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I figured that someone eventually would described how a jazz musician initially learned scales, chords, modes, etc, established the mental context, and then related these to meaningful improvisation and technique. You did — Thank You!

I am an aspiring jazz accordionist…yes, there have been great jazz accordionists (e.g., Art Van Damm, Frank Marocco). I have pursued multiple paths, have gone thru boxes of jazz books (Aebersold thru Levine) and worked scales, inversions, progressions, etc. I played for Frank Marocco a couple times and was ready to start jazz lessons, but tragically, he passed away this year. I’ve contacted local jazz pianists to see if they would take on an accordionist…no luck.

From the books I have studied, I am convinced that most jazz musicians do not remember (or know) how they made the leap from scales/chords to meaningful improvisation.

I started your book, Metaphors for The Musician, yesterday. I couldn’t put it down. I am currently traveling and running through your approaches mentally…I can’t wait to get home to do the serious work.

You nailed it…THANK YOU!

Dick Steichen
Albuquerque, NM

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Hi

First, some context – I’m about 60, I’ve been studying jazz, mostly on the keyboard, for 40 years. On my own. Never having professional performing as a goal (I’m a Ph.D. statistician in educational research). I work at it for the pure personal pleasure of learning and growing.

I’ve tapped into literally hundreds of theory books, classical and jazz, in my self-study. Although there is still gobs to master, I thought I’d pretty much seen it all in instructional advice. That is, until I read your book.

The theory sections especially are a revelation. I guess I must have seen it before, I guess nothing can be really new in this realm, but your exposition of it is an eye-opener.

I just wanted you to know that I (and other isolated students) really appreciate your efforts. I enjoyed the book immensely and will continue to enjoy working at the ideas for some time to come.

Thanks,
Dr. Terry Froman
Research Services
Miami-Dade County Public Schools

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Hi Randy,
I bought Metaphors for the Musician a few years ago and I just keep coming back to it again and again. I think the most powerful concept I got was the ‘practice sequencer’ metaphor. I use it almost exclusively now. I also liked how you presented the examples of how to progress from scales over chords, to licks to transcribing etc. There really are a lot of paths up the mountain. I own Levine’s Jazz Piano Book, and it is good too, but using your book at the keyboard is like having a teacher there with me. Although I am a serious amateur, I feel that I am a more complete musician for having applied what you have taught in this book.
Thanks, and hope to see you in Seattle sometime.

Michael Karns
Whitesboro, TX

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Mr. Halberstadt,

I wanted to send you a note to tell you how much I am enjoying this
book of yours. I picked it up on Kindle from Amazon for a couple of
reasons. One, I was looking to get more proficient at my piano
voicings (I studied piano first but shifted to the bass guitar in high
school and have focused on that since) and two, I was looking for
something to read on my cell phone while I endured a kids pizza party I accompanied my son to for his T-Ball team.

Not only have I found myself completely satisfied on both levels
(Chapter 11 was a perfect starting point for me to get back into piano playing and I found myself reading page after page while my son ran around the pizza place with his teammates!) but I have found some very significant and perspective-changing information here that I had to write and thank you for including.

First of all, you’re a great writer and I really enjoy the anectodes
you share about your journey as a musician. Second of all, I REALLY
identify well with the way you communicate these ideas. Finally, I
feel like you have lifted huge burdens off of my shoulders that I have been carrying for far too long.

I was a very active musician in college, playing in several jazz
groups and traveling with an urban gospel group. After college I got
scared at my prospects of earning a living off of music in Los Angeles so I did the next logical thing and signed up for the Army as an infantryman. Life has moved quickly since that decision up until now (spent 7 years in the Army and got a wife, three kids and several memorable trips to foreign places on the way) and I now find myself with more time than ever to get back to playing and studying jazz.

One significant problem I encountered repeatedly, call me analytical, was running into what I felt was conflicting advice. There was a local bass legend in Los Angeles who told me all my previous study of scales and modes were not only worthless but would greatly endanger my jazz playing…then there was the next jazz guru who told me he was off his rocker and to get back into modes…then the old jazz cat who advised me to learn every note Ray Brown ever played and quit thinking so much…to the trombonist who gigged and wrote for Chet Baker and Joe Henderson that told me All Chord Scale Theory is garbage, Harmony is relative and all I really needed to do was focus on chromatic patterns and the melody…

Meanwhile I found myself really digging and identifying with Jamey
Aebersold methods who was the one guy everybody seemed to agree was offering the equivalent of jazz educational fluff.

So this cycle continued for me and I’d find myself abandoning one
methodoly/pedagogy to embrace another for a few months, quit that and embrace another and ad infinitum because I was under the illusion that one way must lead to enlightenment while all others were certain to lead me astray.

