[TMadness1013]

There was a recent thread that discussed what books Bird played out of when he was younger & someone mentioned these two, which I had never heard of.

I've just ordered both & can't wait to check them out when they get here.

I know SOTW's Paul Coats has recommended them. Anyone else play out of them or use them in their teaching?

 

[jlima]

Please let us know what you think of them, I'm curious too.

 

[TMadness1013]

Will do!

 

[TMadness1013]

I've played through both books now. To sum it up, I'm not terribly impressed. I think these books make for great sight reading material, but that's about all. Etudes in 6/8, 5/4, 6/4 make things interesting. Everything is in "friendly" keys for the most part - a few short excerpts in B major & Db major. There's a particularly nice etude in 6/8 in the Modern Etudes book that is a great study on both whole tone scales. Of all etudes in both books, only one has chord changes written in.

I can appreciate that Bird & Stitt may have studied out of this (I could hear "Red Cross" in one of the etudes) - but if you're looking for some textbook bebop, stick with the Omnibook.

I just picked these up out of curiosity & figured it couldn't hurt to play through them if Bird & Stitt did. That being said, I probably won't use these for much other than sight reading material for students.

 

[jlima]

I've played through both books now. To sum it up, I'm not terribly impressed. I think these books make for great sight reading material, but that's about all. Etudes in 6/8, 5/4, 6/4 make things interesting. Everything is in "friendly" keys for the most part - a few short excerpts in B major & Db major. There's a particularly nice etude in 6/8 in the Modern Etudes book that is a great study on both whole tone scales. Of all etudes in both books, only one has chord changes written in.

I can appreciate that Bird & Stitt may have studied out of this (I could hear "Red Cross" in one of the etudes) - but if you're looking for some textbook bebop, stick with the Omnibook.

I just picked these up out of curiosity & figured it couldn't hurt to play through them if Bird & Stitt did. That being said, I probably won't use these for much other than sight reading material for students.

Hi, TM, thank you for your thoughts on the books.

 

[TMadness1013]

You're welcome. One thing I forgot to mention...unfortunately none of the etudes were particularly melodic. That's a huge downfall in my opinion. I can appreciate the value the book has but it will be difficult for a student to find the value in it if none of the etudes are interesting melodically.

 

[jlima]

I guess there are simply many more good options today than when Bird studied.

 

[amsax]

I have the book. My teacher in NYC made me buy it for sight reading purposes only after I told him I wanted to do studio work. I was 18 (50 yrs ago) and he was a retired studio musician from the NBC Radio Orchestra. I just found it recently and started going through it again. It's a good workout for sight treading and not intended for jazz improvisation. I would recommend it if you wanted to work on your reading abilities. It would also help those of you that wanted to do pit work, etc. The chords in the one piece mentioned above are pretty useless as they are old hat today. It was edgy for it's time. I'll probably go through it again and try to make it musical now that I have the skills.