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I may be mistaken but I think you're referring to my example.
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
That was what I suggested as a good sounding solution within the BH toolbox. I wanted to keep the alternating min7/dim sonority and keep a few more voices moving (m6 voicing could work but sounded boring to me). Obs there's many reharm options but I was curious to find a sound that sounded most like a ii chord within the BH world. It's one of the places where 6th on the 5th won't suffice IMO.
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09-10-2024 09:49 AM
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I've brought it up too and felt the same. I could text a collegue but I don't know anyone who would be into the BH world enough to answer. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Why is it not just minor 6 on a strong beat and Christian’s common tone diminished on a weak beat?
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Compartmentalization of melody and harmony is one aspect of Barry Harris's approach that doesn't match well with how I like to see things. It seems natural to me that melody and harmony come from the same scale in any given moment of a tonal tune (even in a non-functional tune). There is a fundamental dependency between harmony and melody afterall.
To be more precise, they don't come from different "set of notes" in his approach. But these notes have different scalar organizations depending on whether the context is melody or harmony. It seems to me that it would have been a low hanging fruit to unify these scales. For example add more half steps to Major 6th dim scale in the improvisation class or create lines with arpeggios inside that scale (same with dominant 6 dim scale) and use these same scales to construct chord voicings and movements in the harmony class. Every chordal idea could be use in lines and vise versa.
It is possible that this had more to do with how he had to organize the workshops for all instruments than being indicative of how he understood music. He had to separate improvisation and harmony sections as there weren't gonna be a lot of horn players who would be interested in delving deeply into comping and solo piano (guitar) concepts. But clearly it was something more than that. One possible reason why he didn't go down that route might be that he didn't think that would be very good way of teaching the bebop language of Charlie Parker in the improvisation class as his goal there was to capture the specifics of the language. Any thoughts?
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if you mean the last two beats of bar three - 'moon in the sky' - then first inversion of dm6 is surely the ticket. unless I'm missing the issue entirely.
this does happen a lot in the songbook - and this first inversion of the m6 sound plays a crucial role.
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This is the answer that I came up with for quarter note melodies, just have never heard one of the BH disciples mention it. Just looking for a bit of validation from anyone in the know. Sometimes the ol music school shackles of "Is this allowed" are hard to shake. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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oh - you mean 'need a blue la-' - bar 7. sorry.
that's a strange thing to be worried about - it's not just a 'm7' chord - its a vi chord - and that chord just requires that note (it's the fourth of the key or the tonic of the IV).
the concept of a minor 7th doesn't apply to ii, iii and vi in the same way. this, I think, is one of the symptoms of the weakness of a non BH approach.
vi is I with its root on the sixth; iii is one in first inversion; ii is IV with its root on vi. these are all different sounds (i.e. not all 'm7' sounds with roots on different degrees of the scale).
on the BH picture I employ there's no such thing as a minor 7th chord (or a dom. chord) - so this voicing issue doesn't arise.
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It's Bar 26... I put the example in C for some reason too. Originally Posted by Groyniad
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cool - thanks
very similar to bar 3 - but not exactly the same!
I've been getting so into this first inversion m6 / maj 6 sharp 11 sound
the lyric is 'make my most fantastic' - and the crucial note is the one that goes with 'my'
in this case it helps to think of the dm6 in first inversion as an f maj 6 sharp 11 because the series continues with the first inversion of this maj 6 sound: 'most fan....' is the first inversion of this f maj 6 sharp 11 sound - 3/1/5/6 of F maj 6. (melody notes are 5 then 6)
so this example uses the equivalence between first inversion m6 and maj6 sharp 11
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well that is an answer to the question of how to BH that bit of My Romance - no-one interested anymore?
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^ How was it not answered? If you can't harmonize the melody strictly within the BH system, you by definition have to figure out a different way, would you not? There are several ways.. which I already explained.
1. Put the dim on the root of the chord and the main chord with the color tones. I think this sounds great for minor 7 chords.
2. Borrow. Instead of having to strictly alternate between main chord and dim but rearrange them, just borrow the top 1 or 2 notes.
3. Extend the chord cell sequences beyond only 2 chord cells of main chord / dim. For example, I'm working on Autumn in NY. The very first line I go G-9 with A on top, Go7 with G on top, whole tone voicing with F on top, whole tone voicing with D on top, into A-7 with C on top.
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I'll try to answer some people to stir things up a bit but honestly, I may be good with what pamos confirmed. Originally Posted by Groyniad
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I think probably because codifying the harmonic system came many years after the improv classes if understand it correctly. Originally Posted by Tal_175
As far as this quote: "seems natural to me that melody and harmony come from the same scale". It's pretty clear that the beboppers thought about improvising on chords and not necessarily of scales even though thinking of chords may end up with a line that would also be a chord scale. Also, bar lines are pretty flexible in an improvisation over a set of changes, look at the anticipations in Stitt or Bird lines.
The symmetry of the 6th dim scales is part of their utility so adding all the extra half steps would make it not as good.