I feel like Chapter 20 was written just for me. You described my
situation (and my reaction) perfectly. What I really appreciated was
that following this description you offer real and useful approaches
to deal with this type of thinking. Another thing you mentioned
earlier in the book was how your mind is absorbing and hearing these ideas but until you unlock your physical potential to play them, they’re not able to come through. I can’t tell you how many times I have been practicing an etude or a pattern and just thought to myself, “This is pointless. I do not sound any more like Charlie Parker after memorizing this etude than I did before, only now I can play this jazzy line in Eb”. I am so glad that college girlfriend of yours pushed you toward teaching piano lessons! Between just those two concepts alone, seeing worth in the work I’m putting into my instrument and knowing that there’s some worth in all of these methods clears so much up for me. It sounds very simple really, but the cycle I kept finding myself in was really cheating me out of valuable and worthwhile practice. There would be a couple of weeks here or there that I would just get somewhat depressed and not even feel like practicing. So – thank you!

Sorry for the length of this email, if I’m ever in Seattle I would
love the chance to meet you in person, I owe you a drink at least. I
wanted to drop you a line to let you know how much you have really helped me to put things into perspective and keep pursuing this art form I fell in love with years ago.

Best,
Micah Stott

and two months later …

Randy,
I’ve had this book over two months now. I wrote you once to tell you how great I thought it was during the honeymoon phase when I had just finished reading it (I know I wasn’t supposed to read it straight through like a novel, but I did 😉

I wanted to let you know that after two months of consistently working on areas and ideas brought to my attention through the book that I am playing and hearing jazz better than ever in my life. My practice is fun, my walking and solos have improved tremendously. My music teacher just told me last week that I have all the makings of an accomplished soloist, definitely something I’ve never heard before!

I’ve had the tools in front of me the whole time but I was getting caught up in so many similar situations as you describe in your book and now I feel like the sky is the limit.

Thanks again Randy, probably not the last time you’ll hear from me.

Best,
Micah

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Hi Randy,

My name is Az Samad. I am a jazz/acoustic fingerstyle guitarist currently based in Berkeley, California. My girlfriend (a singer-songwriter/pianist/ percussionist/guitarist) attended Taylor Eigsti’s workshop at the Jazz School in Berkeley and heard about your book – Metaphors For The Musician. Taylor was raving about the book – insisting it to be called “The Best Jazz Piano Book Method Ever!”.

We ordered the book from Sher Music soon after and now have been reading (and doing the exercises).

I was so touched when I read chapter 42 – A tale of two pianists – because I felt that you were telling my own story. I have never been very much a natural in music – it was a lot of hard work (and continues to be!) especially with jazz but it drives me and I enjoy it so much.

Thank you for writing the book and I want you to know that I’m practicing from the book too. (so it’s not just for pianists!!!)

Wishing you a great day!

Best Regards,
Az Samad

Best,
Neil Haverstick

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I have to thank you for your book. It has cleared up things for me that most of the others (and we won’t mention the big ones) just didn’t. It is the most helpful periodical on jazz piano I’ve ever spent a buck on – and I’ve spent a lot!

Cliff Panetta

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Randy,

Thanks for writing “Metaphors for the Musician.” What an eye-opener! I’ve been looking for a book like this, and I finally found it. Thank You. Thank You.

Best,
Justin Greenwald

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Dear Randy:

I purchased your book about two weeks ago, and love it. I started learning saxophone about 2 years ago, and thumbing through your book at the music store, I just knew I could learn so much about becoming a better musician even if it was written by a pianist. I was so right.

Many thanks for a truly outstanding book. I’m certain I will be referring to it for a long time to come.

Jerry Szubin
Bloomfield, NJ

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Hi Randy –

I’m an audio professional with 30 yrs keyboard experience and a raft of albums and gigs under my belt. I’ve been making the transition from art rock to jazz over the last 2.5 years. It’s been a challenging but extremely fulfilling road – I’ve been taking lessons, classes at a jazz school here in the Bay Area, reading everything I can, and playing with a quartet on a weekly basis. It’s coming along, but never at a pace I’d like.

Anyway, I found your book at the NAMM show last month, and have been utterly immersed in it every since. It clarifies and adds a very human face to the issues that we face in trying to become jazzers. Far more approachable and understandable than (other books I have read). I teach as well (Pro Tools at a community college level as a side gig), and know the challenges involved in getting complex material across in a friendly, non-threatening manner.

You’ve hit it on the head – at least for me. Your tone and approach are terrific. I wish you lived down here – I’d love to take a lesson or two from you. In any case, I’ll try to make your Yoshi’s gig in April,
schedule permitting.

Very best regards,
Nick Peck

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Randy, I just wanted to tell you how much I love your book.  I’m a long-time guitar player who has recently taken up the string bass, and I think that your ideas are “right on.”  Thanks for writing such a terrific book.

Suketu
San Francisco

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Dear Randy,

I participated in the Jazz Workshop last month and attended your classes on intermediate music theory. I want to let you know how very helpful and interesting I thought your classes were. I learned a lot, especially about the most consonant scales, and really enjoyed the daily classes.

