David Baker Bebop Scales — Barry Harris half-steps

[pamosmusic]

Just went through this entire thread.. what utter madness.

Jazz is a language, and the best and fastest way to learn any language is by listening to it and then playing it.
All this science and mathematics will do nothing but jam up your brain.

Oh amazing, someone else who thinks they’re leveling a devastating criticism by comparing jazz to language. I’ll go ahead and copy my response to this for the third time, I guess.

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)

and your other stuff ……

Why do people over complicate complicate music so much by having an overly mental and intellectual approach when it's really an aural approach that's required.
The only reason all these insanely complex 'methods' and theories exists is to keep teachers in business when all you need is your own ears to teach you anything you need to know.

This is the sort of thing we say when we haven’t really thought about what practice is.

Why is my karate teacher teaching me all these complicated forms when I’m supposed to be learning how to fight?

Why does that pitcher worry about his pivot foot and wind up when all that’s required is to throw the stupid ball?

Why did Da Vinci do all that sketching and diagramming when all that is required is to paint what you feel?

This is just an unserious way to think about any skill.

They're also other downsides to following a method is that it produces magicians that all end up sounding similar or the same.. because they are shaped by a 'school of thought', it does not develop individual and unique musical personalities.

Well I’ve been doing this for twenty years now and I’m still a terrible magician. So I’ll give you that one.

Which how we ended up with the Wes Montgomery, a Grant Green, and George Benson in the first place.

Oh, and while on the subject where are all the jazz guitar theory books written by these three greatest bebop guitarists to ever exist? They don't exist. I wonder why.
If you can't hear this stuff and decipher it with your ears, you definitely ain't getting it from a book.

You should probably Google Peter Farrell. Actually I’ll do it for you.

https://peterfarrellultimatejazzguitar.com/

Also you conveniently left of Jimmy Raney who just had all his practice materials and teaching materials compiled into a method book.

Jim Hall was of course a life long teacher and he also produced this weird little book of kind of practice philosophy and composition stuff.

Roni Ben Hur has been cited here many times and he compiled Barry’s stuff into a method book of his own.

Barry himself is of course a monster player. Etc etc

[Maxxx]

Oh amazing, someone else who thinks they’re leveling a devastating criticism by comparing jazz to language. I’ll go ahead and copy my response to this for the third time, I guess.

and your other stuff ……

This is the sort of thing we say when we haven’t really thought about what practice is.
Why is my karate teacher teaching me all these complicated forms when I’m supposed to be learning how to fight?
Why does that pitcher worry about his pivot foot and wind up when all that’s required is to throw the stupid ball?
Why did Da Vinci do all that sketching and diagramming when all that is required is to paint what you feel?
This is just an unserious way to think about any skill.

Well I’ve been doing this for twenty years now and I’m still a terrible magician. So I’ll give you that one.

You should probably Google Peter Farrell. Actually I’ll do it for you.

https://peterfarrellultimatejazzguitar.com/

Also you conveniently left of Jimmy Raney who just had all his practice materials and teaching materials compiled into a method book.

Jim Hall was of course a life long teacher and he also produced this weird little book of kind of practice philosophy and composition stuff.

Roni Ben Hur has been cited here many times and he compiled Barry’s stuff into a method book of his own.

Barry himself is of course a monster player. Etc etc

I would never compare Barry Harris to Wes for a start. Unless you like elevator music.
Barry Harris plays a style of music that just sends me to sleep and prepares me for the old peoples home.

SLEEP-BOP

But if that's your thing go for it.
Personally I prefer a lot more hot pepper and fire in my soup.

Go watch his class videos.. they are full of people of a certain 'persuasion' that I won't mention that don't have ears as he has to incessantly scold them, tell them off and constantly, repeat himself endless to
them for not listening or hearing. All people that rely on his endless tuition and theories and demonstrations because they can't HEAR. BOOK LEARNERS.

