In this new series of blog posts, I am going to review a selection of brass books that I personally use for teaching beginners, resources for intermediate players and even some study books which I use with students up to grade 8.
These blog posts may contain Amazon affiliate links but always browse around for similar products on the internet or in your local music shop.
I have found, that I never use one whole book with students but dip in and out of a few different ones to suit the needs of the student, so look out over the coming weeks for my blogs specifically targeting other brass resources.
In this review, I am looking at 'Easy Jazzy 'Tudes' by Mark Nightingale. It is available from Warwick Music in both treble and bass clef versions. Follow this link to Warwick Music's site.
As with Polished Brass, it features unaccompanied pieces that can be used for ABRSM and Trinity brass exams grade 1-5. Earlier versions I believe, have the colourful cover and a CD with backing tracks and newer versions have the purple cover and you can download the backing tracks. The book itself is also available as a digital download and it is available for some woodwind instruments.
Easy Jazzy 'Tudes Teaches Beginners to Swing
The book has 28 solos, all in a jazzy style and are fantastic for teaching students about playing in a swing style. It is very child friendly with funny sketches throughout and from my experience, students enjoy these pieces the most out of all the repertoire I show them.
Some of my favourite tunes are 'Ready, Aim, Fire!', 'Slinky' and 'Passion Fruit Samba'.
I also find, due to the styles perhaps, this book contains a lot of staccato, accents and tenuto markings. This is something other books do not use enough and it makes this book great for teaching students about playing with the correct style.
Look out for the next post in this series of reviews and I hope you have found it useful.
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Thank you for reading.
Mark Glover
18/10/23