David Baker Bebop Scales — Barry Harris half-steps

[Tal_175]

I actually prefer David Baker's How to Play Bebop vol.2 over the first volume for working on the half steps of the bebop language. Most of the II-V patterns in the volume incorporate applications of half steps and these patterns are all transcribed from bebop and hard-bop records.

[Christian Miller]

One thing I’d like to say

These aren’t bebop scales. They aren’t anything to do with bebop.

These are a natural solution to a basic issue with Western music. We have seven notes and an even number of eight notes in a bar.

So every composer who has ever written a scalar figure on a static chord has to deal with this basic fact and they have various ways to deal with it many of which have ended up in David Baker books and Barry’s method.

The chromatic interpolation became popular in the 19th century and perhaps most relevantly for jazz, in military marching band music (a friend calls the dominant bebop scale the JP Sousa scale).

These added note scale became heavily used in pre war and post war jazz.

In fact bebop sometimes breaks these rule precisely to make the rhythmic stress less predictable. If you reverse the added the rules you end up on a push for example.

So as connecting tissue they are great, but on reflection it’s no surprise it can iron out the funk in your playing because they are kind of super square.


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[buduranus2]

Man, you're gonna make this old man blush. FWIW I'd like to share my perspectives on your comments. Is there a way I can PM you? I don't want to bog down the thread.

Feel free to. Always interested in other people's opinions.

OK, then. Here's one old man's take on how I (attempt to) hang with the big dogs, as follows:

At the outset, I'd give my eye teeth to be able to incorporate the depth and scope of applied harmony so creatively demonstrated by many of the forum members here, and elsewhere. It's really quite astonishing, let alone the technique required to execute these concepts. That said, and as you suggest, there are other intangible aspects that allow someone at my level of development to play something of value.

My dad was a real music head, so I heard classical, Sinatra, and jazz in the house. Bird, Diz, Monk, Errol Garner, Brubeck etc. So I've always had that in me. Also, I have a particular affinity for swing bands: Duke, Basie, Goodman, Miller, Herman, the Dorseys. And I was fortunate to be a youngster at the birth of rock 'n' roll. As a result, I was able to internalize the sound and feel of jazz, blues and the roots of R&B at a young age.

More years ago than I care to admit I heard Albert King in a club, and that was my epiphany. Albert was a master of "playing the spaces" and making the most out of a limited handful of licks. He didn't need any more than that. People have been trying to capture the essence of his style forever, and while Jimi and Stevie Ray successfully adapted elements of his style, nobody's ever improved on it.

Over the years I became a pretty good blues guitarist, and I think this is my "secret sauce." Blues is (are?) the linguistic elements of jazz: the phrasing, the tonalities, and the foundational licks. It's a deceptively difficult style. That's why there are blues festivals all over the world yet not all that many people who can really play it. Blues has the most solid lines because it uses the most basic elements. It's primal and connects with people viscerally, while jazz guitar (at least IMHO) is more cerebral. IOW a Bird solo on guitar is, in itself, a great achievement, but it doesn't resonate the same.

Let me say at this point that I spend time every day expanding my use of harmony. My "new toy" is an old device substituting a iv-mi6 (aka ii-mi7b5) to V7b9 for a major ii V7 and playing W/H diminished over it. I'm working it to death like a dog on an old slipper. That, and melodic minor over mi6, which is kind of in the same neighborhood. I'm in my 70s now, having started learning jazz well into my 60s. So I'll only get so far, but it's still fun to work on these concepts.

So the "big reveal" is this: a solid foundation in the feeling (not the "idea") of the blues with good "linguistic facility" will get you pretty far down the field with some judiciously applied chromaticism, a consistent beat, some rhythmic misdirection (i.e. starting/stopping phrases on the upbeat/offbeat) and a tone that connects with people. Think of chromaticism as spices on the rack. We don't use every spice in every recipe, and it's not only how much of each we use but when we add them to the mix. My two cents FWIW.

[joe2758]

What sort of level player were you in your 30s and 40s? Would you be at a total loss on a simple jazz standard back then?

[GuyBoden]

I'm sure many others have noticed this simple feature about the Bebop Major scale, it's easier to think of it as simple 'approach notes' to chord tones.

