Jazz Hands for Piano Book 2

Most jazz pianists know their 'standards' – 'My Funny Valentine' etc. These familiar melodies and chord structures provide the basic canvas upon which embryonic improvisation can begin.

But these are hard-won skills, not garnered overnight, so at first it may well be advisable to learn set pieces which are 'jazzy', as opposed to 'pure jazz'. Many of the pieces in the first few books of this series aim to do just that, but before long you should find it hard to resist adding your own ideas to keep things fresh and interesting.

That said, there are no direct expectations to improvise in these books – everything has been written out for you. There are limits to notation, however – take a look at some of the more elaborate transcriptions of Oscar Peterson's improvisations and you'll quickly wish you'd never bothered!

Indeed, some of the pieces in these books may at first appear a little harder to pull off than their classical equivalents for the grades in question, and yet I have always maintained that it is the quality of the playing which governs how compelling the music emerges, not the level of complexity apparent from the page. For this reason, even a classically-trained grade 8 pianist may have to work hard to render a grade 3 jazz piece with the confidence and élan it invites.

Mark Tanner