Singers! Have you ever wanted to feel more equipped to nail every scale and chord shape on call? See a set of chord changes and quickly recognize by sight and by ear what scales to use to help you improvise more freely, deeply and confidently? Here’s a method that will provide you with a set of skills and resource tools to assist in hearing and pitching across a myriad of harmony allowing you greater freedom to improvise accurately. This work can increase your knowledge of theory exponentially, enhance your composing and reading skills and most importantly empower you to become more complete and independent vocal musicians.
Introduction
Discovering the "Tetrachord" has had a significant impact on my learning and teaching as a vocal jazz educator. In fact I’ve found it to be one of the simplest, most direct and effective tools to address all three components of study — theory, ear training and improvisation. This book explores its uses in hearing and integrating scales along with the chords that source to them in much of what we know as "jazz harmony." By working through these exercises, students and professionals will gain a more thorough understanding of the interconnectedness between scales and chords, while helping identify both visually and aurally by sight and by ear how to improvise with more confidence and accuracy. I have also included a number of Appendix documents which I encourage readers to utilize throughout this work and hopefully beyond.
While the main focus of the book is to expand your hearing and understanding of jazz harmony, the work also provides a more complete theoretical template to develop your compositional and arranging skills. While some of you may have substantial theory under your belt others will not. In order to have complete mastery as an improvisor one must be able to integrate both the aural and visual landscape. These are our road maps for navigating our way through harmony. Wherever possible I’ve created exercises in all 12 keys. I encourage working in as many keys as possible and making friends with the piano.