Keyboard Wisdom: A Theory and Technique Book with CD (2001) by Steve Goomas. Address all inquiries to A Goom Tune, 20534 Dumont Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91364.

This is a great book for the intermediate (and especially) the advanced keyboardist. It will give you direction on how to practice improvisation intelligently and how to keep focused. Steve has conducted the Maranatha! Keyboard Worship Leader Workshops for many years. He has a Master's degree in composition, is a recording studio musician, and has had experience writing music for films, popular television programs, and commercials.

An amazing amount of helpful information is crammed into this volume. The layout is clean and the examples and discussions are clear. I particularly like the four measure examples interspersed throughout that incapsulate various contemporary styles such as Salza, Montuno, the Blues, Gospel, Swing, Boogie Woogie, Rock, Jazz, and so on. They are written so that they can be looped. If you learn these in all the keys, I think it will go a long ways toward giving you a feel for many contemporary styles.

Goomas develops many improvisational concepts, illustrates a myriad of scales, chord combinations, and provides numerous, innovative examples for improvising, When illustrating the various chords he often provides a three or four chord progression, thus demonstrating how the material can fit into a context. This is valuable and helps one’s understanding. Goomas also gets into the higher chord extensions such as the raised 9^th and 11^th for the advanced keyboardist.

The book must contain 500 music examples. No hymn or chorus examples, however, are offered. Here are some of his topics: triads, diatonic sevenths, voicing seventh chords, tritone substitution, major and minor scales, sixth chords, modes, ninth chords, voicing exercises for ninth chords, open voicing for ninth chords, eleventh chords, voicing eleventh chords, blues scales and fingerings, pentatonic scale and fingerings, thirteen chords, voicing thirteenth chords, ideas for jamming, dimished scale and fingerings, whole-tone scale and fingerings, chromatic scale and fingerings, exercises for upper structures, altered scales and fingerings. Get it!