Jazz-Sax.Com

I first have to apologize to Brian J. Kane. He sent me two books to review way back in like December, and basically, they got filed (i.e.: stacked) with some other books. I took a look at one of them, Creative Jazz Sight Reading.

The book is 94 pages, and includes etudes for Eb, Bb, C and Bass clef instruments. On a typographical note, all the text in the books was done with the jazz font. While I like the jazz font generally, the actual music is done with the standard Finale font (Maestro? I believe it all was produced on Finale). For me, it looks a little funny.

The material in the book is very good, and introduces how to count music, which is a great thing. I wish some of these other books they use in schools, like “The Standard Of Excellence” would devote. The book also has a great little section on Jazz articulations, and how to swing eighth notes. Good stuff.

There are two little items I don’t like about this book. One, is the lack of a CD. I think in this day and age, the inclusion of a CD for audio examples, and for actually working on the exercises is very important. This book would be even better with some backgrounds and examples to most all the items contained in the book.

Second, there are some counting items that I don’t know if I agree with. The first is the counting of Triplets. Mr. Kane counts a eight note triplet as 1 + +. I think this confuses things. So, are you on the first + or the second +? I learned (and teach) triplets as being ONE-TRIP-LET. Like they do here. You know then exactly where on the triplet you are. The other thing that is counted strangely, are 16th notes. 1 Y + A. I learned (and teach) 1 E + A.

The font use, lack of a CD, and counting issues aside, this is a great book for learning how to read jazz.