MIDI

MIDI Songs
There are thousands of free jazz MIDI files available to download. Listening to these MIDI songs is a great way to learn a modal jazz tune, as often the melody and chord changes are easier to pick out than on the original recordings:

MIDI Notate  

Jazz ‘Fake’ Books
A jazz ‘Fake’ book provides the basic melody and chord changes for a collection of jazz songs. Using a “Fake” book a musician can improvise their own arrangement for a song. These books are used religiously by jazz artists playing standards at gigs. Originally illegal and distributed via photocopy by musicians, they were often inaccurate and contained numerous mistakes. They have since been legalised and the corrections fixed. The following legal ‘fake’ books are widely regarded as being the most accurate available, often transcriptions approved by the original composer, and contain lots of modal jazz songs:

The Standards Real Book
The New Real Book Vol. 1
The New Real Book Vol. 2
The New Real Book Vol. 3

Jamey Aebersold Play-a-Longs
The Jamey Aebersold Play-a-Long series is an excellent way to practice improvising over modal jazz songs. Each Play-a-Long comprises of a CD with a professional backing track (often played by famous jazz musicians) and a booklet containing the melody line, chord changes and scales to use over the “changes”. These play-a-longs all contain famous modal jazz tracks:

Miles of Modes (Volume 116)
Herbie Hancock (Volume 11)
John Coltrane (Volume 28)
Wayne Shorter (Volume 33)
Bill Evans (Volume 45)
The Magic of Miles Davis (Volume 50)
Freddie Hubbard (Volume 60)




These play-a-longs are great for learning how to improvise over the different modes, and making the jump from learning scales to improvising melodically over a song:

How to play jazz (Volume 1)
Time to play music (Volume 5)
Nothin' but blues (Volume 2)
Major and Minor (Volume 24)
Maiden Voyage (Volume 54)