David Baker Bebop Scales — Barry Harris half-steps

[pamosmusic]

There are of course twelve thousand threads on these topics, but …

I have been working on this stuff for quite a while for myself, and have some students who are working on it as well. So this is going to be a classic Peter Compiles a Bunch of Teaching Materials thread.

I guess I’ll start by saying that I was introduced to the bebop scales in college and hated them, but I don’t think my teachers ever really committed to the whole thing. Anyway … I’ve been using these for the past two years or so to start developing a kind of reflexive bebop vocabulary. So the operative thing is not really memorizing or learning the rules, but to take a single rule at a time and just live with it for a week or two or however long it takes for that rule to start jumping out without my thinking. Then adding a layer of complexity, rinse repeat.

With respect to the difference between the two, the main thing is that Baker stresses that chord tones fall on downbeats, insofar as that’s possible, while Barry doesn’t seem to care so long as the line lands on a chord tone. Mostly that’s a theoretical difference but there are some spots where it actually matters.

In terms of actually using the materials, I really prefer Barry’s presentation because it’s looser and easier to digest and more practically flexible. But David Baker has a kind of endless supply of ways to embellish or extend the lines, and I’ve been finding that super useful. So one thing I’ve been working on is trying to bring the two together in a way that makes sense.

Hoping to post some of that stuff here. Also would love to hear people’s thoughts and experiences with the two systems. Even though they have undoubtedly been expressed on 239 other threads at other times.

[pamosmusic]

In the 22 minutes since I posted this, Talk Jazz arrived in the mail. So yeah. It's getting real.

[joe2758]

I don't like how they require work and shit like that

[pamosmusic]

I don't like how they require work and shit like that

well buckle up, my guy

[Tal_175]

The rule is: a line that ends on a chord tone can have as many chromatic notes as you like and they can be placed in any way you like. But it's hard to practice this rule without some structure.

[GuyBoden]

In the 22 minutes since I posted this, Talk Jazz arrived in the mail. So yeah. It's getting real.

Excellent.

I'm waiting for Talk Jazz in the post from the USA.

Whilst waiting, I've been working on the Major Bebop scale. Using the whole neck in a few keys. (It's only an extra note than Major, but I'm working with getting the chord tones landing on the down beats.)

Good stuff

[pamosmusic]

The rule is: a line that ends on a chord tone can have as many chromatic notes as you like and they can be placed in any way you like. But it's hard to practice this rule without some structure.

I mean, yeah.

I tried telling my students that my class rule is “don’t do things I don’t like,” but they didn’t find that terribly useful.

[pamosmusic]

Excellent.

I'm waiting for Talk Jazz in the post from the USA.

Whilst waiting, I've been working on the Major Bebop scale. Using the whole neck in a few keys. (It's only an extra note than Major, but I'm working with getting the chord tones landing on the down beats.)

Good stuff

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.

That means that when you start on the 7 (in C major, a B) then you get the following:

B A Ab G F E D C B

The downbeats are in bold and are all the non-chord tones.

Whereas Baker considers the chord tones to be 1 3 5 and 6.

B A G F E D C B A

So in his case, B is a non-chord tone so he leaves out the half step and gets mostly chord tones on downbeats.

In practice, Roni and Barry Harris usually seem to skip the half-step when they start on the 7th and add it in the second octave.

Anyhoo

Anyhoo.

[joe2758]

That's interesting in light of the 6th diminished scale, know what I mean?

[Tal_175]

I mean, yeah.

I tried telling my students that my class rule is “don’t do things I don’t like,” but they didn’t find that terribly useful.

To be fair, end on a chord tone is a bit more achievable than do what I like.

[pamosmusic]

To be fair, end on a chord tone is a bit more achievable than do what I like.

Is it?

I ended up breaking mine up into a few more manageable rules, and it seems he did the same. Po tay to, po tah to.

[AllanAllen]

I don't like how they require work and shit like that

Just show me one trick to unlock the fret board.

[joe2758]

lol "This BEBOP HACK changed my life!"

[pamosmusic]

Okay, so one thing that I've found super useful is looking at Barry's and Dave Baker's stuff and sorting them out by how long they extend the archetypal one-measure lines.

devices that add one beat:

1. starting on an enclosure (above, below, target)
2. starting with a third (or other interval)
3. starting with a triad
4. starting with a one-note reversal (so if you're starting on C, you go up to D, and then come back down)
5. adding an internal enclosure

devices that add two beats:

1. start by surrounding (target, above, target, below, back to target)
2. start with a chord (7th chord arpeggio)
3. start with an "arpeggio" (triad with the octave)
4. start with a two-note reversal
5. start with a triad, with a leading tone.
6. surround a note inside the line.

devices that add three beats:

1. start with chord, enclosing the first note
2. start with arpeggio, enclosing the first note
3. start with three-note reversal
4. start with a triad, surrounding the first note.

devices that add four beats:

1. start with a chord, surrounding the first note
2. start with an arpeggio, surrounding the first note
3. start with a four-note reversal

Of course, the added half steps (btw 3 and 2, 2 and 1) end up adding a beat, but at the moment I kind of keep that separate.

