Randy Halberstadt

With a quarter-century of experience teaching jazz piano, Randy Halberstadt approaches the subject of learning music (music in general, not merely jazz piano) sagely and philosophically. While the book's kernels of wisdom can be of benefit to any music student, there does remain a focus that makes Metaphors primarily a useful adjunct to the study of jazz piano.
Halberstadt's personal remembrances, framed to showcase lessons learned, invite the reader to benefit from his experience. Through show more colorful, imaginary examples, Halberstadt seeks to jumpstart the brain into degrees of freedom required for a successful jazz state of mind. Along the way of fun and prose come well thought-out examples. Embedded in these sophisticated studies is the knowledge of years that makes practice more productive. Halberstadt's method moves away from rote rehearsing simple building blocks into shorter steps of logical progression that add variety to the learning process. To bring it all together, the volume includes sheet music for several tunes, among them "Embraceable You", "How Long Has This Been Going On?" and "My Foolish Heart." From fast fingerings to proper professionalism, Metaphors is a cornucopia of talent catalysts. show less

Don't let the "pianist" part of the title fool you. If you're interested in jazz and improv., I'm sure you'll be able to make use of this book, like me.
I'm not a very proficient pianist, (I'm a saxophonist) but the ideas that come out in this book helped me improve my improv. greatly. My understanding of chords increased greatly, and I gained more confidence for my solos. This book has changed my life in terms of music, and I doubt it will not change yours either.

An excellent presentation of ideas for the practicing jazz musician. I really enjoyed his deconstruction of chord voicings and his interesting thoughts on motif development in solos.

This is absolutely the best book I've every read for improving your jazz playing. It's good for any instrument, but especially jazz piano.

I've recommended it to every beginning jazz player I know, and some have purchased it and loved it.