Example below:
Bebop Major over CM6 chord.
Approach notes with chord tones in bold:
(Ab>G) (F>E) (D>C) (B>A) (Ab>G)

[buduranus2]

What sort of level player were you in your 30s and 40s? Would you be at a total loss on a simple jazz standard back then?

I could not have played a simple jazz standard if my life depended on it.

I'm sure many others have noticed this simple feature about the Bebop Major scale, it's easier to think of it as simple 'approach notes' to chord tones.

Example below:
Bebop Major over CM6 chord.
Approach notes with chord tones in bold:
(Ab>G) (F>E) (D>C) (B>A) (Ab>G)

This is great. I now remember reading that If you approach each chord tone from a half-step below, you'll get all the notes in the W/H diminished scale.

[joe2758]

I could not have played a simple jazz standard if my life depended on it.


This is great. I now remember reading that If you approach each chord tone from a half-step below, you'll get all the notes in the W/H diminished scale.

Barry Harris describes the W/H scale this way: A half step below each note in a dim arpeggio is the root of a dominant chord, and that is where w/h scale comes from

[pamosmusic]

One thing I’d like to say

These aren’t bebop scales. They aren’t anything to do with bebop.

These are a natural solution to a basic issue with Western music. We have seven notes and an even number of eight notes in a bar.

So every composer who has ever written a scalar figure on a static chord has to deal with this basic fact and they have various ways to deal with it many of which have ended up in David Baker books and Barry’s method.

The chromatic interpolation became popular in the 19th century and perhaps most relevantly for jazz, in military marching band music (a friend calls the dominant bebop scale the JP Sousa scale).

These added note scale became heavily used in pre war and post war jazz.

In fact bebop sometimes breaks these rule precisely to make the rhythmic stress less predictable. If you reverse the added the rules you end up on a push for example.

So as connecting tissue they are great, but on reflection it’s no surprise it can iron out the funk in your playing because they are kind of super square.


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Nice

[TearItDown]

Peter - I'm very much appreciating your highly analytical side, your "devices that add one, two, three, four beats" layout, the specific example of how David Baker vs. Barry Harris would play a descending scale line from the 7th, etc. As a teacher, I'm imagining you find it useful to teach these things to your students, and that's why I think you might be helpful in giving me feedback on this.

I know I'm older and "old school," having learned a lot on the bandstand playing with great more experienced jazz masters, etc. But, even as someone who is by nature very analytical, I've always questioned the pedagogical way people have attempted to teach the bebop language. I realize that telling students "you've got to listen to and play the music so much that you intuitively learn where to add chromatic passing tones in order to be idiomatically authentic" sounds like a complete cop-out, while offering classes in school about the "bebop scales" (which, whatever impression one gets from Harris and Baker, is not how the original bebop greats thought about it) feels like it is imparting useful knowledge. And I well understand how someone like Barry, faced with students who had not absorbed the language through osmosis, saw the value in coming up with a system - this way, he could tell a student that something was right or wrong, based on a rule.

But there's always something a little bit whacky about it to me. All the rules about what notes to start on, where they should fall in the time, etc. in order to play a scale and end on the "right" note (which, as you point out, is a different note as taught by Baker vs. Harris) -- when most real improvised lines are not scales (at least I hope not!)... An analogy to me is teaching someone coarticulation (the way sounds in speech are influenced by preceding and succeeding sounds, even across word boundaries) in a foreign language through an extremely long and detailed list of rules. It's certainly not how we learn a language when we're young and, even as adults, I suspect listening a lot and imitating, rather than memorizing coarticulation rules, is actually more effective in learning a foreign language (even though an entire semester of a university class could be filled with the coarticulation rules).

So my question is: as someone who seems to be quite smart in thinking about and analyzing all of the rules (e.g. in Baker and Harris), do you find that teaching these to your students makes for an efficient pathway and leads them to sound authentic and idiomatic in playing bebop?