But the most important “take away” from my week at the Jazz Workshop was a small section in your book on how to practice. That section urges students to start new pieces very slowly. All my life, I’ve been a “Ready, Fire, Aim” guy, jumping into things too quickly and then having to backtrack. However, for the past three weeks, I’ve been learning new pieces using your method. I start at a tempo that feels much too slow and then gradually increase the speed. The first couple of days of practice are frustrating, but then – much as you predicted – it gets to be fun to be able to play a piece consistently well and at higher speed.

So thanks, both for your classes and for some very useful guidance in your book.

Eric

Comments from around the world!

Dear Randy,

I hope you’ll forgive the first-name terms but after reading your book I felt Mr Halberstadt just wouldn’t do! I’m writing to thank you for Metaphors for the Musician. You should know straight off that I don’t make a habit of writing fan mail. But my girlfriend has been suffering for a week now with me going on about how ‘everything’s becoming clear now’, so I figured I could use another outlet.

Briefly, I am a thirty-year-old British guy living in Prague and trying to figure out how to play jazz piano. I studied classical viola as a child, and played in orchestras through university. I’ve been playing piano by ear for twenty years but only really discovered jazz when I moved to Prague in ’96. I’m happy to say there’s a vibrant local scene here.

As soon as I read your introduction to ‘Metaphors for the Musician’, I was hooked. At last, someone who played a different instrument first but who kept getting drawn back to the piano! Although you started seriously while still at college, your experiences have given me heart. I feel that I am facing – and starting to overcome – the same obstacles. And thirty isn’t so old, right?

I actually have a good ear and have never had problems playing standard pop material, but I found the whole ‘rootless voicing’ approach to jazz completely alien to my way of thinking. I also couldn’t see how it was worth learning a bunch of scales and modes; or rather, I couldn’t see how I could ever apply them.

Although I only got your book a week ago, I’ve read through the whole thing. (I’m your type of student who likes to see the whole terrain mapped out first and then break it down into pieces and investigate one bit at a time.) I’ve started to extract principles and exercises for my practice routine and I’m noticing improvements already.

I appreciate the way that your text is complementary, rather than exclusive. I already owned Mark Levine’s excellent ‘Jazz Piano Book’ and your text has really opened it up for me. The great thing I’m finding about jazz theory and practice is how that, the more I learn and understand, the more I realize that all the teachers and authors are basically imparting the same information. There is no magic solution!

Surprisingly, I find this very reassuring. Although everyone teaches
fundamentally the same thing, they all approach it in different ways. Your way happens to work for me and is providing the key to unlocking all the rest of it.

I’m also finding your methods tie in well with classical piano, which I
started studying six months ago with an excellent teacher. He was
particularly impressed with your scale charts, by the way. Also, I’ve found that the ‘sequencer’, ‘target bombing’, and ‘slow practice’ techniques adapt equally to a classical approach.

I’m now clocking an average of three hours of daily practice and can see the results in both genres. (I know! Without a job to worry about, you’d figure I could do more. But my other projects are ‘mastering’ Czech and writing a novel. Glutton for punishment, me.)

Of course, with my current focus on music, I expected to make progress even using the resources I had before buying your book. But I feel Metaphors for the Musician will enable me to make a quantum leap in my development. And that’s giving me a big morale boost. Although we Brits are not prone to bouts of American-style self-confidence, I feel I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and, for once, I’m pretty sure it’s daylight and not an oncoming train.

The timing of getting your book couldn’t have been better. I’ve studied enough now that your concepts often seem to clarify or confirm something I already half-knew, rather than seeming totally new and overawing. It’s also funny that I was away from a piano for a few days a while ago and I started to think that there must be a better way of learning voicings ‘cold’ than going round the cycle, since I felt that I was learning voicings in a mechanical rather than intuitive way. I started pondering a system for randomizing progressions. Sure enough, before I could finalize my own version you saved me the trouble with your excellent randomized charts!

Once again, thanks for making the effort to produce a truly useful and inspiring book. (By the way, when I do work, it’s within the writing and editing field. I can only imagine what a nightmare it must have been to proof your text and typeset it as elegantly as you have. Congratulations on that, too.)

Finally, I hope to organize a jazz festival in Prague in the next few years. If it goes ahead, I’d be delighted if you could come and play with your trio. Maybe by that time, you could flog a bunch of copies of ‘Metafory pro hudebniky: perspektivy z jazzoveho klavirsty’!

Best regards,
“Practicing in Prague”

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Hi Randy!

This is Lyndon Aguilar from the Philippines. I’m a jazz theory professor teaching at the University of Santo Tomas Manila Philippines, and I use your book as a textbook in my class. The first time I heard about your book I was…skeptical; I thought it’s just another jazz theory book, with the same content as other jazz theory books. But I was wrong man. When I first read it, it’s like you’re talking, teaching me face to face, it’s like a personal approach, a one-on-one personal lesson from a great musician. I really like your book. It’s user-friendly for my students and for me. Next school year we are planning to open a new course: it’s a bachelor of music major in jazz performance. We are the very first to open this course in all conservatories in our country. And the very spark of it is you, Randy! More power to you!!!

Take care,
Lyndon

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Hey Randy,