Honestly, Thinking in Jazz is overkill for a simple jazz fan like myself. It's a nearly 900-page work of ethnomusicology, filled with music theory and hundreds of pages of music transcriptions. The target audience is academic musicologists and aspiring jazz musicians. The subject is "the infinite art of improvisation."
However, nearly every one of the four hundred pages comprising Parts 1 and 2 ("Cultivating the Soloist's Skills" and "Collective Aspects of Improvisation") yields an insight about what jazz musicians do and how they go about doing it. Berliner provides very specific tips that paint a very vivid portrait of the music and the life of musicians. For example:
The book deepens my appreciation of the music even as much of it went over my head. The only thing that could have made it better was a companion CD.
However, nearly every one of the four hundred pages comprising Parts 1 and 2 ("Cultivating the Soloist's Skills" and "Collective Aspects of Improvisation") yields an insight about what jazz musicians do and how they go about doing it. Berliner provides very specific tips that paint a very vivid portrait of the music and the life of musicians. For example:
Pianists can make a subtle harmonic offering to soloists by presenting a non-chord tone or color tone in the inner voice of a passing chord. To present the same color tone in the upper voice of a sustained chord is a more pronounced offering, one that can produce dissonance if others ignore it.Berliner explains ideas very clearly, although he does repeat himself quite a bit in standard academic style. He sets out to de-mystify the process of improvising. By identifying all of the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and extraneous factors that go into it, he makes improvisation less mysterious but even more miraculous.
The book deepens my appreciation of the music even as much of it went over my head. The only thing that could have made it better was a companion CD.
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