The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #76
    Quote Originally Posted by docbop
    Bach would say...what theory???

    People forget the greats just played and composed, someone else came by later and made up some theory to try and explain it.
    I may be misremembering things, but it feels like Bach in my memory.

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  3. #77

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    Quote Originally Posted by sunnysideup
    Particularly as Graham seems to have distanced his thinking about his performance (the only one so far) from the Barry Harris method! If anyone would like to lead a BH thread from the front (ie with performances of standards based on BH) I'd love to join such a study group.
    I wouldn’t put it quite like that - If I want to harmonise a tune, create some movement between chords, or come up with a solo arrangement, the BH harmonic system is my ‘default’ starting point. I don’t know a better way to tackle it. But I also have other favourite chord voicings which I will mix in if they sound right.

    Also bear in mind you can tweak the BH chords by just one note and get different voicings. I like changing some of them to a quartal chord (there are some in that Stardust arrangement). Barry himself allows for ‘borrowing’ of notes which can produce some quite different effects.

  4. #78

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    I'd say at a bare minimum, it's an absolutely great template/starting point...and obviously a great way to handle a long stretch of one chord too.

    I nicked the connecting diminished thing from listening to Wes years ago, but this Barry stuff--there's a nice logic to it that makes sense to me.

  5. #79

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    Quote Originally Posted by docbop
    Bach would say...what theory???

    People forget the greats just played and composed, someone else came by later and made up some theory to try and explain it.
    Oh god, murky waters of my wierd obsessions beckon.... Urrggghhh.

    OK... from what I know I think what 'theory' Bach used to compose (AFAIK, I mean I'm not Bach, duh) was a thoroughly internalised set of guidelines of counterpoint, form and so on learned through writing and improvisations both in strict and free situations.

    OTOH, people often say things like - 'here Bach modulates to the mediant via the use of a secondary dominant tonicisation' or whatever. I suspect to JS that would have seemed a bit long winded and pointless.

    JS Bach didn't have the concept of functional harmony, or even the concept of root movement of chord progressions, or chord inversions, because they hadn't been invented yet when he was learning his craft as a boy.

    Actually the idea of a home key (AFAIK from my reading) was somewhat mutable compared to the modern concept - C major harmony might include digressions to G, F - and yes, Barry - A minor.

    Again, separating craft and academic theory is important. I'll try and make it relevant. For me the basic theory of the BH maj-6 scale is simple enough. Application - the craft, is where the practice is. So yeah, sunny is right, talk is cheap. Aim to apply right away.

    Internet forum not so good for that.

    One stumbling block might be how to apply the scales over a chord progression of a standard. I believe I can advise on that if anyone needs help.

  6. #80

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    Personally, I'm not "annoyed" by Barry or confused by his terminology. He has codified Jazz at one of its peak moments in a crystal clear and accessible way. It would be supremely arrogant to think anyone here could improve on that.

    His instructional materials (and Alan K's) are easily available for anyone who wants to buy them, and clear as daylight.

    I'd really enjoy a playing thread based on his approach, but I don't have time or interest for yet another chat thread about it.

  7. #81

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    Quote Originally Posted by sunnysideup
    Personally, I'm not "annoyed" by Barry or confused by his terminology. He has codified Jazz at one of its peak moments in a crystal clear and accessible way. It would be supremely arrogant to think anyone here could improve on that.
    Communicating Barry's ideas to mainstream casually interested jazz person can be a bit difficult. You have to sort of translate a bit. But that's no-ones fault, just the way things are.

    But now I just point them towards those Ben Hur videos as a 'gateway drug' and that solves that problem. It's not too huge of an investment, and so much better.

    His instructional materials (and Alan K's) are easily available for anyone who wants to buy them, and clear as daylight.

    I'd really enjoy a playing thread based on his approach, but I don't have time or interest for yet another chat thread about it.
    So why not take action yourself - why don't you transcribe and analyse some or all of Graham's solo and post it up here? I'm sure you'd learn something, as would we.