By the way Barry Harris didn't invent anything, people were utilising that all that stuff long before Barry Harris formulated into 'his' method. it's not his.

You said:
Quote:
This is the sort of thing we say when we haven’t really thought about what practice is.
Why is my karate teacher teaching me all these complicated forms when I’m supposed to be learning how to fight?
Why does that pitcher worry about his pivot foot and wind up when all that’s required is to throw the stupid ball?
Why did Da Vinci do all that sketching and diagramming when all that is required is to paint what you feel?
This is just an unserious way to think about any skill.


I didn't say study was not required. I didn't say a single word that practice wasn't required, I didn't say a single word that repetition wasn't required, I didn't say a single word about not fine-tuning technique.
Seems you maybe talking to someone else there.

And please don't even get me started on that embarrassing jester that is Peter Farrell.
I can't imagine what possessed George Benson in allowing someone like that to be the inheritor of his legacy and now trying to charge $1,000 for a pdf and a video of some licks that
anyone can workout for free if they have EARS and some effort which is always a far deeper level of learning and a hell of a lot more fun in the process..

But I guess it may suit many out there that ignore those two small slabs of meat pinned to both sides of their skulls and see this jazz more as a series of theoretical black dots on a piece of paper instead of a spectrum of wildly dancing colours swelling around their heads.

You know what they say.. 'those that can, do.. those that can't teach'.

[pamosmusic]

lol. Always humbling to be in the presence of genius.

[joe2758]

[jazzshrink]

I would never compare Barry Harris to Wes for a start. Unless you like elevator music.
Barry Harris plays a style of music that just sends me to sleep and prepares me for the old peoples home.

If that's your dismissive and disrespectful attitude toward Harris, why would I value anything you have to say about the topic?

[pamosmusic]

I do find that I have a hard time talking to musicians about practicing sometimes. Even musicians who think pretty deeply about music generally tend not to think much about practice or sequencing what they do. Which is fine by the way, so long as you don’t plan to teach anyone.

My best friend from childhood went to college on a golf scholarship and we talk about practicing allllllll the time because we think about it the same way.

I have a student who is a martial arts teacher (some obscure sword based thing that sounds terrifying) and I never have to explain why he should do some weird thing I want him to do. He’s just like “no need I get it.”

Musicians often complain about how analytical people needlessly over complicate their art, but I tend to think musicians who fancy themselves artistes needlessly mystify what they’re doing.

[AllanAllen]

I would never compare Barry Harris to Wes for a start. Unless you like elevator music.
Barry Harris plays a style of music that just sends me to sleep and prepares me for the old peoples home.

SLEEP-BOP

But if that's your thing go for it.
Personally I prefer a lot more hot pepper and fire in my soup.

Go watch his class videos.. they are full of people of a certain 'persuasion' that I won't mention that don't have ears as he has to incessantly scold them, tell them off and constantly, repeat himself endless to
them for not listening or hearing. All people that rely on his endless tuition and theories and demonstrations because they can't HEAR. BOOK LEARNERS.

By the way Barry Harris didn't invent anything, people were utilising that all that stuff long before Barry Harris formulated into 'his' method. it's not his.

You said:
Quote:
This is the sort of thing we say when we haven’t really thought about what practice is.
Why is my karate teacher teaching me all these complicated forms when I’m supposed to be learning how to fight?
Why does that pitcher worry about his pivot foot and wind up when all that’s required is to throw the stupid ball?
Why did Da Vinci do all that sketching and diagramming when all that is required is to paint what you feel?
This is just an unserious way to think about any skill.


I didn't say study was not required. I didn't say a single word that practice wasn't required, I didn't say a single word that repetition wasn't required, I didn't say a single word about not fine-tuning technique.
Seems you maybe talking to someone else there.

And please don't even get me started on that embarrassing jester that is Peter Farrell.
I can't imagine what possessed George Benson in allowing someone like that to be the inheritor of his legacy and now trying to charge $1,000 for a pdf and a video of some licks that
anyone can workout for free if they have EARS and some effort which is always a far deeper level of learning and a hell of a lot more fun in the process..

