A Creative Approach To Practicing Jazz

Soft cover sheet music book. I bought this book expecting to find a structured and organized way to guide the beginning jazz musician along the path to jazz improvisation.

The book begins with a list of general, platitude-filled suggestions such as
"Use a metronome as one means of measuring growth".
"Your practice sesion should include
- maintenenace (warm-ups, flexibility exercises,...
- scales and arpegios
- etc"

But then later in the book, no ways of how to organize practice sessions to do this are suggested. The main section of the book starts off with
" Practice all genre scales in the following ways
- Starting on the lowest note available...
- Ascending and descending
- etc"

This is probably the most depressing statement for the beginning jazz musician. What if the beginner does not know all these scales? I calculate that there are about 13 scale types, which gives a total of about 150 scales in total. Is it the intention that all other study areas must be postponed until the scales have been mastered?

Don't bother with the book. Hal Crook's "How To Improvise" is also not perfect, but it does a much better job of trying to get into the head of the beginner.