Making a Connection with Your Saxophone: Teaching with a Focus on Learning to Play Jazz

This is a book for jazz educators who know that much of our traditional techniques for teaching and learning jazz need to change. The concepts in this book add to the growing body of knowledge. It offers techniques that go beyond our simplistic, narrow approaches for teaching and learning jazz. Students need to learn to play what is heard and not what they think is seen on the printed page. Riposo outlines teaching techniques that convert textbook knowledge into useable knowledge. With this method, students will be able to use mental processes that allow them to applying the knowledge learned. This book organizations the materials so that all parts of the brain become engaged while learning. In the first part of the book, Riposo has included a Learning Design Model and Whole-Brain Learning Design Model to help develop an understanding of the whole-brain approach. This book goes on to list appropriate lesson materials and identifies teaching styles and strategies that are used to create the environment from which students best learn appropriate jazz styles and jazz tunes. Riposo describes how jazz books are used in lessons to bring about learning on the highest level possible. Students are taught to use their knowledge and make a connection with pre-existing knowledge. Along with the list of jazz books included is a list of jazz tunes to be used to apply the knowledge obtained and to build a jazz repertoire. By the integration of learned knowledge, students will play music through their instrument while feeling a sense of relationship with it. The instrument can become a part of the player's body. "Joe Riposo has written a terrific and comprehensive introduction to the ever-challenging concept and craft of jazz improvisation." ---Walt Weiskopf