But I guess it may suit many out there that ignore those two small slabs of meat pinned to both sides of their skulls and see this jazz more as a series of theoretical black dots on a piece of paper instead of a spectrum of wildly dancing colours swelling around their heads.

So, where's the clip of you dominating a tune?

[joe2758]

yawwwnn

[pamosmusic]

Another thing that bothers me about the F*** Books crowd is that they’re coming to it almost universally with an unrealistic expectation of what a book or strategy or method can do.

If you buy a book so you can learn to play jazz, you will be disappointed. If you buy one to maybe learn one or two interesting things about the music or get some insight into a player you like or hand you an interesting practice idea, you probably will be very pleased.

I spent $35 on Hal Galpers Forward Motion book and read the whole thing and the only thing I got out of it was to practice with the metronome on 1 and 3 or just 1 rather than on 2 and 4 to start training yourself to feel bigger chunks of time. That might seem silly, or a waste of money, but if I’d spent $100 on a lesson with Hal and spent the hour working on that concept, I think I would’ve found it super productive and I think everyone would’ve thought it was cool that I’d spent an hour with Hal Galper. But getting it from a book makes me a sucker and a dummy.

I also have the book and recently started reading back through it. Maybe I’ll get another $100 lesson out of the second read.

So many books are this way. The Johannes Haage book gave me one or two interesting ideas. Bert Ligon’s thing gave me some really interesting ways to think about scales that I hadn’t thought about. David Bakers stuff is interesting and I get something little every time I go through these bebop books.

And they’re all sitting on the shelf for when the mood strikes again.

I honestly just think people who think books are stupid or whatever just aren’t geared to learn that way. And that’s totally fine, but it doesn’t make people idiots for finding them a productive use of time or resources.

Of course none of this is in place of transcribing. I transcribe literally every day. I transcribe more quickly than I can learn the language.

And there are books that are exceptions. Barry’s stuff would be an obvious example of something that I think would lead to proficiency for someone prepared to handle the material. Randy Vincent’s introduction book is another good one, in part because it’s excellent, and in part because he makes a specific and limited claim for a specific type of student.

[pamosmusic]

yawwwnn

Get this smooth jazz elevator music off my thread. Please and thank you.

[Christian Miller]

I dunno I happen to think Barry Harris was jolly good at the old jazz piano. So, I suppose that’s a difference of opinion.

Except I am of course, correct.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AllanAllen]

I know Barry Harris can kick it, that's not the issue, it's someone coming on all hot headed and puffed up.

Though he's not totally wrong, you do need to get an ear and be able to learn things away from the page, but this stuff Peter is talking about isn't even that complex if you have the most basic scales sorted. I mean, I can understand the conversation and I didn't know shit.

[bediles]

I do find that I have a hard time talking to musicians about practicing sometimes. Even musicians who think pretty deeply about music generally tend not to think much about practice or sequencing what they do. Which is fine by the way, so long as you don’t plan to teach anyone.

My best friend from childhood went to college on a golf scholarship and we talk about practicing allllllll the time because we think about it the same way.

I have a student who is a martial arts teacher (some obscure sword based thing that sounds terrifying) and I never have to explain why he should do some weird thing I want him to do. He’s just like “no need I get it.”

Musicians often complain about how analytical people needlessly over complicate their art, but I tend to think musicians who fancy themselves artistes needlessly mystify what they’re doing.

Pat Martino being the #1 culprit.

[joe2758]

Best thing I got from Pat Martino educational material is my avatar picture

[bediles]

I would never compare Barry Harris to Wes for a start. Unless you like elevator music.
Barry Harris plays a style of music that just sends me to sleep and prepares me for the old peoples home.

SLEEP-BOP

But if that's your thing go for it.
Personally I prefer a lot more hot pepper and fire in my soup.

