Barry Harris Method and The Paradox of Learning Improvisation

[StringAddict]

Long time reader of the forum, finally I am so overwhelmed I've needed to write out my questions as I feel I cannot answer them by simply scouring the internet!

I have been trying to learn how to improvise, mainly in the Bebop language, for the past two years. Before that, my guitar playing was learning arranged fingerstyle pieces, so Improvisation has been a major struggle.

The advantage I have is that I was many hours to practice. I wake up early and throughout the day I am able to get in 6-8 hours of guitar practice, as a norm.

The downside is I feel like I am constantly in a spiral of "what do I practice". My question for everyone is two fold:

1. How do I exactly practice "For the Tune"? I hear that a lot and agree with the logic, but despite having a good number of technical and theoretical concepts under my belt, I cannot seem to make this work in a way that is satisfying. To give an example, on just the single line aspect of my playing, I am working on a few key elements:

- The Barry Harris approach (Taking major scale for example, and practicing it in 3rds, triads, arpeggios, pivot arpeggios, triplet arpeggios etc, and repeating all with a leading note, most of this I can do very well now in my practice sessions)
-Practicing the arpeggios to the tune in positions

- Transcribing phrases from famous players, analyzing them, and playing them in many different keys and positions
-Trying to write my own lines over chord progressions found in the tune

The problem is, when I try to "apply this stuff to tunes" I often run into these problems: The chords are mostly non diatonic, which makes i hard to apply the barry harris exercises which are practiced in scale positions; getting "locked in" to the chord tones as a fall back to the point where the solo sounds very mechanical and boring; having maybe only two chasnges in the tune where I can insert some transcribed line, so the solo is a lot of nothing then BAM: one decent, rehearsed line, then a bunch of ambiguous nothing.

How exactly do those who practice only "musical practice, as opposed to exercises" or "only practice whats in the tune" do it? How did you do it when you were learning, two years or so in? It feels like a never ending cycle of trying to only compose for the tunes, realizing where my weakspots are, going back to exercises to improve, and then the exercises take so long to get down that I have nothing to really play other than running exercises. To make this more difficult, I am in an ensemble and haver to learn 4-5 tunes at once, so I really just feel like I am now terrible at playing 5 tunes, as opposed to good at playing just one or two.


2`. For those who have studied the Barry Harris approach, how exactly do you use the small elements he has you work on to improvise? I can run most positions of major scale in pivot arpeggios with leading note and what not, with my eyes closed, but when I'm soloing in my group, it almost never comes out.

- Simply applying these concepts to the major scale is months and years of work, some of which I have under my belt. How do I apply his concepts to tunes, especially as many tunes have chord changes that dont fit the exercises (lots of non diatonic chords, tons of key changes, one chord over many measures/modal tunes)?




For context, I do have a teacher right now who is helping me with some concepts but he never studied Barry harris method. So I know a general answer is usually "get a teacher" but I wanted to get the input of the many people on this forum.

Any help is appreciated!

[Guitlifer]

Long time reader of the forum, finally I am so overwhelmed I've needed to write out my questions as I feel I cannot answer them by simply scouring the internet!

I have been trying to learn how to improvise, mainly in the Bebop language, for the past two years. Before that, my guitar playing was learning arranged fingerstyle pieces.

1. How do I exactly practice "For the Tune"? I hear that a lot and agree with the logic, but despite having a good number of technical and theoretical concepts under my belt, I cannot seem to make this work in a way that is satisfying.

How exactly do those who practice only "musical practice, as opposed to exercises" or "only practice whats in the tune" do it? How did you do it when you were learning, two years or so in? Any help is appreciated!

There are a lot of knowledgeable folks here who will hopefully chime in but I'll offer some thoughts as a long time student of jazz guitar who has/is struggling like you.

I do not know the Barry Harris method. But, like you have studied arpeggios, scales, techniques, some language and now spend all my practice working on tunes, as I have an ongoing solo gig. I play improvisational fingerstyle versions of standards and pop tunes, trying to emulate great players like Tim Lerch, Jake Reichbart, Ted Greene, Martin Taylor, Diego Figuerido etc etc.

Here's what I've discovered so far....

Early improvisation was based a lot on working off the melody. So, having the melody of the tune completely entrenched and playable all over the fretboard is a good start. Then listening to many versions of a tune can give you ideas of where and when you can add improvisational flourishes.
The more you play a melody, the more it opens up to adding ideas.

