There are a few listed in the store here. But I'm not able to guide you as to which one to get, as I've yet to get some! But i plan to, very soon!

you can go to erikfriedlander.com and pick up some free lessons for down load. I have Chris White's book from this site with a CD, Also Jamey Aebersold has this HUGE marketing empire of jazz books and CDs. I reckon that you can only learn improv by actually doing it. Of course listening and watching a lot of different music helps. There are so many alternative cellists with stuff on the internet that the mind boggles.

Well, if you only ever read on book on improvisation it should be Derek Bailey's 'Improvisation: It's Nature and Practice in Music'. It won't teach you how to improvise, but it should inspire you to get on and do it.

Happy reading - and playing!

Stephen

Good call Stephen, I certainly second that. It's a book that makes a very powerful case for improvisation, particularly free improv. in a world which is often pretty hostile to it. Coming from a classical background initially, it gave me more confidence to believe in the value of what I was doing with improv. More power to musicians and a little less to composers!! If you didnt know, the great man died very recently, so maybe a good time to read/re-read it and celebrate his contibution to free music.

www.pepperjam.moonfruit.com

Yes, I was sad to hear that Derek B died on Christmas Day, and it would have been his 75th birthday this Sunday. I'm certainly not from a classical background, but I know what you mean about this book giving you confidence. It was great for me to know that there was someone persuing improvised music in such an uncompromising way. I wish Channel 4 would show the wonderful tv series based on the book again sometime.

I still have some of those programmes on video tape. They still seemed very fresh and relevant when I watched them recently.
The biggest criticism of improvisation around the world and in popular and folk music that I encountered in academic and classical circles was that it offered only very limited freedom for performers. That in fact improvised musics are all essentially model bound and so tend away from innovation. Seemed to me this argument completely ignores the great paradigm shifts that do take place ie Hendrix etc, but more importantly it conveniently ignores free improvisation which knows no limits or frontiers. I think some of my favourite quotes from the book have to be from Whitmers "Art of Improvisation" (an old manual for extemporizing organists) a few of which I list here for everyones edification and enlightenment...

"Do not be afraid of being wrong; just be afraid of being uninteresting"

"Dont look forward to a finished and complete entity; the idea must always be kept in a state of flux"

"An error may be only an unintentional rightness"

Excellent advice in life as in improvisation. Regards.

www.pepperjam.moonfruit.com

My teacher and I started working through this book. We love it!

With my guitar background, I understand the advantage of scale/arpeggio fingerings that are easily transposable. With such fingerings, to transpose the scale/arp to a different key is a simple matter of moving the pattern up, down, or across the neck. What this also means is removing the reliance open string notes. This book introduces this concept, which Baker calls "fretting", by first having the reader work through these fingerings for scales and associated arps that he feels are essential to jazz, in all their inversions. It's been hard going at the outset, but I'm excited.

The book then goes on with various suggestions for practice, and a generous helping of what he feels are essential patterns. I realize the topic of patterns (or, dare I call them, licks) is controversial in the improv world, but every great jazz musician goes through the process of absorbing the literature one way or another before his/her unique improvisational personality matures. Or, as the great Clark Terry said, the jazz educational process is summarized as "Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate!".

The book is incredibly dense, as far as the information offered within, much more than the number of pages would suggest.