The non-jazz improvisation series is a concept that germinated in Dick Weissman's mind while he was attending music school. He wrote a 15-piece arrangement of the old square dance tune Cripple Creek and wanted the trombone totake a solo as part of the arrangement. When the trombonist kept playing a bebop solo that was totally unsuitable for the chart Dick realized that - in addition to the many musicians who do not improvise - there are even jazzmusicians who don't know how to improvise outside the limits of their own stylistic backgrounds. The non-jazz improvisation series mostly includes new original tunes that are intended to show how to improvise in manymusical styles including; Blues Country American folk Latin-American World music including South American Eastern European and Asian Odd meters (playing in a variety of time signatures) New Age Classical Folk-Rock In short the books are an encyclopedia of virtually every musical style excluding jazz.