Go watch his class videos.. they are full of people of a certain 'persuasion' that I won't mention that don't have ears as he has to incessantly scold them, tell them off and constantly, repeat himself endless to
them for not listening or hearing. All people that rely on his endless tuition and theories and demonstrations because they can't HEAR. BOOK LEARNERS.

By the way Barry Harris didn't invent anything, people were utilising that all that stuff long before Barry Harris formulated into 'his' method. it's not his.

You said:
Quote:
This is the sort of thing we say when we haven’t really thought about what practice is.
Why is my karate teacher teaching me all these complicated forms when I’m supposed to be learning how to fight?
Why does that pitcher worry about his pivot foot and wind up when all that’s required is to throw the stupid ball?
Why did Da Vinci do all that sketching and diagramming when all that is required is to paint what you feel?
This is just an unserious way to think about any skill.


I didn't say study was not required. I didn't say a single word that practice wasn't required, I didn't say a single word that repetition wasn't required, I didn't say a single word about not fine-tuning technique.
Seems you maybe talking to someone else there.

And please don't even get me started on that embarrassing jester that is Peter Farrell.
I can't imagine what possessed George Benson in allowing someone like that to be the inheritor of his legacy and now trying to charge $1,000 for a pdf and a video of some licks that
anyone can workout for free if they have EARS and some effort which is always a far deeper level of learning and a hell of a lot more fun in the process..

But I guess it may suit many out there that ignore those two small slabs of meat pinned to both sides of their skulls and see this jazz more as a series of theoretical black dots on a piece of paper instead of a spectrum of wildly dancing colours swelling around their heads.

You know what they say.. 'those that can, do.. those that can't teach'.

There were some heavies that studied with Barry but maybe you're responding to the adult amateur thinking his methods are the way the truth and the light. I've had more than one stranger approach me on a gig or at a wedding (not on a gig) and start professing the method as the only way or whatever, found it a bit funny. But this is pretty normal in most 'workshop' circles, my partner has first hand exp with the same thing in Tango.

I think Barry's stuff is great though, and I like his playing. He's no OP or Hampton Hawes or Herbie but you don't have to be the best to be a great teacher.

I don't hate the band, just their fans?

[pauln]

...I’m still a terrible magician.

Music is a potentially wonderful illusion,
Still forever, we're all terrible magicians.

[djg]

He's no OP or Hampton Hawes or Herbie but you don't have to be the best to be a great teacher.

ouch. OP, huh?

[pamosmusic]

ouch. OP, huh?

If this becomes a dunkfest on OP, then I'm going to shut this whole thread down. I won't have it.

[djg]

Since you bring it up, this is the most obvious difference in the Baker and Harris methodologies. There are places on the margins where you ended up with slightly different applications of the dominant scale, but the major scale is the big one. Barry (and, by extension, Roni Ben Hur) consider the major chord tones to be 1 3 5 and 7.

i thought BH considers 1 3 5 6 the major chord tones and the maj7 a note borrowed from diminished? i dont recall what baker has to say. but in general baker was more concerned with the single line, reverse-engineering bird and fats, while BH as a pianist was also interested in hidden movements via the maj and minor 6/dim scales.

i#ve never been a fan of the term harmonic major. major is already harmonic by definition. just because you add a guidetone borrowed from dim does not warrant this terminology imo.

[pamosmusic]

i thought BH considers 1 3 5 6 the major chord tones and the maj7 a note borrowed from diminished? i dont recall what baker has to say. but in general baker was more concerned with the single line, reverse-engineering bird and fats, while BH as a pianist was also interested in hidden movements via the maj and minor 6/dim scales.

i#ve never been a fan of the term harmonic major. major is already harmonic by definition. just because you add a guidetone borrowed from dim does not warrant this terminology imo.

Good question. I don’t have an answer.