I've found working with 'Session Band" loops has been invaluable. They sound good and you can set up any tune and play for hours against them. I have all 3 jazz apps but find Jazz 1 and Jazz 2 the most useful. I believe they work on both Apple and Android. They also have many standards as 'stock' tunes. You can play through several choruses with just the melody, then maybe, play through with arpegios, then try to combine the two and so on and so on. It's endless.

Harmony is the same. How well do you know the chords to a tune? Can you pick out all the embedded sequences? Do you jump all over to find them or play smoothly in one or two positions? Again, the more you play them the more possibilities will open up.
As you play through a ii v I for example, do you listen for voice movement? Can you play convincingly over a minor ii v I where one scale does not cover the whole sequence? Having various ways to play sequences gives you flexibility to change it up each time you play through a tune. Once you get on to it, you can spend a lifetime refining it.

Analyzing a tune and getting as deep as possible under the hood has helped me immensley. The first tune I tackled like that was Stella By Starlight. I worked on that song for hours a day for a couple of months. Now, a couple years later, I feel I can add improvisational ideas as I perform the tune. I bought it, never opened it but years after I bought the Mick Goodrick/Tim Miller book "Creative Chordal Harmonies", I told my teacher about it. He bought a copy he and I started working on it. The concepts are all executed over a "well known standard", which my teacher pointed out is Stella by Starlight! So it was a good catalyst to really learn the tune.

It took years to force techniques into songs. But continuing to do so, slowly reveals where an arpeggio may fit nicely, or a bit of Wes will work over a sequence.

Recently, learned a Barney Kessel lick he plays in "Wave". It's so cool and is just a little chordal thing he plugs in over a ii v I. When I first heard it, I thought it was awesome and had to figure it out. The concept was so simple but the sound was brilliant. I don't have it fluid yet but it's coming and like all bits of language will work in lots of places.

Learning to do this stuff is great fun and an ongoing challenge. The more you do it, the more the ideas come and you eventually find a lot of common things in various tunes.

Hopefully some of this makes sense and is a bit helpful. Good luck on your journey.

[pamosmusic]

There are a lot of threads about the Barry Harris stuff. This is one that I started with a bunch of stuff I’m working through for myself and for students and it is currently active.

David Baker Bebop Scales — Barry Harris half-steps

I’ve worked a lot with the stuff but don’t have first hand experience with Barry and am not really a Barry partisan, though I find it fascinating and super useful.

Some of the folks engaged on that thread do have some first hand experience with Barry, so that’s cool.

As far as practicing improvising goes, I think you have to do a couple things.

1. Actually improvise … manageable tempos and focused on the actual tools you want to work on. Something small like … I want to use triads better, so improvise using only triads. Make lines in real time over changes this way.

2. Build lines. Take some time and use those tools to construct something you find interesting over part of a tune. Go back over it many times changing and editing it. When you get bored, build a new line. Barry does loads of line building. Jimmy Raney refers to this process as “editing.”

3. Do both of those things over sections of tunes. Trying going one step larger than the cadence. So like … on How High the Moon, don’t do Gm C7 F … do G — Gm C7 F

two fives are hugely important but they’re not that hard to play over. The tricky part is usually the two five, plus whatever home base it’s jumping off of.

As for the Barry stuff, you might need to spend some time with that material to work it over more complex changes. He’s obsessed with the diminished chord, for example, and a lot of the times some fluency with that chord will unlock the logic in what seems like non-diatonic chords, or whatever. But that’s a process.

[Christian Miller]

I think helps to decide if you are working on acquiring jazz language or improvising. Two different things. To practice improvisation is to improvise. You may come up with a strategy to start you off, but I don’t see a separation between performance and practice here. It’s a flowing, artistic activity. You want to get into a ‘flow state’ when doing it. It gives you energy.

Practicing for instance, jazz language, otoh is a much more ‘left brain’, conscious activity and has nothing to do with the state of mind you are in when performing. You can’t do too much of it in one go - good practice is tiring.

It often takes a long time for new material to be internalised enough to come out in improvisation.

This is perfectly normal.

FWIW I didn’t start with Barry. Actually it was about ten years into my journey that I first encountered his teaching and another ten before it started to make sense.

I don’t know what that means, but I am quite thick.

OTOH I could at that point play jazz to some extent.

On the flip side as a teacher for a while I tried to go straight into Barry Harris. What I found is that for most students this doesn’t seem to work.

Most newcomers to jazz really struggle with the demands this approach makes in terms of fretboard knowledge. It’s intimidating and represents years of study. This is in large part because piano is a naturally scale instrument. So it comes more naturally (even for me who can’t really play piano lol.)

Guitar otoh is a shapes instrument.

