Rhythm First! A Beginner's Guide to Jazz Improvisation (C Instruments with Free Audio CD)

The first book to teach children how to start soloing using rhythms instead of scales and chords!

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.

• In a step-by-step fashion, Rhythm First! builds up the student's library of rhythmic figures to get the sound and feel of jazz soloing under their fingers.
• Melodically, the book starts with playing simple rhythmic figures on any note, then on the tonic of the F blues scale, followed by the tonic and one other note. Over the course of the book, it progresses to show how and when to use three kinds of blues scales.
• This Rhythm First! method is more fun and therefore more successful in getting kids starting to improvise than any other approach. A must for any school band program!
• Available in C, Bb, Eb and Bass Clef versions!

Spiral-bound, 103 pages!

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.)