Jazz Guitarist's Thesaurus, by Jay Umble. $22.95, book/CD, 127 pages.

If you are an intermediate or advanced player looking for some seriously fast bebop chops, you may want to check out Jay Umble's Jazz Guitarist's Thesaurus. Lick sections are divided into major, minor, dominant, altered dominant, and half-diminished, with each section containing 24 licks. This book is not overly cluttered, as each lick is given an entire page of space and two licks per CD track. Very nice for those of us who prefer the "lick-a-day" approach. One warning: Track 1 comes burning out of the chute, so you better have your technical chops in order. If you're disciplined enough, take the author's suggestion and run each lick through all 12 keys for a real instrumental adventure. Umble also goes the extra mile and does a little bit of harmonic analysis, which will get you thinking about bebop in a deeper mode.