    Perhaps you could incorporate what you learned into an arrangement of a different tune and post a video of you playing it?

  8. #82

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Oh god, murky waters of my wierd obsessions beckon.... Urrggghhh.

    OK... from what I know I think what 'theory' Bach used to compose (AFAIK, I mean I'm not Bach, duh) was a thoroughly internalised set of guidelines of counterpoint, form and so on learned through writing and improvisations both in strict and free situations.

    OTOH, people often say things like - 'here Bach modulates to the mediant via the use of a secondary dominant tonicisation' or whatever. I suspect to JS that would have seemed a bit long winded and pointless.

    JS Bach didn't have the concept of functional harmony, or even the concept of root movement of chord progressions, or chord inversions, because they hadn't been invented yet when he was learning his craft as a boy.

    Actually the idea of a home key (AFAIK from my reading) was somewhat mutable compared to the modern concept - C major harmony might include digressions to G, F - and yes, Barry - A minor.

    Again, separating craft and academic theory is important. I'll try and make it relevant. For me the basic theory of the BH maj-6 scale is simple enough. Application - the craft, is where the practice is. So yeah, sunny is right, talk is cheap. Aim to apply right away.

    Internet forum not so good for that.

    One stumbling block might be how to apply the scales over a chord progression of a standard. I believe I can advise on that if anyone needs help.

    I remember being told that Bach and that era didn't look at music like we do now. Today tend to look at things from Bottom up, but Bach being focus on counterpoint looked at things from Top down. Since harmony as we know it today wasn't codified yet their view was multiple melodic lines that worked together. That back then they studied and were influenced by each other's work, that was their way passing on knowledge versus formal study. Which you get into the early Jazz innovators that his how they learned except more drinking was involved.

  9. #83

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    Quote Originally Posted by docbop
    I remember being told that Bach and that era didn't look at music like we do now. Today tend to look at things from Bottom up, but Bach being focus on counterpoint looked at things from Top down. Since harmony as we know it today wasn't codified yet their view was multiple melodic lines that worked together. That back then they studied and were influenced by each other's work, that was their way passing on knowledge versus formal study. Which you get into the early Jazz innovators that his how they learned except more drinking was involved.
    That's what I 've read.

    One thing I never quite realised (being stupid!) was that it's not just knowing the rules of counterpoint and expecting the muse to alight on your shoulder. You practice vocabulary, language and exercises. Bach was the greatest counterpoint master of all time, but all pro composers had their fugue chops together.

    There are specific situations which I believe musicians learning the 17th/18th century language would just drill over and over. Lots of them, but it makes writing a fugue a bit more natural when you aren't pausing on every note wondering if you've written a parallel fifth or violated some other basic rule, but you go into the episode and know you can employ a 7-6 sequence on that descending bass or whatever and elaborate that basic template melodically so you have those canonical imitations.

    (Obviously the masters were long past this stage of thinking by the time they were working professionally.)

    Lots of grunt work, drill, dry practice. As Gjerdingen puts it, music was a trade, like bookbinding or building houses.

    I think modern serious students of counterpoint would do the same stuff, pretty much. AFAIK, this is what Nadia Boulanger was teaching.

    There are not just direct analogues to Barry, but some of the harmonic situations we practice are the same. The 7-6 resolutions for instance, are a basic BH exercise. You do it in the diatonic scale and the maj-6.

    I'm keen to post a video of that and it's relationship to standards when I'm playing again and have a moment...
    Last edited by christianm77; 01-11-2018 at 05:39 PM.

  10. #84

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    Setting all that learned stuff aside (it's my thread, and I can do what I want ) I've just spent an enjoyable half hour taking the G6 sequence from the third fret area, 6th string, across and up to the high G6 on the first string 15th fret. Just block chords, then different arpeggios, etc. It is helping to see the crossing points between string sets - I crossed at different positions as I went through it again and again.

