H O M E P A G E
Welcome to dropback.co.uk, the home of John Elliott's Insights In Jazz, the book that helps you see patterns in jazz standard chord progressions and thereby memorise them so that you can play them in any key.
Anyone interested in playing jazz standards faces the same set of daunting challenges:
- What can I do to stop jam sessions being stressful? How can I learn enough songs so as to be not embarrassed when other jazz musicians call well-known tunes that I cannot play?
- How do I achieve a high-level understanding of songs so that I always know where I am and can stop worrying about what the next chord is in the progression?
- How can I make each song my own and free up mental space for creative thought so that I can improvise in a meaningful and cohesive way?
- Is it possible to learn songs in such a way that playing them live in any key is not stressful?
These challenges can all be tackled using the method outlined in The New Guide To Harmony With LEGO Bricks, which exploits the astonishing way the human brain naturally remembers things through a hierarchical process of understanding. Common 'bricks' of chords are identified along with 'joins' that allow you to move from one to the next within a song. A small repertoire of twenty-four songs is analysed in prose.
Insights In Jazz moves to the next level, taking the baseline method established and applying it to over 230 songs. The baseline method is extended and updated according to the needs of those songs so that you can see how to apply the method to your favourite songs. MP3 audio tracks of 55 bricks used are provided to allow you to hear how they sound.
Reliable chord progressions are provided for a body of songs that are likely to be called on the bandstand (and some others for interest) with complete analyses of bricks and joins presented as visual roadmap charts. Once you see a chart, you find the song form and changes hard to forget. The roadmaps are provided as a PDF file allowing you to electronically search for features across all the songs in order to rapidly make the associations that facilitate memorising.
Whatever your level of jazz musicianship this book will help free your mind up for developing better improvisations and interacting with other musicians on stage.
