Yes, you’ll get a lot out of it. You don’t need to have purchased Vol. 1 to get benefit from Vol. 2. While Vol. 1 does have more jazz standards that cover jazz harmony fundamentals, you still won’t be left in the dark with Vol. 2. Vol. 2 has some more complex standards in it than Vol. 1. When in doubt, just get both!

It can be very helpful to have a basic understanding of reading music on your instrument. You don’t need to be a fantastic reader, just enough to decipher the musical examples. Audio examples accompany every example and exercise in the book, and this will help you especially if you’re a novice reader.

No. Due to copyright law and after much consideration and discussion with the rights holders, we decided not to include melodies.

However, jazz, and especially melodies, is best learned by ear. In the book, I give you all the resources you need to do this, including an intro chapter walking you through the LIST method for learning jazz standards by ear.

You can, but The Jazz Standards Playbook Vol. 2 does not teach you how to play your instrument. While the book does explain basic-advanced music theory concepts to help you through the studies, I would suggest working on your instrument fundamentals before diving into this book.

Absolutely! Regardless of whether you are a beginner or advanced player, these studies can be extremely beneficial. Vol. 2 specifically addresses several more advanced jazz standards that will be beneficial. If you are trying to decide, look at the list of standards being studied and see if you want to learn more about them.

Definitely! The Jazz Standards Playbook Vol. 2 is written to help you understand the core material. Just be sure that you already know the fundamentals of your instrument. Consider buying both Vol. 1 and 2 especially if you need to start with some basic jazz harmony which is covered a little bit more in Vol. 1.

Absolutely 100%. While I give you all the resources you need to actually learn these 10 jazz standards, this is beside the point.

The goal of this book is to dive in deep to these standards and draw important lessons from them to help you understand jazz harmony and improvisation better. Even if you know all of them already, you will get immense value from this book.

This book was designed for all melodic instruments. We have versions for C, Bb, Eb, and Bass Clef instruments.

Each version has been transposed from the original to fit the ranges of all instruments.

Some common C instruments are guitar, piano, and flute.

Common Bb instruments are tenor sax, soprano sax, clarinet and trumpet.

Common Eb instruments are alto saxophone and baritone saxophone.

Common Bass Clef instruments are upright bass, electric bass and trombone.

Make sure you know which concert pitch your instrument is tuned to.

While this book is aimed towards melodic and harmonic instruments, drummers can still benefit from these studies. Drummers have a responsibility to know the form and understand harmony as well, and so The Jazz Standards Playbook can be a helpful resource to have.

Quite different. 15 Essential Jazz Etudes is a much shorter book with etudes for a handful of jazz standards and little instruction. The Jazz Standards Playbook Vol. 2 is a full-on method and resource book that has in-depth instruction, analysis, and teaching. That being said, the etudes book could be a helpful companion to this one.

The Jazz Standards Playbook has been transposed from its original version for C, Bb, Eb, and bass clef instruments. If you’d like to use this eBook or companion course as a teaching resource for your students, contact us about purchasing for a larger group!