I’m keen to get onto music right away and get them used to using their ears. So I start with what I call ‘grips’n’licks’ learning simple voicings, chord tones on the neck and yoinking licks from records with a clear reference to II Vs, and map these licks out around simple chord forms.

Once you have a II V line you can copy and paste into a tune. You assemble an etude sort of thing, very much like this

The more licks you have on a given tune, the more you have to string into a musical statement. This is a time honoured approach to playing bebop and more or less everyone in the 1940s and 50s learned to play bop this way, as far as I can tell. Every player had little devices they half inched from Charlie Parker

Now this is not improvisation at the early stages. I always say, you have to learn some stock phrases until you get fluent in a language. The more you learn the more you have to say, but also you start to spot patterns in the lines.

The other thing is most students lack a rhythmic vocabulary. If you have a good rhythmic vocab the problem of improvising is much simplified because simple scalar and chord tone figures will sound like jazz. This is something we usually acquire by ear.

Once you’ve acquired some ability to play, we can introduce various Barry harris things like added note scales and so on.

[Christian Miller]

In terms of playing tunes, this is something Barry did in his workshops. We applied everything over a standard, usually starting with scale outlines - 1-7 and 1-7-1. Then he’d tell us what to play, explaining how he came up with it, and we’d hang on for dear life. By the end of the two hour session we’d have a bebop solo over a chorus of the tune and understand how he’d come up with it.

But everything is always on a standard

In terms of the guitar, I had to relearn my scales to be able to hang because positions didn’t work. Too many notes. I use one octave positions for scales, and fit them around chord forms.

Hope that helps. The Howard Rees DVD sets have many examples from the man himself.

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[Bobby Timmons]

- The Barry Harris approach (Taking major scale for example, and practicing it in 3rds, triads, arpeggios, pivot arpeggios, triplet arpeggios etc, and repeating all with a leading note, most of this I can do very well now in my practice sessions).
- Practicing the arpeggios to the tune in positions.
- Transcribing phrases from famous players, analyzing them, and playing them in many different keys and positions.
- Trying to write my own lines over chord progressions found in the tune.

This is a very good understanding of the approach to soloing. What you're overlooking are probably just a few key things plus more work.

It takes a lot of work. You have to take 1 tune and shed the crap out of it until you can do it. It's not a problem of absorbing knowledge and then expecting viable improv to emerge out of nowhere.

The very 1st thing you should start with is outlining the arps in an exercise fashion to where you can just run them. Then try to make a solo out of only arps. When practicing licks, take 1 lick and practice it until you can execute it naturally in a solo.

After you can play with arps, bring in other devices. BH is a great solo approach. It's quite in depth for beginners to get all at once, but it is a good approach to work long term.

[bediles]

In terms of the guitar, I had to relearn my scales to be able to hang because positions didn’t work. Too many notes. I use one octave positions for scales, and fit them around chord forms.

A big thing when I was first starting was to see the CAGED shapes as alternating 3 string and 4 string one octave patterns.

Having a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 string one octave fingering/shape was also helpful. With the 5 and 6 string ones being more an awareness exercise (and to some extent the single string too) and the others being highly practical.

As you know, lots of music is played within the octave but this method also gives you automatic fingerings for a 3 octave scale for example (3 string + 3 string + 2 string also other options but depends on how much you want to shift) that's a little more intuitive then let's say the Segovia scales. Or a way to easily move a line around the neck or up/down the octave as the logic/nature of the guitar/alterations req for the B and E strings presents itself.

[pamosmusic]

I’m curious how you guys learned one octave patterns?

My guitar teacher brought me seven pages, each with all the modes on all the string sets. I played through the first page and then was like … these are all the same patterns over and over. And he was like … exactly.

Which is probably not what yall are talking about.

[Christian Miller]

I’m curious how you guys learned one octave patterns?

My guitar teacher brought me seven pages, each with all the modes on all the string sets. I played through the first page and then was like … these are all the same patterns over and over. And he was like … exactly.

Which is probably not what yall are talking about.

If I remember right I sat down and worked each scale shape within an octave grip. I think I just aimed to get good at the scale outline exercise for a few months.


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[bediles]

I’m curious how you guys learned one octave patterns?

My guitar teacher brought me seven pages, each with all the modes on all the string sets. I played through the first page and then was like … these are all the same patterns over and over. And he was like … exactly.

Which is probably not what yall are talking about.

I was given the 7 Berklee/Leavitt shapes (the non weird ones and the ones without pinkie stretches) and a 3NPS on sets of two strings going up the neck exercise initially.