[pamosmusic]

Peter - I'm very much appreciating your highly analytical side, your "devices that add one, two, three, four beats" layout, the specific example of how David Baker vs. Barry Harris would play a descending scale line from the 7th, etc. As a teacher, I'm imagining you find it useful to teach these things to your students, and that's why I think you might be helpful in giving me feedback on this.

I know I'm older and "old school," having learned a lot on the bandstand playing with great more experienced jazz masters, etc. But, even as someone who is by nature very analytical, I've always questioned the pedagogical way people have attempted to teach the bebop language. I realize that telling students "you've got to listen to and play the music so much that you intuitively learn where to add chromatic passing tones in order to be idiomatically authentic" sounds like a complete cop-out, while offering classes in school about the "bebop scales" (which, whatever impression one gets from Harris and Baker, is not how the original bebop greats thought about it) feels like it is imparting useful knowledge. And I well understand how someone like Barry, faced with students who had not absorbed the language through osmosis, saw the value in coming up with a system - this way, he could tell a student that something was right or wrong, based on a rule.

But there's always something a little bit whacky about it to me. All the rules about what notes to start on, where they should fall in the time, etc. in order to play a scale and end on the "right" note (which, as you point out, is a different note as taught by Baker vs. Harris) -- when most real improvised lines are not scales (at least I hope not!)... An analogy to me is teaching someone coarticulation (the way sounds in speech are influenced by preceding and succeeding sounds, even across word boundaries) in a foreign language through an extremely long and detailed list of rules. It's certainly not how we learn a language when we're young and, even as adults, I suspect listening a lot and imitating, rather than memorizing coarticulation rules, is actually more effective in learning a foreign language (even though an entire semester of a university class could be filled with the coarticulation rules).

So my question is: as someone who seems to be quite smart in thinking about and analyzing all of the rules (e.g. in Baker and Harris), do you find that teaching these to your students makes for an efficient pathway and leads them to sound authentic and idiomatic in playing bebop?

I know this is a long thread with many useless digressions, but I have answered both of these, I think, in some detail.

My response to someone earlier who made the language analogy.

Oh good, another opportunity to say the same thing I’ve been saying for four pages.

Barry Harris has like … maybe a half dozen little rules for running scales that just sound like bebop. If you live with them for a long time, your playing sounds like bebop. Thats just not unreasonable to me.

David Baker has a gazillion little things that he calls “rules” but that strike me more as “contingencies.” Like … rather than memorizing them all, you treat them as opportunities to explore what happens when you do x or y with the scale.

And with all due respect, the reading and speaking analogy doesn’t hold water. We don’t learn those things by memorizing rules (though I will point out that “grammar” seems to have sufficient utility to still be taught in schools after a hundred odd years) but we do learn by imitating imitating imitating.

My four year old son learns a word and uses it at every single opportunity, and eventually figures out the correct context.

And we learn to read by sounding out the same small group of words over and over and over again, and then adding a new sound that opens up a new small group of words. And reading and language pedagogy also involves the use of “sight words” … meaning words you just memorize as such because they’re extremely common, even though the sounds contained therein might be advanced. For example, learning the “th” sound is kind of an advanced sound, but there is obvious utility to just memorizing the words “the” and “with.”

So you might consider these bebop scale exercises to be something like bebop “sight words.”

……

Ill also note that I’ve been a writer in a past life and know a lot more than a few, and if you show me a writer without a notebook full of weird words they ran across while reading and multiple copies of Strunk and White, I’ll mail you a check for a hundred dollars

…….

For what it’s worth, for the last thirty years or so, there has been a debate in American education over how to teach reading.

The consensus moved away from, and then recently back to, phonics (sound it out) reading and the more I think about it, the more I actually like the analogy.

We actually do learn and memorize a set of rules — c makes a sss sound when followed by e, a k sound when followed by a consonant, and a chhh sound when followed by an h — and we internalize those by applying them over and over again, getting tripped up by exceptions, slowly chunking and memorizing common words, etc. We learn a couple sounds at a time and add to those as we get comfortable.

(there’s an incredible podcast on that reading debate called Sold a Story if you’re into that kind of thing)

Christian has already mentioned several times that these things are meant to teach a certain limited aspect of a certain sort of line, and it’s extremely important but only a useful fraction of the way we build lines. Hes also mentioned that it’s not a substitute for listening and is best utilized by people who listen a lot and have spent a little time learning lines already. I would probably agree.

