Amazing Phrasing --
50 Ways to Improve Your Improvisational Skills

by Dennis Taylor and Steve Herrman

Amazing Phrasing is for any tenor saxophone or trumpet player interested in learning how to improvise and improve their creative phrasing. Dennis Taylor writes, "Good phrasing is essential to communicate musically. The exercises in this book teach the technique behind phrasing and are designed to help you make the leap from playing notes to playing music."

The "50 ways to improve your skills" are divided into three main sections:

1. Harmony, which explores scales, arpeggios, chord substitutions, harmonic embellishments, and other harmonic phrasing ideas;
2. Rhythm, which covers legato tonguing, swing feel, rhythmic displacement, how to manipulate time, and other aspects of rhythmic phrasing;
3. Melody, which discusses contour lines, melodies from the blues scales, one-chord vamps, making patterns musical, developing a motif, building a solo, and many other melodic phrasing ideas.

The companion CD contains 26 demo tracks for listening, as well as many play-along examples so you can practice improvising over various musical styles and progressions. Listen to the examples first. Then remove the recorded sax or trumpet track by turning the balance knob to the left so you can supply your own phrases.

About the authors

Two-time Nashville Music Awards nominee for Miscellaneous Wind Instrumentalist of the Year, saxophonist Dennis Taylor began playing in 1976, and performing in 1981. He's performed and toured with a wide variety of artists and has played on four Grammy-nominated albums. Taylor is also the author/composer of Blues Saxophone: An In-Depth Look at the Styles of the Masters.

A graduate of North Texas State University in 1985, trumpeter Steve Herrman was a featured solo artist with the famed One O'Clock Lab Band. Since then, he's toured and/or recorded with a wide variety of artists, including Delbert McClinton, Waylon Jennings, Lou Rawls, Vince Gill, Little Milton, Sam Moore, Kenny Rogers and Hank Williams Jr.

Amazing Phrasing books available: