I love Hal Leonard's Jazz Play Along Series. Sure, it could be improved, but it's the best series of play alongs out there, Jamey A's collection notwithstanding. I like the fact that the selctions are always prefaced with a performance where the music is performed with a melody. It establishes not only a generic staement of the melody, but the cue points and the form. The backing trio is always tasteful, animated and very professional. It's like having a first rate piano/bass/drums backup group at your disposal. The quality is good enough that a performer could always use the tracks in a live performance context. We all have issues regarding tune selection, so sometimes the choices in a collection are a bit odd for me. I know that my favorites will probably not be your favorites. But, every collection probably has a few excellent choices for any musician. Those cuts are the reasons we buy the book/CD.
Now, it would be easy to improve this series as well, at least from my perspective. I believe that Hal Leonard should disclose the key that the track is in when the product description is displayed, or, in the alternative, have an audio sample of the back up track available on their website. I also believe that many of the HL tracks should be offered in several different keys to accomodate the idiosyncracies of different instruments, male or female vocal interpretation, and just the pedagogical value of learning (and practicing) a standard in two different keys. Finally, why aren't these tracks available on itunes? Many of us who have been playing jazz for awhile already have lots of the printed music, but the playalong tracks (and even the printed charts) would be terrific on our ipods. We could cherry pick the tracks we wanted and not buy a bunch of tracks we don't want. Plus we wouldn't have to kill so many trees! Just a thought.