Oops...can you tell I haven't pulled it out in a while...princeganon said:I think you mean mark, not ted. but yeah, that's the best one.
I use both The Jazz Language and The Jazz Theory Book as references, but they aren't really comparable. The Levine book covers topics TJL doesn't even touch on and covers the topics covered by TJL in much more detail. I wouldn't really call anything in Levine's book "extraneous", but Levine's book is defintely better when all you want is a quick reference on some chord/scale theory. Seems to me like everyone should have both.HeavyWeather77 said:That's a good book, but I'm a huge fan of The Jazz Language by Dan Haerle, I think you can get it from the Aebersold web site. It's got a lot of the same info as the Levine but presented in an incredibly concise and easy to digest way; it's very skinny and has all the essentials of theory without anything extraneous.
That makes a lot of sense and I definitely see your point. Levine's book is much more detailed and in-depth, for sure, and is a great book to check out. I guess what I like about Haerle's book (aside from the fact that he was my teacher and a great, great guy) is how brilliantly it takes care of the essentials, which are so, so easy to slide over and not really take care of. I'd say it like this: check out Levine's book if you're on top of your game, for sure, but if the stuff in Haerle's book doesn't make sense to you, don't move on until it does.hsitz said:I use both The Jazz Language and The Jazz Theory Book as references, but they aren't really comparable. The Levine book covers topics TJL doesn't even touch on and covers the topics covered by TJL in much more detail. I wouldn't really call anything in Levine's book "extraneous", but Levine's book is defintely better when all you want is a quick reference on some chord/scale theory. Seems to me like everyone should have both.