With the continued worldwide success of the book series Ultra Smooth Jazz Grooves that I co-authored with sax player Frank Villafranca based on compositions that we wrote for our band The Super Groovers, I have now authored this series of Smooth Jazz books for the following instruments: Piano/Keyboards, Guitar/Bass, Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Tenor and Alto Saxes, Trumpet and Trombone. Smooth Jazz covers a wide variety of different styles and I have combined elements of Jazz, Rock, Pop, Blues, Latin, GospeL Funk and R&B, Classical, Folk, New Age styles into the examples in the book.
Smooth Jazz” is a genre of music that is predominately instrumental, usually very melodic in nature and in most cases features some jazz improvisation. and is usually performed at a medium tempo and tends to feature piano /keyboards, saxophone, trumpet, and guitar as the most common lead instruments playing the melody. Most Smooth Jazz is well produced and has memorable melodies over a backdrop of multiple tracks of rhythm instruments, keyboards, guitar, strings, synth pads, drums and percussion. Each riff has been recorded with the solo melodic instrument along with a rhythm backing track of guitar, keyboards/synths, bass, drums/percussion followed by just the backing tracks for you to practice with. Also included are backing tracks playing the chord progression through 10 times giving you extended time to practice your improvisational skills using the riffs in the book and developing them into your own style.