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Glad you're digging the sound but I would say Dm6 is prob the simpler way to think about it. However, minor 6th chords sound like in inverted V chord or a tonic minor IMO. The point of me bringing this up was to find the most min7 way of dealing with this situation. The 6th degree on a ii min7 is rare in this context (not an implied V chord, slower melodic rhythm, slow to med swing), this example in My Romance is the only one I could think of. Miss Jones has a 6th on the iimin7 chord in the A sections but I'd prob deal with that one via chromatic planing to the b7th due the tempo/melodic rhythm. Originally Posted by Groyniad
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Did you have a different username before? maybe I'm confused by the pic thinking you used to be Jimmy Smith. Originally Posted by Bobby Timmons
1. I don't think that works i this context maybe with borrowing to get some crunchiness but you still run into the fact that the Fmaj6 scale doesn't have a B.
2. fair enough, but what about when the note isn't in the scale (B not in fmaj6/dmin7 scale) and the 6th on the 5th of a min7 sounds like a 7sus chord?
3. Cool but now we're just reharmonizing the tune.
Did you say you're taking lessons from Chris Parks? ask him about this, I'd be curious to know what the BH school teaches. Or maybe AK wants to weight in. It's literally the only situation where I haven't found the stock/vanilla solution in the BH system, and I haven't seen any of the big online guys talking about it.
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Oh BTW, I think the best guitar based description of the BH harmonic world is this one, kinda summarizes AKs book (to give some love to the OP):
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I am not sure beboppers thought about improvisation the way Barry Harris taught it with scale outlines as such either. But given that he was using a form of scalar mapping of chord changes as one of the driving engines of his pedagogy, it's interesting that he didn't unify it with how he taught harmony classes in any obvious way. Clearly he developed one of the most effective approaches to teach the bebop language. So this is obviously not a criticism but curiosity. Originally Posted by bediles
Yeah, that's right, you wouldn't add half steps when applying it chordally. If there was a way to unify them it would look something like, starting with the same base scale that has one extra diminished note, then building on this base scale differently on harmonic and melodic applications. I am giving this as an example to describe what I mean, I am not saying that's how specifically they can be unified. Originally Posted by bediles
Last edited by Tal_175; 09-12-2024 at 08:15 PM.
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Yeah this dude is bananas. Originally Posted by bediles
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Interesting to think about, eh? Originally Posted by Tal_175
Yeah the harmonic side is taught in a funny way, kinda piecemeal, that makes it hard to understand.
You can play bebop lines w chords Ala supersax but that's going to be a bunch of chromatic planing and outside this BH dim note/6th note thing.
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It’s interesting. No one on the London jazz guitar scene seems to know who he is. YouTube is a parallel universe…. Very impressive player. That arpeggio video is shred tastic. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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I don’t think the dim-6 scales are modelled so much on bebop practice. Barry said Bud didn’t pay them much for instance. I think it was more Barry’s own point of departure from big band arranging and lock knuckle piano playing. And classical music for that latter - Barry was as likely to talk about Chopin as jazz when discussing the scales.
That said, the swing era players did play the m6-dim in particular. I have heard it referred to by a friend ignorant of BH stuff as the Lester Young scale; he worked it out himself. That said Barry’s linear examples were influenced by Coleman Hawkins. So these things are clearly things we can derive from listening to the music alone, which of course is what Barry did. I don’t think any of us can say more than that:
This sort of thing happened to me. For a while I was analysing Parker in my own way, then I realised Barry’s single note improv stuff was - naturally - much more complete and there was no point reinventing the wheel (for once!).
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Originally Posted by bediles
It's not that simple because the m7 sound is preserved with the solution I offered (it seems to me). that's because the first inversion of the dm6 is an Fmaj6 sharp 11 - and then we use the first inversion of that chord (the f chord) to complete the ascending phrase. this preserves the flat 7 of the dm7 sound.
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That's funny! Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I think he plays functions and stuff? I'm not exactly a mainstay of the scene, myself. Originally Posted by bediles
TBH most of the players you might know on the web are not that active on the circuit. Some of them, like Tom Quayle, don't really enjoy playing live. He's certainly not playing jazz gigs. I could give you a list of top London jazz guitarists who are all amazing and the chances are slim that people outside of London, much less the UK will have heard of them. In fact those live players can get a bit resentful haha.
It's the same everywhere - I think the same is true even of New York players who don't tour.
The other thing is time - heavily gigging players don't have enough time to make high quality YouTube videos. (That's not a reflection on a player's talent btw - there's loads of reasons why someone might to be playing jazz gigs loads.)
Watching Robbie's videos it's clear how much work goes in them. I think people think that doing YouTube well is a sideline that takes little effort. I can say from my own limited efforts, it's a serious workload. I have no idea how long it must have taken him to do that Barry Harris video for example.
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I've been messing around with this lately. For a Major 7#11 chord I've been using a Minor 6/Dim scale starting a minor third below as well (Dm6 for FM7#11, as per your example). It's a bit funny because the scale also has a natural 4th and and minor 6th as well. But it seems to work sometimes. Originally Posted by Groyniad
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