I was hipped to the 3 string and 4 string octave patterns after that. And from there, I worked out the rest on my own and decided strech fingerings for single notes for the most part weren't for me.

[Tal_175]

- The Barry Harris approach (Taking major scale for example, and practicing it in 3rds, triads, arpeggios, pivot arpeggios, triplet arpeggios etc, and repeating all with a leading note, most of this I can do very well now in my practice sessions)
-Practicing the arpeggios to the tune in positions

- Transcribing phrases from famous players, analyzing them, and playing them in many different keys and positions
-Trying to write my own lines over chord progressions found in the tune

These are very good things to do. There are a few things that I would add along these lines. These have been extremely beneficial for me, so if you find them intriguing you might give them a try:

- Connect the lick with your existing language for the same harmonic situation. This is so crucial. Here I'd treat the chord as a static situation and play extended lines incorporating the new lick with other ideas I have for the chord. If you don't have a lot of existing language, use BH abc's before the line and after the line (ie arpeggios, scales fragments with half steps etc.). Make sure you can play several bars this way fluidly.

- Generalize the lick with phrasing devices. Apply half notes, approach notes, pivoting, rhythmic displacement etc. to the lick and create several variations of it. Again you can use BH devices here. The goal is to get more conversant with the ideas behind the lick.

- Harmonically generalize the lick. Suppose it's a major lick. Let's say in C major it uses an A minor idea. Well another minor that works over C major is E minor. Can I transpose it to E minor and make it work over C major? A minor is also related to D7. Can I make it work over D7 or Amin7-D7? In this case the original lick is not dorian but it's close enough that it might work as is or with minimal changes. Would it work over Ab7alt? This is the Pat Martino minorization concept.

[pamosmusic]

I was given the 7 Berklee/Leavitt shapes (the non weird ones and the ones without pinkie stretches) and a 3NPS on sets of two strings going up the neck exercise initially.

I was hipped to the 3 string and 4 string octave patterns after that. And from there, I worked out the rest on my own and decided strech fingerings for single notes for the most part weren't for me.

I guess my question is a pedagogical one … you’re either doing like major from the root and dominant from the root, which seems quite limiting because lines don’t always start and end on the root.

Or you’re doing more fingerings and shapes from different scale degrees, which doesn’t feel like a simplification at all.

[Tal_175]

I guess my question is a pedagogical one … you’re either doing like major from the root and dominant from the root, which seems quite limiting because lines don’t always start and end on the root.

Or you’re doing more fingerings and shapes from different scale degrees, which doesn’t feel like a simplification at all.

In my case octaves are per chord type so they are unordered. It's like repeating patterns of a blueprint. The blueprint is not sequential but hierarchical. Chord tones, 1, 3, 5, 7 and three extensions (9's, 11' and 13's). Chord tones light up first, if you will. The intervallic quality of the chord tones are instantly apparent (they are not just black dots) and root is no more special than 5 or 7. The scale notes (aka extensions or non-chord tones) come into existence depending on the harmonic context (b9 - 9 or 11-#11).

When these octaves or connected across the fretboard, they basically form the CAGED system. So I use this one blueprint per chord type idea both for chord voicings and lines. Chords and lines (harmony and melody) are the same things in this view. Note this blueprint also matches the aural reference in the moment (ie parallel, not derivative so to speak).

This is so ingrained in me at this point that I don't know how anyone can manage the fretboard with a different view for jazz (even though I know it happens).

[bediles]

I guess my question is a pedagogical one … you’re either doing like major from the root and dominant from the root, which seems quite limiting because lines don’t always start and end on the root.

Or you’re doing more fingerings and shapes from different scale degrees, which doesn’t feel like a simplification at all.

I wouldn't teach like I learned. I also don't teach anymore and havent taught too many advanced students (pre uni) so keep that in mind. Fundamentally, I wouldn't want to force a fretboard conception on someone, some of the best player I know do not think like that at all. BUT, if I did it would be 5 shapes without stretches and the various one octave fingerings (1 string, 2 string, 3 etc...). The 3 and 4 string fingerings are the same as the positional patterns so nothing extra there and the one and two string are split into maj/dom and min/half dim which changes the shifting a bit.

From there you could get into the stretch fingerings (Where R,2,3 are on the same string) or 4NPS but at that point maybe doing unmusical scale mapping/exercises won't be too critical bc the initial work plus plus playing the music gives an adaptability that then doesn't necessitate uncovering every stone.

Hope that answers your question.

[Christian Miller]

I guess my question is a pedagogical one … you’re either doing like major from the root and dominant from the root, which seems quite limiting because lines don’t always start and end on the root.