    So, I think I've a reasonably good sense of the drop2 shapes, with the drop3 lagging a bit behind.

    I make up little melodies, so far staying within the key, which makes a break from going all the way up, then all the way down, which also has me crossing string sets. Not so hard, if you go slow enough. And slowly it's all sinking in.

    Early days, though.


    PS Please let's not derail the thread with thoughts on what was going on in Bach's mind...

  11. #85

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
    PS Please let's not derail the thread with thoughts on what was going on in Bach's mind...
    I also think I forgot on whose thread I was commenting re: baroque music ;-)

  12. #86

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    Rob, I’m a Barry Harris neophyte and I know the cognoscenti have little tolerance for differing viewpoints. But I took very literally Barry Harris saying jazz in not ii-V-I. I try very hard not to “translate” what I learned from Kingstone/RBH/Grasso into ii-V-I, and would a least suggest not starting by thinking of this as elaborate substitutions to work out over a ii-V-I.

    I would suggest trying to forget the given harmony and start with the melody and a clean slate. As I understand it, given any tonality or key center you have three basic harmonic families to choose from. Use them by ear to create movement/tension/resolution to support your melody. Don’t worry about cadences or traditional functional harmony. Let the melody and your ear guide you. Kingstone offers some cool moves for linking the different families, but in the end it was freeing to me to believe that it really was personal taste which family to be in, which member (M6/m7, m6/m7b5, 7b5, dim7, or some blend using “borrowed tones”), and when to transition.

    I feel like I’m a child who just had their training wheels taken off. Re-harmonizing for me is wobbly and full of crashes. But I feel the thrill of where this can go. I feel forcing it back to ii-V-I and thinking of it as a system of substitutions is putting boots on your wheels and telling your bike to run.


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  13. #87

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    the ii is merely a color (err, sorry, looks like people from across the pond here, "colour" (sic)) to the V7.

    The notes of the ii form the upper extensions of the V7.

    D-7 to G7

    Notes of a G7, with the 9th and 11 added: G B D F A C

    Note the top four notes of DFAC. I.e., D-7.

    Really, a G11.

    Barry clears up what the misnomer when he says, "people think Bird must be a playing a G-7 to C7; no! that's impossible, Bird is playing C7; the piano player is playing G-7 to C7 but the G-7 are just the upper extensions of the C7".

    Also: a great turn around INSTEAD of a ii-7b5- Valt-i6

    bVI7-V7-i-6 (note that dominants are straight not altered here).

    e.g. Db7-C7-F-6

    What is the Db7? the tritone sub to the II7.

  14. #88

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Yes this is a cool thread, let’s stay on track.

    Rob I’ve got some 2 5 stuff I wrote down, I’ll dig it out. Also a bit of comping.

    But I’m off to bed now, some of us have to get up and go to work in the morning!
    Back again! (thank **** it’s Friday!)

    Have a look at page 6 etc of that ‘My Romance’ thing I posted earlier, it has some ideas for 2-5 stuff.

  15. #89

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    I appreciate the positive contributions here.

    Graham, I have your PDF, but haven't had time to dig deep into yet, but doing so is my intention. I really appreciate your willingness to share your findings.

    NSJ, I understand completely the theory you've just outlined, and had made my own observations along those lines a few years ago. So it's good to know that once I get further into the BH approach, I will be on somewhat familiar ground. Thanks for that.

    rirhett, thanks also for your advice. I'll find it difficult to abandon traditional functional harmony, but I see your point.

    Anyway, it's breakfast time. Must have my porridge, before getting the guitar out. Ah, when I was younger it would be the other way round. I'm getting lazy!

  16. #90

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    Here's the comping example (again something I previously posted on another thread).

    The 'original' chord changes are shown in brackets where appropriate.

    To actually play this you'd want to make it more rhythmic, syncopate it etc. (as Alan K. said earlier, think rhythmically!)
    Attached Images Attached Images

  17. #91

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    Thanks, Graham!!

