This book will appeal to pianists who want to learn to improvise in many of the styles current today including blues, rock, Latin-American, country, New Age, World Music, etc.

The non-jazz improvisation series is a concept that germinated in Dick Weissman's mind while he was attending music school. He wrote a 15-piece arrangement of the old square dance tune, Cripple Creek, and wanted the trombone to take a solo as part of the arrangement. When the trombonist kept playing a bebop solo that was totally unsuitable for the chart, Dick realized that - in addition to the many musicians who do not improvise - there are even jazz musicians who don't know how to improvise outside the limits of their own stylistic backgrounds.

The non-jazz improvisation series mostly includes new original tunes that are intended to show how to improvise in many musical styles, including:

* Blues
* Country
* American folk
* Latin-American
* World music including South American, Eastern European and Asian
* Odd meters (playing in a variety of time signatures
* New Age
* Classical
* Folk-Rock

In short, the books are an encyclopedia of virtually every musical style, excluding jazz. Includes access to online audio.

Foreword
What You Should Know Before
Starting this Book
Part 1 - Techniques of Improvisation
Getting Started
Grace Notes
Double, triple and quadruple grace notes
Mordents, turns and trills
Neighbor Notes, upper and lower neighbor notes
Passing tones, diatonic
Passing tones, chromatic
Improvising with Melodies - Summing Up
A Bit of Music Theory
Major scales
Improvising with major scales
Jingle Bells (improvisation)
Minor scales
Harmonic minor scales
Improvising with harmonic minor scales
Melodic minor scales
Improvising with melodic minor scales
Improvising with modes
Ionian Mode: Ionian Item
Dorian Mode; The Drunken Sailor
Phrygian Mode; The Spanish Tinge
Lydian Mode; Lydia's Lunch
Mixolydian mode; Old Joe Clark
Aeolian mode; Shady Grove
Locrian mode; Transposing modes
Specialty scales; D minor hexachord; Pretty Polly
Pentatonic scale on F; Oh Susanna (part 1)
Pentatonic scale on C; Shortnin' Bread
Tetrachord; In the Pines
Improvising by adding notes to a melody
Improvising with double notes; Just Lopin' Along
The Missouri Waltz
Using a note above the melody as a drone; Black-Eyed Susie
Improvising with Chords (major, minor and seventh chords)
Using chords as tools for improvisation
Adding chords to the RIght-hand melody
Left-hand accompaniment patterns in 4/4
Left-hand accompaniment patterns in 3/4
Left-hand accompaniment patterns in 2/4

Part 2 - Tunes and Styles
Country and Western
Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie
Railroad Bill
Country waltz: Beautiful Brown Eyes
Bluegrass
The Eighth of January
Banks of the Ohio
Irish (Celtic) Music
The Irish Washerwoman
Straight Jig
Stack O' Barley
Accompaniment patterns in 6/8 time
American Folk Music
Wildwood Flower
Sweet Betsy from Pike
Latin-American and Caribbean Music
The clave beat
The rhumba
The cha-cha-cha
The bolero
The mambo
The merengue including montuno
The beguine
Calypso, conga, tango, samba
Ragtime
Temptation Rag
Gospel
White Gospel: Will the Circle Be Unbroken
Black Gospel: Wade in the Water
The Blues
Blues progressions in G, F, C, and Bf
Blues scales in G, F, C, and Bf
Piano Blues
Blues All Alone
Rock and Roll
Basic rock chords and accompaniment patterns
Double-time or boogaloo feel
Country and Folk Rock
Nevada Motels
Odd Meters
5/4, 7/8, 9/8
Five Times Four
The Other Bela
Odyssey in 9/8
Exotic Scales
Whole tone scale
Klezmer Music
Misherabach: Chosen Kalle Mazel Tov
Harmonic minor: Havah Nagilah
Fraigish or Greek scale: Goodbye to Piraeus
Gypsy scale: Gypsy Fantasy
Japanese scale: The Geisha's Lament
Chinese scale: The Golden Bell
Cajun Music
Joli Blon
J'ete au Bal
Brazilian Music (bossa nova)
Extended chords, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths
Bossa nova clave beat, accompaniment patterns, and The Girl from Rio
New Age Piano
Brand New
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