These are not for memorizing rules, they’re for sitting with for a while and figuring out articulation and absorbing the rhythmic flow of each. When you improvise, your ear is operating on intuition but there are lots of ways to develop and hone that intuition.

[Christian Miller]

Peter - I'm very much appreciating your highly analytical side, your "devices that add one, two, three, four beats" layout, the specific example of how David Baker vs. Barry Harris would play a descending scale line from the 7th, etc. As a teacher, I'm imagining you find it useful to teach these things to your students, and that's why I think you might be helpful in giving me feedback on this.

I know I'm older and "old school," having learned a lot on the bandstand playing with great more experienced jazz masters, etc. But, even as someone who is by nature very analytical, I've always questioned the pedagogical way people have attempted to teach the bebop language. I realize that telling students "you've got to listen to and play the music so much that you intuitively learn where to add chromatic passing tones in order to be idiomatically authentic" sounds like a complete cop-out, while offering classes in school about the "bebop scales" (which, whatever impression one gets from Harris and Baker, is not how the original bebop greats thought about it) feels like it is imparting useful knowledge. And I well understand how someone like Barry, faced with students who had not absorbed the language through osmosis, saw the value in coming up with a system - this way, he could tell a student that something was right or wrong, based on a rule.

But there's always something a little bit whacky about it to me. All the rules about what notes to start on, where they should fall in the time, etc. in order to play a scale and end on the "right" note (which, as you point out, is a different note as taught by Baker vs. Harris) -- when most real improvised lines are not scales (at least I hope not!)... An analogy to me is teaching someone coarticulation (the way sounds in speech are influenced by preceding and succeeding sounds, even across word boundaries) in a foreign language through an extremely long and detailed list of rules. It's certainly not how we learn a language when we're young and, even as adults, I suspect listening a lot and imitating, rather than memorizing coarticulation rules, is actually more effective in learning a foreign language (even though an entire semester of a university class could be filled with the coarticulation rules).

So my question is: as someone who seems to be quite smart in thinking about and analyzing all of the rules (e.g. in Baker and Harris), do you find that teaching these to your students makes for an efficient pathway and leads them to sound authentic and idiomatic in playing bebop?

I know you weren’t addressing me but I’m one of the people here who had a bit of direct contact with Barry, and all I can say is I’ve personally found it very useful. It’s like a series of axioms that lead to idiomatic bop language. It’s kind of like magic.

Barry’s stuff works in a very modular way. These added note scales allow you to set up further modules and you improvise in a very chunked way. Barry would construct lines on a standard phrase by phrase at bop tempo, explaining each move as he went.

It’s not for beginners, IMO. I haven’t had much luck teaching it to guitarists who don’t already have a few licks in their ears and fingers. Also they really have to know their scales. Otoh those who have have taken it onboard and developed quickly

I think it works well in combination with transcription although Barry never mentioned transcription in workshops. He himself had obviously checked out everything Parker and Bud had recorded and I would say his students all checked out tunes and solos. IIRC Charles MacPherson said he wasn’t fussed about students transcribing solos, but bebop heads and tunes absolutely.

Tbh if you went to Barry’s workshop every week in New York, you’d probably have heard it all coming out of his piano.

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[AllanAllen]

Also they really have to know their scales.

Which ones? I’ve struggled to find motivation outside the major scale and its modes.

If I play something outside that, I think in arpeggios. Like Caravan I think C7b9 or Autumn Leaves I think G-6 (this includes the major 7). But if I was asked to play the scale to that I’d be clueless. I know it’s a weakness, but I also don’t feel crippled with my system.

[pamosmusic]

Which ones? I’ve struggled to find motivation outside the major scale and its modes.

If I play something outside that, I think in arpeggios. Like Caravan I think C7b9 or Autumn Leaves I think G-6 (this includes the major 7). But if I was asked to play the scale to that I’d be clueless. I know it’s a weakness, but I also don’t feel crippled with my system.

