The non-jazz improvisation series is a concept that germinated in Dick Weissman's mind while he was attending music school. He wrote a 15-piece arrangement of the old square dance tune, Cripple Creek, and wanted the trombone to take a solo as part of the arrangement. When the trombonist kept playing a bebop solo that was totally unsuitable for the chart, Dick realized that - in addition to the many musicians who do not improvise - there are even jazz musicians who don't know how to improvise outside the limits of their own stylistic backgrounds. The non-jazz improvisation series mostly includes new original tunes that are intended to show how to improvise in many musical styles, including;

• Blues
• Country
• American folk
• Latin-American
• World music including South American, Eastern European and Asian
• Odd meters (playing in a variety of time signatures)
• New Age
• Classical
• Folk-Rock

In short, the books are an encyclopedia of virtually every musical style, excluding jazz