( 5 reviews )
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Posted: Dec 21 2008
Mr. Wise is perhaps the best educator I've ever known. I first heard about him via his reputation as the teacher of the year at GIT. Then I found out he had this book available. Bravo! Anyone interested in being excellent needs to buy this book and commit it to memory. If you are a serious person willing to exercise your mind, then this work of genius is for you. W
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( 4 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: Mar 7 2007
A reprint of Les Wise's 'Inner Jazz', and it is essentially a crash course on tension and release in the context of major and minor ii-V-I progressions. This important musical concept is demonstrated in some 30 bebop licks. The book title of this reprint 'Jazz Improvisation for Guitar' is quite misleading, as the material is not about a broad exposition of jazz improvisation. The focus in this book is three-fold: (1) the understanding of the difference between natural tensions (b7, 9, 11) and altered tensions (b5/#5, b9/#9), (2) the substitutions of major/melodic minor/harmonic minor scales for the dominant chords to create altered tensions, (3) and how these tensions are resolved into the I chord. Newer books, such as Don Mock's Melodic Minor: Revealed and Guitar Secrets: Harmonic Minor Revealed are more in-depth studies of applying these scales, though these two books do not primarily just deal with tension and release in a bebop context (please refer to my reviews on Don's books). As such, Les Wise's 'Inner Jazz' reprint should still be a nice supplement to the aspiring guitarist who is concerned with a traditional bebop sound.
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 21 2004
This is a lesson on tension and resolution. Specifically, on some simple innovations for adding tension with altered tones over dominant chords, with most examples within the context of ii-V-I sequences. Several methods are outlined for this using familar scales played from various starting points in order to access patterns with altered tones.