It briefly appears in the Howard Rees stuff and he describes the 7th as the chord tone, and the Roni Ben Hur book also describes 7th as the chord tone. Baker describes 6 as the chord tone.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me because as you describe, the 6th diminished scale obviously considers the 6 the chord tone and the 7th the borrowed diminished note.

I haven’t really bothered with it just because Bakers makes more sense to me so on the rare occasions I’ve worked with the major version, I’ve used his formulation, but I would appreciate clarification on this from the real ones … Christian, dasein, PMB, with some first hand experience with the man himself.

[buduranus2]

i#ve never been a fan of the term harmonic major. major is already harmonic by definition. just because you add a guidetone borrowed from dim does not warrant this terminology imo.

Gee, harmonic major is my go-to scale for Caravan. Am I missing something or are we talking about two different things?

[pcjazz]

Good question. I don’t have an answer.

It briefly appears in the Howard Rees stuff and he describes the 7th as the chord tone, and the Roni Ben Hur book also describes 7th as the chord tone. Baker describes 6 as the chord tone.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me because as you describe, the 6th diminished scale obviously considers the 6 the chord tone and the 7th the borrowed diminished note.

I haven’t really bothered with it just because Bakers makes more sense to me so on the rare occasions I’ve worked with the major version, I’ve used his formulation, but I would appreciate clarification on this from the real ones … Christian, dasein, PMB, with some first hand experience with the man himself.

You have to bear in mind Barry’s distinction between single-line soloing and harmony. The 7-note scales, extra note rules and ABCs are on the soloing side and the 8-note scales of chords are on the harmony side. Barry came up with the single-line stuff long before he formulated his take on harmony. There is some overlap—e.g. using the minor sixth diminished scale to solo over a tonic minor—but by and large they were separated in his mind and in his teaching. So he had “improvisation” classes for all instruments where the extra note rules, pivoting, etc were taught using the ordinary major and dominant scales, and “harmony” classes for piano and guitar where the emphasis was on chordal movement on the major and minor sixth diminished scales (and to a much lesser extent the dominant diminished and dominant flat five diminished, whole tone, double diminished and chromatic scales). It’s also worth remembering that for Barry’s harmony the major seventh chord is not so much the major sixth with a borrowed diminished note, but rather the major sixth chord on the fifth degree of the scale. So for Cmaj7 play G6/C (and let the bass player take care of the root C).

[pamosmusic]

You have to bear in mind Barry’s distinction between single-line soloing and harmony. The 7-note scales, extra note rules and ABCs are on the soloing side and the 8-note scales of chords are on the harmony side. Barry came up with the single-line stuff long before he formulated his take on harmony. There is some overlap—e.g. using the minor sixth diminished scale to solo over a tonic minor—but by and large they were separated in his mind and in his teaching. So he had “improvisation” classes for all instruments where the extra note rules, pivoting, etc were taught using the ordinary major and dominant scales, and “harmony” classes for piano and guitar where the emphasis was on chordal movement on the major and minor sixth diminished scales (and to a much lesser extent the dominant diminished and dominant flat five diminished, whole tone, double diminished and chromatic scales). It’s also worth remembering that for Barry’s harmony the major seventh chord is not so much the major sixth with a borrowed diminished note, but rather the major sixth chord on the fifth degree of the scale. So for Cmaj7 play G6/C (and let the bass player take care of the root C).

Right but if you look at the rules for the major scale, at least how they’re written in Rees and Roni, then it’s the seventh he treats as the chord tone. So when you start on the seventh, you add a passing note to land on the seventh, rather than skipping the passing note to land on the sixth.

And like you said in the scales of chords, the seventh is a borrowed note (or the sixth on the fifth) and it’s the six that’s from the chord.

Just kind of odd.

[pcjazz]

On the “improv” side of things the 7th is a chord tone. On the “harmony” side it is a diminished note.

[charlieparker]

If this becomes a dunkfest on OP, then I'm going to shut this whole thread down. I won't have it.

People are dunking on Oscar Peterson?