Mickey Baker's Jazz Guitar (Guitar Books)

This book arrived as advertised, in very good condition and on the expected date.

Neither book is for beginners and both books require a considerable amount of discipline to get the best from. I have given both five stars. And there, to my mind, the similarity ends.Baker's book is very systematic. He uses a minimum number of chord shapes, 36 I think, which are numbered and nearly all occur on a single page at the beginning. Said chords do not use open strings and therefore can be easily moved up and down the fretboard. For each of the keys he chooses, C and G, there are two sets of chords and thus it is easy to play in two different positions for any key, simply by moving the shapes up and down the neck.He gives some theory on chord construction and introduces melody chords, i.e. chord structures which provide a melody by using inversions in which the top notes form the melody. He does not use tablature or provide a recording, therefore the non-reader is at a great disadvantage and will not get very much out of the book.In the second half of the book, with the same rigour that characterises the first, he goes into soloing showing how to make riffs related to the chords over which they are being played, how to improvise riffs that work over fast changing chords sequences etc. Disciplined practice with this book will produce results, and I have found both my playing and my ear to have improved greatly because of it.Jody Fisher's The Complete Jazz Guitar is a much thicker, longer and informative book. It comes with a CD with MP3 recordings. Said recordings are exact renditions of the score they represent and are useful if either you cannot read music or have a tendency to sloppiness.The book, actually a compilation of four separate books in the same format, contains a huge amount of information. He has two different and interesting approaches to modal playing, a lot of different fingerings for scales, many more chords than you will find in Baker's book and a wealth of different ideas relating to different aspects of jazz guitar. A rich source of information.I recommend both books and suggest that if you are going to buy both, go through Mickey Baker's first.

10 years ago I was a bass player that got a job at a guitar shop, didn't much know how to play guitar. all of the old guys that would hang around the shop taught me the basics, so I got where I could play basic rhythm guitar for a basic band. Then one of the guys gave me this book. I learned more from the first three pages than from two years in a guitar shop. I've had this book for ten years and have still not learned everything it has to offer. I have given this book away to every guitar player I have met that I thought deserved it. I don't know anyone that it has not made a better player out of. for real on the third page it shows you 27 movable chords that you can play in any key, the next page shows you how to work them together. if you want to learn how to play guitar better than the guy at the guitar shop giving you lessons and you want to sound original and not like Stevie Ray Vaughn (no disrespect he was awesome)but this book makes you form your own sound. take it and go. I've worked in bars and played in bands all over the south and I've taught old timers chords and licks I have learned from this book. I have bought this book 11 times and have always passed it on and it has made a better guitar player out of everyone I have given it to. I am keeping this copy so even if you plan on meeting me soon I am not giving it up. buy it. It is the best guitar book you will ever buy.oh yeah don't buy the chord book or the solo book because they are both in this book. unless you don't care about chords or solosjust sayin.sam

This new printing of Baker's work has been edited to eliminate the little errors in the original. As others have said, it's not for beginners. For one thing, you have to know how to read music coming in.The book was written in 1955, so it's somewhat dated. Is it the best book for getting started in jazz guitar? I doubt it, but I think you could do worse. Pete Townsend said he learned all his chords from this book, and it was Robben Ford's first book, and they've done OK.The first thing Mickey has you do is memorize all these nice chords that are still used today because they still sound hip. In the first half of the book you learn to play rhythm-guitar using these chords. But he only has you use one simple, Freddie Green-type rhythmic pattern throughout that whole first half. You ARE learning to strum with your right hand, and you're learning to make chords with your left, skills you'll be able to apply to other rhythmic patterns, but the one pattern you use in this book gets old.In the second half of the book he teaches you how to string together arpeggios (chords whose notes are played in sequence instead of all together) to form solos, 1955 style. You couldn't play this way professionally today unless you were playing fifties music. But you do need to learn about using arpeggios eventually, so perhaps this is a good way to get started playing lead licks.Heck, books are cheap, and if I can learn one useful thing from a book, I consider it worth what I paid for it. So I buy everything I can find that looks like it contains useful information. Sure, buy this book, have fun with it, but I'd suggest also buying books by Ted Green, Barrett Tagliarino, Jody Fisher, William Leavitt, anyone you can learn from. Each teacher will have a different focus and show you other ways of looking at the same things, broadening your understanding.

Good solid jazz guitar foundation. “Cookie cutter” as it is, it does provide a practice schema to allow for “automatic” kick-in formatching Licks and riffs. Not for everybody,It is a good introductory course. Chords thenJazz figures, in two sections, nothing fancy, but good format—note reading is helpful.

Das Buch von Mickey Baker ist aus meiner Sicht der absolute Hammer! Es ist eines der besten Gitarren-Bücher, die ich für mich durchgearbeitet habe! Wer sich noch nicht so gut mit Jazz-Chords auskennt, ist hier bestens beraten! Nicht ohne Grund weist Robben Ford in seinen Videos und Interviews wiederholt auf dieses Buch hin, wenn es um seine Aha-Erlebnisse geht! Behutsam wird man an gängige Akkordfolgen herangeführt. Mit der Zeit wird man auch ohne Theoriekenntnisse wichtige Zusammenhänge und Verwandtschaften von Akkorden erkennen und in sein Spiel integrieren. Man sollte sich unbedingt die Zeit nehmen und den Empfehlungen des Autors folgen, alle Übungen in die gängigsten Tonarten zu transponieren! Genial finde ich die Nummerierung der Griffdiagramme! So kann man sich mit 33 Griffen durch dieses Buch, aber auch durch wahrscheinlich alle Jazz-Standard manövrieren! Das gleiche Konzept gibt es auch von dem Autor Roger Edison in seinem Buch „Jazz Rhythm Guitar“, welches ebenso sehr gut und leider nur antiquarisch erhältlich ist! Wer nun dieses Nummern-System erfunden hat, entzieht sich meiner Kenntnis. … Im zweiten Teil geht es um Singlenote-Improvisation. Hier werden „Mini-Arpeggien“, oder „Runs“, verschiedener Griffbilder chromatisch über das ganze Griffbrett verschoben und geübt. Dabei bemerkt man dann die vorab in den Akkodübungen verdeutlichten Verwandtschaften bzw. Austauschbarkeiten (Substitute) von Akkorden, die sich auch im Solospiel anwenden lassen! Die ersten praktischen Übungen dazu werden im Blues dargestellt, später findet man auch Anwendungsbeispiele über „Dark Eyes“. ... Ich habe dieses Buch für mich vor über 20 Jahren entdeckt und finde es genial! Es ist allerdings eine Geschmackssache, ob man die (blaue) Neuauflage nutzen möchte oder die (schwarz/gelbe) Erstausgabe aus den 1960-ern. Ich besitze beide Ausgaben, habe die „blaue“ Ausgabe durchgearbeitet und finde inzwischen die alte Originalausgabe auch sehr sympathisch, spiele überwiegend nun darin und schwelge in Erinnerungen. Uneingeschränkte Kauf-und Übe-Empfehlung! Ich hoffe, ich konnte helfen!

Super Buch

Great book

Maybe it is not fair to review this as a whole product since I bought this only because of the chords part. But the truth is that I haven't found it that good on that area. Maybe i was expecting too much.I have been playing blues for more than 10 years and studied jazz for a while.For me some chords are too difficult to reach and, in my opinion, useless. I found the way that chords are organised/named a bit unlogic.Like I said my review covers only the chords parts.

Très bien pour travailler les gammes, modes et suites d'accords avec renversement. je regrette juste le manque de cd audio reprenant les exemples du livres