Theory of Jazz - César Cardoso

Theory of Jazz is a book that was conceived to fill the gap of the absence of a book in Portuguese that explains the theory of Jazz in more depth and, above all, than can serve as a handbook for all Jazz students or any other person who would like to understand how the world of Jazz works. It is a practical book, with several concrete examples, frequently resorting to Jazz Standards in order to make comprehension of the topics analyzed easier. Even though this is a translated version to English, the language in which many Jazz books are written, I hope this book could also serve the same purpose.

The book first goes over the theory which is common to all music styles (staff, measures, key signatures, scales, etc), and then moves on to go over the most common topics in Jazz – from triads and seventh chords to modes of the major scales, melodic minor and harmonic minor, from Blues to Voice Leading. It will also go over extremely important topics such as Secondary Dominants and Supertonic Chords, Modal Interchange, Tritone Substitute, Diminished Scale, Augmented Scale, among many others.

The main objective of this book is, thus, for the reader to find in it a significant theoretical foundation for their study (or mere curiosity).