Mr. Coryell is a genius, obviously. This book is for anyone who wants to learn from such a player. I'd also recommend getting some of the albums as well, such as "Spaces," "Spaces Revisited," and "Live in Chicago," the power trio album. This book will take awhile to actually absorb. That's a good thing, meaning that you're getting more for your money.

Larry starts out from the basic format of a 12-bar blues, and extends it into other aspects of jazz improvisation, such as scale usages, chord-scales, comping, which serve as a solid foundation for further study. This particular way of learning jazz is encouraging since blues is an important basis of jazz music, and there are different forms of blues in jazz, playing them ensures learning the language of jazz while staying close to the root.

One thing has to be pointed out, Larry teaches it on an intermediate/advanced level, the 12-bar blues (totally five pieces) in the first two chapters are reharmonized with sophistication, but there are no explanations for the reharmonizations. As such, beginners may find the chord changes difficult to follow. However, those who are able to figure out themselves will benefit from the materials. The guitarist is thus assumed to have a sound understanding in jazz harmony and a good rhythmic sense in jazz (especially for the unaccompanied solo guitar pieces), in order to fully comprehend the materials in this book.

This is a great book . Larry builds from an introductory jazzy-blues piece . There's no harm in a beginner who aspires to play modern getting this book . Yes , the absolute elements are not covered . But they are covered for free at many many useful websites , and some jazz-guitar news groups .
The best part of Larry's teaching examples is that they are so MUSICAL and so little ' mechanical ' .

Like many guitarists I have always admired Larry's work, so when I saw this book in a store I looked through it and bought it on the spot. I had always been into his fusion music and frankly didn't realize his jazz stuff was so strong. The first three tunes are walking bass jazz/blues tunes - the first is pure walking bass with chords, the second is based on the first but interspersed with some extended single note solo phrases. The third is based on the same chord progression as the first two but uses chord solo phrases in "traditional big band styling". This is fun stuff!!!! I have been working on these first three tunes for the last several months and have them almost completely memorized - not a simple task - and I haven't had this much fun playing guitar in a long time. After listening to the CD a number of times I also skipped ahead to learn a great bossa tune from Larry's Live in Bahia album. This book has definitely challenged and inspired me to pick up the guitar and get some practice in almost every day. The more you play these tunes the more you get out of them from an analysis standpoint. Also, I didn't know he has a signature jazz guitar out made by Cort but after listening to the CD I would certainly like to try one out.

When I saw a couple negative reviews here I felt that I had to put my proverbial two cents in and let people know that there is some great stuff in this book. This book is not for beginners or the meek and is not a collection of ii V I riffs. As Larry states in the intro, "You should have a working knowledge of theory, at least some theory (that's all I have), and I'll assume you know some jazz chords and the fundamental major, minor, augmented (whole tone) and diminished scales and arpeggios... The material covered here is sometimes easy, but some of it gets involved and there are some examples/exercises I hope will challenge you and open you up to play things maybe you didn't think you could play. That's how I felt when I first heard jazz players make this amazing music on their guitars - I had no idea how it was done, but I had to try to learn it."

There is some fun and pretty intense stuff in this book and it will keep me challenged for quite a while. I have paid more than the price of this book for a one hour lesson and gotten so much out of this book already that it's incredible. Be ready to put some time in but if you like Larry's playing and you've got the right attitude you can have a lot of fun and learn a lot with this book.

Larry Coryell is one of the most gifted guitarists alive. Throughout his career he has shared his thoughts and ideas on his playing and his approach to solving problems or issues particular to jazz interpretation and improvising that he was dealing with. I don't think his contributions to the educational world are for beginners. This book is for an intermediate to advanced player. Providing you have some experience and knowledge under your belt, Larry's tips are fantastic and above all useable right away in your playing. I've admired his work for 25 years and this offering is another great piece of work, added to many others, that Larry has produced. His acoustic albums Standing Ovation and European Impressions (which I think is partially available on the Tributaries CD) are seminal works for me and even after twenty years bear repeated listening for more amazing things created by this master.