Jazz Piano Fundamentals, Book 1

The bottom line

For decades, jazz piano pedagogy had a dirty secret: there was no good first book. We handed beginners Mark Levine’s The Jazz Piano Book — a masterpiece written for players who already play — and watched most of them sink. Jeremy Siskind fixed this. Jazz Piano Fundamentals, Book 1 (2021) is, without hedging, the best-structured entry into jazz piano in print, and I now recommend it before anything else.

What makes it different isn’t the material — ii-V-Is, shell voicings, the blues form and swing feel are in every jazz piano book. It’s the engineering. Twelve units, each designed for about two weeks of work (Siskind suggests ~30 hours per unit; the whole book is roughly a six-month course). Each unit contains explanations, written exercises, technique work, improvisation assignments, repertoire, listening — and QR codes linking to instructional videos and answer keys. There’s a “Tune Bank” of Real Book standards matched to the harmony you’ve learned, and an opening section of “Principles for Learning Jazz” that’s worth the price alone (“Learn rules, then break them”).

Siskind — a Nonesuch-recorded pianist and longtime educator — writes like a teacher who has actually watched hundreds of students get stuck, because he has.

Who it’s for — and who should skip it

Get it if you’re a pianist with decent classical or pop technique who wants to learn jazz properly from the start — or a self-taught jazz dabbler whose knowledge is a pile of YouTube fragments with no load-bearing structure. It’s also a gift for teachers: the unit structure is a ready-made lesson plan.

Skip it if you already comp fluently through standards with rootless voicings and handle altered dominants — you’re past Book 1 (Books 2 and 3 exist and extend the curriculum, including the minor harmony and solo piano topics this volume explicitly defers). And it’s the wrong book for non-pianists: this is piano-specific by design, not a general jazz method.

One honest expectation-setting note from the book itself: Siskind compares finishing all twelve units to “your first semester of language learning” — enough to play in a small combo, with a great deal still ahead. Any book promising more than that in six months is lying to you.

What’s inside

The twelve units build in a deliberately musical order:

1. Getting Oriented — what jazz literacy actually means, lead sheets, swing basics.
2. Comping Basics — first voicings and rhythmic roles.
3. Introducing the ii-V-I and 4. Going Deeper with the ii-V-I — the progression that runs the genre, done patiently across two units instead of one crammed chapter.
4. “Evening in Lyon” — the first of Siskind’s étude-tunes: a full piece that is the lesson.
5. Introduction to Type A/B Voicings — the two-position rootless voicing system, taught as a system.
6. The Blues Form and 8. Playing Bass in Two — form, feel, and functioning as a rhythm-section pianist.
7. “Blues for Sammie” — second étude-tune, consolidating the blues unit.
8. Introducing Altered Dominants and 11. More Altered Dominants — the first real color chemistry, again split across two units so it actually sticks.
9. A closing unit that points forward (and honestly names what’s not covered: minor-key harmony, modal jazz, solo piano — that’s Book 2’s job).

Around the units: the Tune Bank (thirty-plus Real Book standards — All the Things You Are, Misty, Satin Doll, Tune Up, Four — chosen because they use exactly the harmony the book teaches), the Principles for Learning Jazz, and the QR-code video/answer infrastructure.

Strengths

• It’s a curriculum, not a reference. The two-weeks-per-unit pacing with explicit practice plans removes the single biggest failure mode of jazz books: not knowing what “working through it” means.
• Étude-tunes are brilliant pedagogy. “Evening in Lyon” and “Blues for Sammie” let you perform your progress instead of just accumulating exercises.
• The Tune Bank closes the loop. Every concept lands in real repertoire immediately — the thing Levine-era books left entirely to the student.
• Multimedia done right. QR-code videos answer the “what should this sound and feel like?” question that kills self-study, and answer keys make the written work self-checking.
• Honest scope. The book tells you what it doesn’t cover. That’s rarer in music publishing than it should be.

Weaknesses

• Piano-only, swing-mainstream-only. No latin feels, minimal modern/contemporary flavor — deliberate for a first book, but know what you’re buying.
• The pace is brisk for true novices. “Fundamentals” means fundamentals of jazz, not of piano — if you can’t already play, say, a Clementi sonatina comfortably, the technique load will bite around Unit 6.
• Self-published production. It’s clean and well-engraved, but spiral-bound-workbook aesthetics and occasional typos come with the territory.
• Video depends on external links. QR-code content is hosted online; if that infrastructure ever lapses, the book loses a real part of its value. (As of this review, everything works.)

How to actually practice with this book

The book largely tells you how to practice — its defining feature — so my advice is about compliance rather than design:

1. Respect the two-week unit clock, in both directions. Don’t rush ahead of the pacing, and don’t camp for two months polishing Unit 3 to perfection. The units are sized for momentum.
2. Do the writing. The written exercises feel skippable to pianists who “just want to play.” They’re not — they’re where the harmony becomes conscious. Check yourself against the QR answer keys.
3. Anchor each unit to two Tune Bank standards. One as the workbench, one as the test. Memorize both.
4. Listen like it’s assigned, because it is. The listening guides are curriculum, not garnish — fifteen minutes of directed listening per practice day.
5. Add an ears track in parallel. The one component the book can’t print is recognition speed: hearing maj7 vs. m7 vs. dominant vs. altered before your hands respond. Five minutes of chord-quality drilling per session (this is exactly what Earonman’s chord training does) keeps your ears synchronized with Units 3–11.

How it compares

• vs. The Jazz Piano Book (Levine): not competitors — sequential. Siskind is the first year; Levine is years two through ten. Siskind teaches you to function; Levine hands you the deep vocabulary.
• vs. Playing Solo Jazz Piano (Siskind’s own): different mission — that one’s for solo performance craft; this one builds combo-ready fundamentals. Fundamentals first.
• vs. Hal Leonard-style “jazz piano method” books: those are collections of pieces with light commentary; this is an actual course with pacing, assessment, and video. No contest.

Rating breakdown

Criterion	Score	Why
Clarity	5/5	Written by a working teacher; every unit answers “what exactly do I do this week?”
Depth	4.5/5	Deliberately scoped to six months of fundamentals; Books 2–3 carry it onward.
Practicality	5/5	Practice plans, answer keys, videos, Tune Bank — nothing left unstructured.
Value	5/5	A semester of private-lesson curriculum for the price of one lesson.
Overall	5/5	The new default first jazz piano book. Levine can finally retire from a job he never applied for.