Reddit reviews Patterns for Jazz -- A Theory Text for Jazz Composition and Improvisation: Treble Clef Instruments

Patterns for Jazz

I agree that listening is important, but I'd also highly recommend this book: Patterns for Jazz, by Jerry Coker. This is seriously the best $20 you'll ever spend on jazz studies.

Take it nice and slow, maybe around 5 exercises a week (but played in all 12 keys). Once you've mastered those exercises, move on to the next five. The book starts out pretty simple, with major scale exercises, but soon it moves into other scales and chord exercises.

Here's an inception style link to a post with a link to another post where I made recommendations for people more or less in your position.

While you may be been to aim purely at the technical mastery, I'd highly encourage you to work through the sightreading book and method book. Reading better will open up a lot more resources to you a lot more quickly. And putting some of your ideas in context of reading simple stuff will be great.

I definitely don't think you should play big pieces (a mistake too many pianists make at the cost of efficient technical improvement), but playing lots of small stuff out of simple method books will help a ton as it will highlight very specific technical hurdles you need to overcome, but without having and overwhelming amount of different problems going on (hard rhythms with big chords with crazy fast scale runs for example).

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Given your longer term goals, I'l throw in some other resources I think will be useful to you... much later. Definitely start with the scale/arpeggio book, method book, and sightreading book, but you might start dabbling in some of these others.

The Pop Piano Book is my go-to recommendation for people wanting to learn in lots of styles. It's explained not just with examples, but theory explanations of why things work, which will make you much more adaptable. I would start here before any other style book.

I'd also recommend the Keyboard Style Series of books from Hal Leonard for any particular style you want to get deeper in. For jazz, I'd absolutely recommend Intro to Jazz Piano from this series.

Make sure you work through that book BEFORE you take anyone's recommendation for The Jazz Piano Book. Great book, not for beginners to jazz (and especially not straight up beginners)... not to be worked through without guidance.

I'd also highly recommend Patterns for Jazz. While you won't be ready to play through this on piano, get it now and work through it on your other instruments. So much of jazz is mentally understanding the language. Being able to do what it asks on your other instruments (stuff like outlining different chord types while quickly jumping between keys) is absolutely essential and the mental side of that will translate to piano.

In the meantime, you'll get much better at playing your other instruments from a technical perspective. Kill all the birds with one stone. You might find different approaches to the exercises work better for different instruments. For example, it's easy to spell an arpeggio from different key roots on guitar (with moveable and barre shapes), but forcing yourself to spell them from the 6th, 5th, 4th, and even 3rd string (where applicable) will make you know your neck a lot better.

http://www.fiddlingaround.co.uk/exploringjazzviolin.html

Also learn a few Grappelli transcriptions, learn to do your own transcriptions.

Then for jazz in general: https://www.amazon.de/Patterns-Jazz-Composition-Improvisation-Instruments/dp/0898987032/ref=sr_1_1?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=nav_ya_signin&

Jerry Coker’s Patterns for Jazz -- A Theory Text for Jazz Composition and Improvisation: Treble Clef Instruments

Edit: Denis DiBlasio’s approach to Coker’s book

besides the obvious advice of "practice practice practice" and "listen listen listen" I'd recommend a few things. Good advice in this thread so far. In no particular order, I guess:

• find a group of people that you can play with and not have any fear about performance quality...improvising is great, but when done alone it's just one factor of many in the overall sound. The abersolds are good and all, but no substitute for a rhythm section that is listening to you, as well.
  
  
• don't just listen, but analyze. Take the song you are trying to learn to solo over...find a few good examples of other artists improvising over that tune, and start listening and transcribing. (kind of like how writing down notes in a lecture helps you remember, writing down notes from a solo helps you internalize)
  
  
• lastly, but definitely not least -- learn patterns, they are great starting points and "go tos" when you need 'em. I guess that's what your original question was anyway, ha. The Levine book that was recommended is great for theory. Another good book for learning patterns and transitions in jazz that I've always enjoyed is this one. Play the patterns in every key, no excuses:
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Jazz-Treble-Jerry-Coker/dp/0898987032
  
  (you didn't mention which instrument, so I linked the treble clef version..)
  
  good luck!
  

Check out Patterns for Jazz by Jerry Coker. It's a great way to get you introduced to cell and digital patterns and by the time you've gone cover to cover you'll have a lot under your fingers.

I recommend Patterns for Jazz by Jerry Coker. You basically learn some of the patterns in every key and it gives you a good arsenal of beginning solo material.

https://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Jazz-Theory-Composition-Improvisation/dp/0898987032/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=patterns+for+jazz%5C&qid=1574088220&sr=8-1

I'm really liking this book. I've been hitting it hard for about a month and I'm only on like page 30. It'll give you a pattern or scale in C, then you have to transpose it to the other 11 keys yourself.

Patterns for Jazz -- A Theory Text for Jazz Composition and Improvisation: Treble Clef Instruments https://www.amazon.com/dp/0898987032/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_KPo7Bb69TW55C