[Mick-7]

This is sounding a lot like advanced mathematics.

[pamosmusic]

This is sounding a lot like advanced mathematics.

well yeah

You jumped in on the “Let Me Try to Summarize That 90-pg Book In One Post” portion of the conversation

[pamosmusic]

In an effort to earn some patience for that super long summary, one of the really interesting questions I get when I give these scales to students is “why is it good to land on a chord tone?”

At first it makes tons of sense, but if you’re playing over a dominant chord, shouldn’t you want to land on a chord tone of the major or minor chord it resolves to?

And there are two answers for this.

1. Most people who use this kind of device chunk the ii-V at least for purposes of putting these lines together. So often you’ll get two measures of “V.”

2. the more interesting answer is that one of the big differences between beginner jazz dork lines, and lines that you find in killer bop solos is that beginner lines resolve where the bar line says to resolve, and bop lines resolve when the line is over.

So the dominant will carry over and then resolve a few beats into the major chord, or maybe not at all.

So when you start actually turning these into lines, I’ve found it’s really useful to have practiced them with their rhythmic end points in mind, as much as with their melodic end points.

[Bobby Timmons]

You should join Open Studio for $47/month if you pay for a year up front. Then you get 6 Chris Parks BH classes a week. You can BH single note to your heart's content.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

^ I'd go to Shan Verma's Jazz Skills.

Jazz Skills

[Bobby Timmons]

He's good too.

[pamosmusic]

So for what it's worth, I have checked out loads of Shan's stuff. I have not done Open Studio, but I have watched the entire TILFBH catalog.

The reason I do stuff like this and really deliberately game out different ways of thinking and approaching this stuff is certainly for myself, but is generally more because I'm thinking about ways to teach it. Of course it does help to watch other teachers teach it, but I've done a bit of that in this particular instance, and I'm in a place where I'm thinking more about how to take information I've gleaned from all these other sources and make it into something coherent.

I'll also say that while there are certainly differences, Shan and Chris are very very very Barry. For people who really adhere to the Dave Baker thing, there are fewer but Jerry Bergonzi communicates that stuff quite well and Cecil Alexander is a big proponent of it, though he's more of an "etudes" guy than a "rules and concepts" guy, it seems.

[Bobby Timmons]

If you want to teach it, I would highly suggest just learning and internalizing all of it. I think it's by far the best single note system in jazz pedagogy and it would only benefit you. You could memorize it all in about a month. Then it would just be a work in progress after that with how much you have command of and picking up extra bits as you go.

I used to not really care to study it that heavily. Now that I've gotten a preview of it, I'm for sure going to learn all of it.

[pamosmusic]

If you want to teach it, I would highly suggest just learning and internalizing all of it.

Been working on this for some time, my dude.

Part of what I think is interesting is that Barry’s rules are easy to memorize as such. There are like … a half dozen or something. They get more complex way later, but at least at the start. Baker has the same few rules more or less but then goes on for another fifteen pages, and those “rules” seem less like anything a person would (or could) memorize and more like contingencies. If … then … stuff to sit with and internalize.

So what I’m trying to do lately is take both of those things and a bunch of other junk I’ve fallen into doing just on my own and make it into something coherent.

[Bobby Timmons]

So what I’m trying to do lately is take both of those things and a bunch of other junk I’ve fallen into doing just on my own and make it into something coherent.

Learn everything. :P It's not that hard. The topics are fractal but there are only a few of them. You can get an overview of the main topics and a working knowledge of them and then learn them to a deeper level as you go.

Added half steps
(Dominant) scale in 3rds
Scale in diatonic triads
Scale in diatonic chords - 7th chords
Pivots
Half step below all those devices
Barry's chromatic scale
Family of dominants
3 important arpeggios
BH 5432 licks
Scale outlining

[pamosmusic]

Learn everything. :P It's not that hard. The topics are fractal but there are only a few of them. You can get an overview of the main topics and a working knowledge of them and then learn them to a deeper level as you go.

Added half steps
(Dominant) scale in 3rds
Scale in diatonic triads
Scale in diatonic chords - 7th chords
Pivots
Half step below all those devices
Barry's chromatic scale
Family of dominants
3 important arpeggios
BH 5432 licks
Scale outlining

Bobby, it feels like you’re not reading anything I’m posting and then just telling me it’s easy.

I’ll also point out that sometimes people have a different standard for what constitutes something being “learned” or “internalized.”