  18. #92

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    To answer the II-V-I somewhat theoretically, my personal take on it is this is a movement from a less stable position to a more stable position in the key.

    So, in terms of the Barry Harris language, we obviously have this thing encoded into the scales. Do7 = unstable C6 = stable.

    In fact, we have it with any diatonic scale, but in the BH 8-note scales it's more symmetric - 4 notes on the home chord, 4 notes in the dim7 chord.

    When creating movement using these scales, it's really up to you to create that movement, and one obvious way of doing it is to use the dim7 and then the I chord. So for C major

    Do7 --> C6

    If we add in the Dm7 chord, we have an interesting thing, because it's a mix of C6 and Do7 notes
    D F A C
    D F - Do7
    A C - C6

    So, by combining diminished and 6th chord notes we have a potential wide variety of movements. If we start with a Dm7, F6, Fmaj7 or some other type of subdominant chord as the first chord and changing one or two of the chords notes within the scale, we can easily generate movements like this:

    Dm7 Do7 C6
    Fmaj7 Fm(maj7) C6
    Fmaj7 Fm7b5(maj7) C6
    Fmaj7/A G13/Ab C6
    Dm7b5 G7b9 C6
    Dm9b5 G13b9 C6 (Notice the Dm9b5 - a Bill Evans chord, is present in this system.)
    Even
    Bm7b5 E7b9 Am7 (or even Am(maj7)!)

    And so on and so forth... This might look a bit horrendous, but all of these progressions, in context have the same role as a II-V-I. In practice the name of the second chord is often difficult to write down in chord symbols, and you wouldn't necessarily be thinking of it in those terms. As a side point, in mainstream CST, a lot of these chords would be thought to have different chord/scale implications. Here, they are all parented by the same scale.

    Furthermore, you aren't necessarily limited to following the same pattern of dominant-tonic as the vanilla changes. You can resolve as and when you like.

    They start on a static, but non-tonic chord and resolve to tonic via some interesting voice leading (A-Ab-G or G-G#-A being important). The extra note, Ab/G# serves to allow a lot of voice leading and unites a lot of seemingly different progressions under one umbrella

    This might seem a bit waffly, so I'll try and post some examples of it eventually. The chord progression above are an example of things that are horrible to write down, but very logical on the neck, because it's all tight voice leading.

    From a brass tacks point of view, the whole A of WITCL can be boiled down to two scales:

    Gm7b5 C7(b9) Fm6 --> Fm6 - dim
    Dm7b5 G7(b9) C6 --> C6 -dim

    So a good exercise might be to run each scale up and down for 4 bars.

    Bridge

    Cm7 F7 Bb --> Bb6 - dim
    Ab7 G7 --> we can actually treat as Dm7b5 G7 (see Roni BH's videos), therefore C6 -dim, or Cm6 - dim. G7b5 - dim is a also a good shout. Or take each dominant chord in isolation. Choice is yours.

    Hope that makes some sense....
    Last edited by christianm77; 01-12-2018 at 02:40 PM.

  19. #93

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  20. #94

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77

    Dm7 Do7 C6
    Fmaj7 Fm(maj7) C6
    Fmaj7 Fm7b5(maj7) C6
    Fmaj7/A G13/Ab C6
    Dm7b5 G7b9 C6
    Dm9b5 G13b9 C6 (Notice the Dm9b5 - a Bill Evans chord, is present in this system.)
    Even
    Bm7b5 E7b9 Am7 (or even Am(maj7)!)

    And so on and so forth... This might look a bit horrendous, but all of these progressions, in context have the same role as a II-V-I.
    YES!!!

    This is so important...people get so hung up with "what's on the chart." But it's very possible for both the soloist--and the accompanyist--to NOT "play what's on the chart," to get at any of these ideas--they're still performing the same function. Jazz is a music of movements, phrases, functionalities.

