Jazz Piano Masterclass with Mark Levine(With CD) (ISBN 1883217474)

No Surprises Here (and that's a good thing!):
This book is a welcome follow-up to Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book. The only frustration I had with the Jazz Piano Book is that it could not tell me EVERYTHING. The Jazz Piano book only introduced Drop 2 techniques, leaving the voracious student wondering where to find more information. The Drop 2 Book fills that void with the same clarity and pace that made the Jazz Piano Book so useful and popular. The book explains major, minor and dominant progressions, tweaks to make chords sound "modern", applications, problems and work-arounds, soloing, comping, the Altered Bebop Minor Scale, and suggested practice routines. As an added bonus, this book includes a CD with recorded examples. Most students at this level could hammer out the examples, but the relative volumes of the left and right hands are important to this technique. Such nuances cannot be expressed clearly with standard music notation, so the CD is more than just a nice afterthought. If you have worked through the Jazz Piano Book and feel ready to explore Drop 2 voicings in greater depth, this book will take you there. Buy it and recommend it to all your friends so that we can see more Masterclass books by Mark Levine.

Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!:
I love this book. I just bought it last week. I jumped right into it and I love it! I am not a piano player but I write music. The explanation of the 'drop 2' technique in this book is the best explained and illustrated that I have ever seen or heard. I have tried other music books that describe the 'drop 2' method but I had problems in applying it to real music. I kept running into problems with melody notes that didn't seem to allow you to use this technique musically or effectively. I wanted to get this book to see how this author explains the 'drop 2'. And I was not disappointed but ecstatic. YES!!! This was the information I needed. Mark Levine points out alternative voicings or should I say reharmonizations to correct those melody notes that just do not allow you to use the 'drop 2' voicings. Also, these reharmonizations give a much more modern sound than the way other jazz theory books teach and they don't take away from the initial music quality of the original chords. Mark Levine's teaching of the 'drop 2' gives you room to actually create your own musical artistic sound for your own personal arrangements of melodies using this technique. It is well explained and clearly illustrated. I must warn though, as Mr. Levine explains in the beginning of the book, you should be somewhat advance in your music theory knowledge. Mr. Levine comes right out of the chute explaining this technique and does not digress into any theory knowledge. The accompanying cd is a plus because you can hear the illustrations for yourself. This is a technique that not only can be used by piano players but also for anyone that writes or arranges music. Since I write and arrange music, this book is a huge blessing for me. Simply wonderful!!! Thank you, Mark Levine.

Locked hand voicings:
This is almost a one topic volume but invaluable. Whether you want to voice melody lines or improvised lines using Shearing type voicings or Drop 2 voicings this is the best volume going. As with all Mark Levine's publications this is beautifully written and produced. It is the best exposition of the bop scale that I have seen.