Oriental Jazz Improvisation: Microtonality and Harmony

Oriental Jazz Improvisation: Microtonality and Harmony is a comprehensive study on setting Arabic, Turkish, and Northern Indian scales and modes into context and blending and employing them in improvisation. It contains about two dozen of the mentioned music cultures' scales and modes each as well as their transpositions. Scales and modes which any musician interested in South-Western Asian or Northern Indian music should be familiar with. It moreover contains numerous scales and modes of other cultures' folk music, such as Greek rebetiko, Bulgarian wedding music, or Jewish music and points out parallels among these music traditions.

Each scale and mode is introduced in its purest - microtonal - form, including the exact interval values in the particular tuning used in the native Turkish, Arabic, or Northern Indian music tradition. Additionally, the basics of the respective music theories are imparted. Further, the genuine scales and modes are transcribed into the equal temperament and various ways are shown how to apply them in a jazz context. Also, several useful methods are demonstrated of how South-Eastern European Romani use some of those scales and modes in improvisation.