Designed for vocal students to better connect what they "hear" with what they "play."

This book provides practical advice on professional jazz singing. Topics covered include getting inside the lyrics, personalising the song, creating an emotional mood, word stress, melodic variation, breathing, rhythm, choosing a key, writing a lead sheet, creating an arrangement, organising a gig book, rehearsing, and playing styles.

A landmark in jazz studies, Thinking in Jazz reveals as never before how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea. The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker. Thinking in Jazz overflows with musical examples from the 1920s to the present, including original transcriptions (keyed to commercial recordings) of collective improvisations by Miles Davis's and John Coltrane's groups. These transcriptions provide additional insight into the structure and creativity of jazz improvisation and represent a remarkable resource for jazz musicians as well as students and educators. Berliner explores the alternative ways—aural, visual, kinetic, verbal, emotional, theoretical, associative—in which these performers conceptualize their music and describes the delicate interplay of soloist and ensemble in collective improvisation. Berliner's skillful integration of data concerning musical development, the rigorous practice and thought artists devote to jazz outside of performance, and the complexities of composing in the moment leads to a new understanding of jazz improvisation as a language, an aesthetic, and a tradition. This unprecedented journey to the heart of the jazz tradition will fascinate and enlighten musicians, musicologists, and jazz fans alike.

Written by a jazz teacher for jazz teachers, "The Real Jazz Pedagogy Book" is based on the premise that successful jazz teachers must be constantly working four main areas: 1) the wind instruments-including tone production, intonation, and section playing skills; 2) playing styles correctly-such as rhythmic and time feel approach, articulation approach, and phrasing; 3) the rhythm section-playing the instruments, time feel and concept, coordination of comping, harmonic voicings, drum fills and setups, stylistic differences; and 4) the soloists-developing improvisational skills (both right brain and left brain), jazz theory, the ballad soloist, and the vocal soloist. Ray Smith, who has taught and directed jazz ensembles, including the acclaimed Brigham Young University group, Synthesis, and given private lessons for over forty years, also discusses the details of running school programs. Smith's YouTube channel complements "The Real Jazz Pedagogy Book."