Just those. The more comfortable you are with the seven note major scales, the less trouble it is to add those half steps, or get the basics with which you embellish them down — thirds, various arpeggios etc

i guess melodic minor down the line

[AllanAllen]

Good to know I’m headed in the right direction.

[Christian Miller]

Which ones? I’ve struggled to find motivation outside the major scale and its modes.

If I play something outside that, I think in arpeggios. Like Caravan I think C7b9 or Autumn Leaves I think G-6 (this includes the major 7). But if I was asked to play the scale to that I’d be clueless. I know it’s a weakness, but I also don’t feel crippled with my system.

Dominant and melodic minor (or m6-dim). Have them down in intervals and arpeggios in every position and key


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[joe2758]

Dominant and melodic minor (or m6-dim). Have them down in intervals and arpeggios in every position and key


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ouch

[pamosmusic]

ouch

Slow and steady, my guy.

Helps to prioritize stuff too.

[AllanAllen]

Dominant and melodic minor (or m6-dim). Have them down in intervals and arpeggios in every position and key


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What does dominant mean? Are you talking mixolydian

C D E F G A Bb

or an 8 tone

C D E F G Ab Bb B

[Bobby Timmons]

Dominant is just the BH term for 7 note mixolydian - C D E F G A Bb.

[Christian Miller]

ouch

I would start with the dominant scale. Do 5-10 minutes a day nice and slow. Build up your knowledge slowly.

The Roni Ben Hur Talking Jazz book represents a thorough syllabus of scales and arpeggios for Barry Harris stuff.

I also found this VERY hard until I started working on one octave scales. I did a video on this yonks ago, time for a remake maybe,
can’t seem to find it right now

[Christian Miller]

What does dominant mean? Are you talking mixolydian

C D E F G A Bb

or an 8 tone

C D E F G Ab Bb B

Dominant is mixolydian

I always use dominant scale as a term because 1) I prefer it but also 2) Barry’s materials always call it by this name. We also refer to it as the G7 scale (for G mixolydian).

It simplifies the language. The name of the scale matches the chord.

The second scale is the dom7-dim. It’s not one that Barry used much according to him .


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[GuyBoden]

I would start with the dominant scale. Do 5-10 minutes a day nice and slow. Build up your knowledge slowly.

The Roni Ben Hur Talking Jazz book represents a thorough syllabus of scales and arpeggios for Barry Harris stuff.

I also found this VERY hard until I started working on one octave scales. I did a video on this yonks ago, time for a remake maybe,
can’t seem to find it right now

The Roni Ben-Hur Talking Jazz book starts with the Major Scale with added half steps, not the Dominant scale.

So, do you feel that starting with the Dominant scale with added half steps would be more beneficial?

Many thanks.

[pcjazz]

The Roni Ben-Hur Talking Jazz book starts with the Major Scale with added half steps, not the Dominant scale.

So, do you feel that starting with the Dominant scale with added half steps would be more beneficial?

Many thanks.

As Barry often said, it’s called the dominant because it dominates!

[GuyBoden]

As Barry often said, it’s called the dominant because it dominates!

The BH Dominant scale half step rules can also be looked at as simple approach notes.

I did this in previous exercises. (see below)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'C7' Dominant Scale with added half step rules. (Converted to approach notes.)

(Dominant Scale notes in bold on the downbeat. Descending lines.)

Rule 1: Start by approaching the 1st
(D>C)(B>Bb)(A>G)(F>E)(D>C)

Rule 2: Start by approaching the 1st
(Db>C)(B>Bb)(A>G)(F>E)(Eb>D)(Db>C)

Rule 3: Start by approaching the 2nd
(E>D)(C>Bb)(A>G)(F>E)(D>C)

Rule 4: Start by approaching the 2nd
(E>D)(Db>C)(B>Bb)(A>G)(F>E)(D>C)


(Edit: On Dominant scales, the half step rules seem similar to the Major rules, except the half step b6 is exchanged for a b7.)

[AllanAllen]

The Roni Ben-Hur Talking Jazz book starts with the Major Scale with added half steps, not the Dominant scale.

So, do you feel that starting with the Dominant scale with added half steps would be more beneficial?

Many thanks.

But C major is G dominant.