  21. #95

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    Thanks, Christian, for both the written post and the video. It will take me a while to completely wrap my head around all this, but I get the drift. Basically there is a Home and various Aways. Some of the Aways are smoothly connected, others more obliquely. But they're all heading home eventually.

    Okay, I've got a lot of stuff. I've also got a lot of practice and thinking to do. "I may be gone some time!"

  22. #96

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    In one of the talks I get to hang out in with the old Jazz cats one of the things said recent that I think relates to threads like this. As mentioned in the past the old Jazz masters were known for not directly answering questions about theory, they would just play something as their answer. Two reasons first ears was everything to them you had to be able to hear the sounds and understand things by sound. The second and what relates to this thread is they didn't talk theory because they didn't know what background others had, what terms or labels people used. By communicating in sound then each person could look at the idea from whatever system or lack of system for self taught players that made sense to them. So the eliminated the bickering in my system calls it this, well I play with whoever and we called it that, or Wes Montgomery "it's just a sound".

    This really empathises you have to hear it first, know the sound, before labeling it. And if two people playing together both understand the sound, what's it matter if the call it by different names.

    Okay coffee time.

  23. #97

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    Quote Originally Posted by docbop
    In one of the talks I get to hang out in with the old Jazz cats one of the things said recent that I think relates to threads like this. As mentioned in the past the old Jazz masters were known for not directly answering questions about theory, they would just play something as their answer. Two reasons first ears was everything to them you had to be able to hear the sounds and understand things by sound. The second and what relates to this thread is they didn't talk theory because they didn't know what background others had, what terms or labels people used. By communicating in sound then each person could look at the idea from whatever system or lack of system for self taught players that made sense to them. So the eliminated the bickering in my system calls it this, well I play with whoever and we called it that, or Wes Montgomery "it's just a sound".

    This really empathises you have to hear it first, know the sound, before labeling it. And if two people playing together both understand the sound, what's it matter if the call it by different names.

    Okay coffee time.
    It's been remarked on that the highest level (Herbie Hancock) of this harmony masterclass is basically the two musicians playing chords at each other.


  24. #98

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    Well, that video will be the coolest 15 minutes of my day.

    I'm also pretty proud of myself in that I actually understood quite a bit of what he and Herbie were talking about...and then their playing...dang, well, I didn't say ALL of it

  25. #99

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    As a side point, in mainstream CST, a lot of these chords would be thought to have different chord/scale implications. Here, they are all parented by the same scale.
    I did one of my many short lived threads awhile back that died a quick death, like that tree falling in a far off forest,
    did it ever really happen? Anyway, I mentioned this as one of the limitations of viewing harmony from a chord scale
    perspective.

    Ex. addressing rapid succession of dominants, each derived from multiple scale collections.

    I was surprised to discover how significantly the harmonic content expands by adding just one more note to a seven note scale.
    Not a Barry Harris mindset, but ma6 diminished can also be understood as a hybrid of C major + C harmonic major +
    A harmonic minor. This means it possesses every chord found in those three scales plus even a few more.
    Ultimately, even an 8 note scale will fall short of offering total one stop shopping but is a positive path to streamline some stuff.

  26. #100

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    Quote Originally Posted by bako
    I did one of my many short lived threads awhile back that died a quick death, like that tree falling in a far off forest,
    did it ever really happen? Anyway, I mentioned this as one of the limitations of viewing harmony from a chord scale
    perspective.

    Ex. addressing rapid succession of dominants, each derived from multiple scale collections.

    I was surprised to discover how significantly the harmonic content expands by adding just one more note to a seven note scale.
    Not a Barry Harris mindset, but ma6 diminished can also be understood as a hybrid of C major + C harmonic major +
    A harmonic minor. This means it possesses every chord found in those three scales plus even a few more.
    Ultimately, even an 8 note scale will fall short of offering total one stop shopping but is a positive path to streamline some stuff.
    Very true. I'm sorry I didn't see your thread.