Ever heard an old jazz recording and wondered how they could have what seemed like such a mastery of the keyboard? The First Steps Toward Freedom series helps take the mystery out of improvisation and equips students with the tools to break free from slavery to the notes on the page. This first book in the series focuses on taking students who already know the basics of reading music and who understand basic musical notation to the next level where they can begin to read chord charts, and understand the basic structure of the most common pop and jazz tunes starting with basic scale and chord structures. First Steps Toward Freedom is the perfect gift for the young or novice pianist in your life that has an interest in how to reproduce the types of songs heard on the radio, understand the basic structure of classic pieces, or wants the tools to begin composing pieces of their own. Learning musical structure takes the guess-work out of why certain chords work and others don't, and demystifies the art of improvisation.