Rhythm First! Bass Clef Version

Directed towards elementary, middle school and high school music students and their teachers, Rhythm First! is the only book designed to teach beginners how to improvise by focusing on basic rhythms as the starting point for building solo lines. It includes an audio file, available for free download at shermusic.com, so that the student can hear, see, count and feel what good jazz time consists of. Starting with simple rhythmic figures, the book progresses until the student is able to improvise using longer strings of rhythms to create real solo lines. All this is done without having to learn a bunch of scales and chords before making any music and this makes learning to improvise fun!

Tom Kamp is a trombonist, improviser, teacher, introvert, clinician, author, composer, and arranger. He works as a band director for the Berkeley Heights (NJ) Public Schools. Tom created and taught the “Exploring Music and Technology” class at Governor Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights, and has also taught general music, elementary band, and middle school band. Tom has taught privately for over 30 years, teaching all levels and specializing in low brass and jazz improvisation.Tom has played in Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and Birdland jazz club in NYC. Other career highlights include playing with the Woody Herman Orchestra in the Poplar Bluff, Missouri H.S. Auditorium during a mid-west blanketing blizzard, backing the Temptations and the Four Tops for a hardware convention and playing on the beach at the Atlantic Ocean with a symphony orchestra conducted by a priest in combat fatigues. (It’s a Jersey thing.)