Tadley Ewing - What is Harmony With Lego Bricks?

Can you imagine being able to just glance at a chord sequence and not only remember it instantly, but straightaway being able to play it in any key without even having to think about transposing?

That is the astonishing claim which thousands of musicians all over the world have put to the test and found to be true.

At a stroke this book removes all the hurdles to dealing with harmony and frees you to practice improvising.

Everybody, musicians and non-musicians alike, can use this book - all it takes is an interest in jazz.

Everything else you need is here, including a complete course in directed listening, and the simplest, most pragmatic way ever to make the transition from listening to playing. There is lots for experienced players too. ‘All the scales there are’, ‘Why Giant Steps is a Doddle’, and much else besides.

This book is about getting you ready to hold your own as a jazz player, on bandstands, even with the fastest company around.

And even if you don’t play an instrument at all yet, there is enough in the book to do that job for you, starting from scratch.

But the book is also structured so that the price you pay for not getting all of the way through it is trivial. You can bale out at any point, and still retain all of the benefits gained to date.

This has two immediate and inevitable payoffs, almost regardless of how little attention you pay:

First, whether you are a musician or not, this book will show you how to get more out of listening to jazz. The section called What to Listen for in Jazz is a complete guide to what happens during a jazz performance. It shows you the view from the improviser’s head, as it were. You get to discover the thinking behind the solos. And yet it does it all by directed listening (to great music, needless to say), and has no pre-requisites in terms of musical knowledge. Just dive in, and dig the music.

Second, if you are already, or if you want to become, a jazz musician, this book will help you improve the quality of your improvisation. It will remove, almost at a stroke, one of the major obstacles which aspiring players of all levels confront- that of the conflict between having to know harmony thoroughly, and the discovery that applying that knowledge, consciously while playing, limits your power of expression. The New Guide to Harmony with LEGO Bricks solves this problem. Your detailed knowledge of harmony will be immense, as will your view of the repertoire. But you won’t consciously have to think about it at all while playing, whatever key you are playing in!

Understanding music has nothing to do with reading notation, playing an instrument, or knowing technical terms. If you love and can remember whole performances by your favourite players, then you do understand music.

While this is true of all music everywhere, it is especially important for jazz players. A jazz musician personally decides on every note s/he plays, so any attempt to play jazz without the requisite understanding in place is the wrong thing to be doing!

There is even more to this issue of personal choice, though. It is because you choose what to play, that you don’t have to have a virtuoso technique in place before you engage with the process. As long as the understanding, (or taste as it is also called), is there, you can start with any level of competence. And without it, you can’t start at all, no matter how ‘competent’ you are.

All that the technical terms, the musical analysis, and even the historical background, are for is to explain the understanding that you already have.

The achievement of this book is to have identified what it is necessary to explain, and to have discovered that the amount of knowledge you need is unbelievably small - as well as being very easy to learn.

This book works by separating out the pre-requisites. It doesn’t clutter and confuse the learning process by mixing them up. And it always places ‘theory’ after practice.

It starts with the problem of understanding. And from there, but entirely without the paraphernalia of technical language, leads you from just listening to jazz, to a deep appreciation of the processes involved.

It then shows you the tiny knowledge components you need to be able to translate thought into action. Separated and clear so you can see the ‘theory’ for what it is.

Applying the knowledge (practising) is where the playing begins. So you will find a lot of deeply practical help about what and how to practise.