Hal Crook play-alongs- Berklee archives

Hal Crook is one of the most gifted professors at Berklee College of Music. I played in his big band when I was at school there and his big band compositions are about that best that I have ever encountered. He is an incredible trombonist and a demanding educator and I still use his books with my private students. I just ran across an entire stash of his educational play-alongs while I was looking through the Berklee online archives today.

 There are 45 different play-along tracks with parts in concert, Eb, Bb and bass clef. He also includes a guide tone line for each composition, each tune being a contra fact of a Jazz standard. The guide tone lines notes are marked in red on the melody parts so you can see how the melody was created from the guide tone lines.You can tell that he wrote the tunes specifically for educational purposes, but they are all still very hip. There are nicely recorded audio play-along tracks for each tune at reasonable tempos. What a great find!


Hal Crook's Berklee Play-Alongs