Chris Parks' Open Studio

[Sam b]

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone here has had experience with Chris Parks' Barry Harris related courses on Open Studio. I know there are a lot of other ways to get into Barry Harris pedagogy including Parks' own YouTube channel but was specifically wondering about his Open Studio courses. It looks like it may be a distillation of all the stuff he has on YT (I'm daunted by the number of episodes, frankly), but I can't really tell. I've emailed Open Studio as well but was hoping for a user's perspective.
Thank you very much.

[joe2758]

I did it for a while. You need to be comfortable with most of the stuff on his channel already to get much out of it. I'm speaking of the live classes

[Sam b]

Thanks, Joe. I think the live classes would be hard for me but I was wondering about whether the courses themselves would be good primers.

[joe2758]

I'd say you'd do just as well to go through the youtube channel more or less in order

[AllanAllen]

Has Chris Parks ever posted a clip of him playing music? I tried searching after hearing him talk about BH on a podcast, but it was all instruction.

[Sam b]

The whole reason I'm asking now was that there was a live Open Studio YT thing yesterday. He played at the beginning of that:

[joe2758]

yeah he has it on his youtube channel

[AllanAllen]

I wish they had the camera on his hands! That was great.

There's all this education on BH but I feel like it's rare to see strict application. You can get hours and hours of content on chords, scales, scales of chords and various mappings. But what I feel is missing is the crucial, next step of "here is an example using X technique."

[Sam b]

I thought he sounded great, too. Agree there's so much out there - that's why I was wondering about his course.

[joe2758]

I wish they had the camera on his hands! That was great.

There's all this education on BH but I feel like it's rare to see strict application. You can get hours and hours of content on chords, scales, scales of chords and various mappings. But what I feel is missing is the crucial, next step of "here is an example using X technique."

weird, that's what his whole youtube channel is

[AllanAllen]

I watched a few videos and didn't see him running it through Rhythm Changes like he does in the Open Studio video.

[joe2758]

Fair enough, he doesn't have other players in his vids. His musical examples are solo guitar. Although, a lot of the practice material is in the context of tunes and he'll play 2 or 4 bars here or there. But yeah, I don't think I've seen much in the way of taking full solos.

When I said "that's his whole channel" I meant that he is showing actual applications, though not blowing through whole tunes.

[CliffR]

I watched a few videos and didn't see him running it through Rhythm Changes like he does in the Open Studio video.

He did do a video or two on rhythm changes quite early on, but I'm afraid I can't point you to the specific links.

[CliffR]

Has Chris Parks ever posted a clip of him playing music? I tried searching after hearing him talk about BH on a podcast, but it was all instruction.

I love Chris Parks, but I can't resist the joke. He plays both kinds of music: diminished *and* minor 6th.

[AllanAllen]

Fair enough, he doesn't have other players in his vids. His musical examples are solo guitar. Although, a lot of the practice material is in the context of tunes and he'll play 2 or 4 bars here or there. But yeah, I don't think I've seen much in the way of taking full solos.

When I said "that's his whole channel" I meant that he is showing actual applications, though not blowing through whole tunes.

I yearn for comping concepts explained and directly applied. This is not specific to Parks. I just think comping is where the single note stuff lies, to me it’s all chord shapes and scale patterns over those shapes. Maybe I’ve self taught myself into a corner.

[joe2758]

[Strat-itis]

I'm in Chris's live classes on OS Pro. I started over a year ago. He teaches the strict Barry method where:

- Learn single note and harmony domains orally where you just keep drilling it weekly.
- He refuses to water down the Barry method and integrate other teaching. For example Barry wouldn't outline the 2 or use blues scale, even though this is all over jazz.
- He stresses learning little Barry ideas at a time so you actually integrate them into your playing. Learn the raw device, make a move out of it, put it in a tune.
- He started with Barry in 1993 and keeps Barry's teaching true, even down to the small details where he won't write it all down and codify it, just teaches it orally.

In my opinion, it is simply the BEST method for learning true jazz playing and anyone would benefit from it. You can follow it strictly, or you can be a rebel and use it as a base and blend other players' methods.

Chris is also a MONSTER. He's not arrogant with flashy playing or prolific recording, often demonstrating things humbly and low key. But when he gets into a demonstration and shows us his full skill set, it is like almost all pure language, executed perfectly, that he has worked out and internalized rather than filler.

As to the question about the recorded courses on OS: they're super organized and clean, with his examples notated in music notation, but it's not like they'd be way better than just following his TILFBH channel. I do highly recommend OS Pro tho.

[Sam b]

Thanks so much!

[Strat-itis]

You're welcome

[Navdeep_Singh]

I’ve spent years on Barry’s stuff, and I use it as a harmonic and fingerboard organization to play any song from the G.A.S. I can take any song and organize it according to key, diving the fingerboard in 3 frets (minor 3rds-imagine that, lol).

That is also to say: I don’t use any BH stuff for single-note soloing, single note lines, no half step rules, 7 note scale outlines up and down etc, up to the 7th and down to the #3rd of F, etc. The most useful solo note idea I got and kept and assimilated is the pivot arpeggios.

But for solo guitar, to play the guitar like a piano BH’s stuff about families of chords related and/or derived from the related diminished? That is a godsend. Every song I play I envision as constant V-Is, using chord subs using the related minor 6ths and dom7 families, all using BH.

CPs YT page seemed to focus on single note lines, while Thomas Echols focused on the harmonic system. I personally found Thomas’ stuff more useful, for my use of BH’s system,

[Strat-itis]

^ My opinion is that the single note stuff is also the real deal and shouldn't be glossed over since it gets you playing authentic single note in the bop style.