Or you’re doing more fingerings and shapes from different scale degrees, which doesn’t feel like a simplification at all.

Tbh I never really found it to be a problem. But I couldn’t do it with my full positions

I think once at mapped things around the chords it wasn’t to hard to extend the shape as needed


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[pamosmusic]

In my case octaves are per chord type so they are unordered. It's like repeating patterns of a blueprint. The blueprint is not sequential but hierarchical. Chord tones, 1, 3, 5, 7 and three extensions (9's, 11' and 13's). Chord tones light up first, if you will. The intervallic quality of the chord tones are instantly apparent (they are not just black dots) and root is no more special than 5 or 7. The scale notes (aka extensions or non-chord tones) come into existence depending on the harmonic context (b9 - 9 or 11-#11).

When these octaves or connected across the fretboard, they basically form the CAGED system. So I use this one blueprint per chord type idea both for chord voicings and lines. Chords and lines (harmony and melody) are the same things in this view. Note this blueprint also matches the aural reference in the moment (ie parallel, not derivative so to speak).

This is so ingrained in me at this point that I don't know how anyone can manage the fretboard with a different view for jazz (even though I know it happens).

Let me restate this to see if I get it.

So you have a fingering, say, for I and ii and iii etc, and organize the fingerings around chord tones for that particular chord?

If that’s the case, it doesn’t sound super different than how my guitar teacher presented other than that you’re avoiding the obnoxious Greek names I think it’s an awesome way to break people out of the strict positions, but it seems to people like maybe more work than the big positions. ***

I really like using these, and I don’t practice them in isolation much anymore but use single octaves when I improvise pretty much every day. So I think they’re very useful, but I’ve always had a little trouble justifying them to students when they actually seem like a bit more work than the CAGED patterns, for example. Randy Vincent’s tetrachord stuff seems like it might be instructive and I should probably get back into that.

Anyway — Lay it on me.

*** follow up question: have all of you mostly learned these and used these with students as follow ups to the big patterns? Or have you taught or used them literally in place of larger more positional patterns.

[Christian Miller]

Let me restate this to see if I get it.

So you have a fingering, say, for I and ii and iii etc, and organize the fingerings around chord tones for that particular chord?

If that’s the case, it doesn’t sound super different than how my guitar teacher presented other than that you’re avoiding the obnoxious Greek names I think it’s an awesome way to break people out of the strict positions, but it seems to people like maybe more work than the big positions. ***

I really like using these, and I don’t practice them in isolation much anymore but use single octaves when I improvise pretty much every day. So I think they’re very useful, but I’ve always had a little trouble justifying them to students when they actually seem like a bit more work than the CAGED patterns, for example. Randy Vincent’s tetrachord stuff seems like it might be instructive and I should probably get back into that.

Anyway — Lay it on me.

*** follow up question: have all of you mostly learned these and used these with students as follow ups to the big patterns? Or have you taught or used them literally in place of larger more positional patterns.

I haven’t thought about it that much. My personal experience has been that I did the scale outline exercise and it made me good at doing the scales on the chords and stufs

But then I already knew my positions

In terms of teaching, I think I would start by teaching the exercises for scales 1-7, then 3-9 later. Then added note scales. If you can bridge one octave into the next seamlessly and extend out from the single octave (by a single note, then two notes) it seems to me you could build up knowledge of the rest of the fretboard quite organically.

I wonder if it’s possible to overthink this?


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[pamosmusic]

For some added context, I was like sixteen or something and simultaneously obsessed with and confused by modes, so my guitar teacher presented me with this huge packet of fingerings labeled as modes to sort of break my brain and get me to realize it’s just major scale stuff.

After that he would have me use them more for improvising exercises and for finding fingerings for different ideas and stuff

[bediles]

I did a lot of voice leading diatonic triads too through cycles and random dice roll progressions. Helped to think globally about the neck/key/shapes at the time.

[Christian Miller]

For some added context, I was like sixteen or something and simultaneously obsessed with and confused by modes, so my guitar teacher presented me with this huge packet of fingerings labeled as modes to sort of break my brain and get me to realize it’s just major scale stuff.

After that he would have me use them more for improvising exercises and for finding fingerings for different ideas and stuff

I worked them out on a pad of paper in the back of a car during a long drive, I think to Scotland or maybe Wales. I didn’t really have a teacher.

I’m not sure why I didn’t. It would have been better. Good luck trying to teach me anything at 17 or 18 or whatever it was. Your teacher sounds well versed in headology.

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[Tal_175]

Let me restate this to see if I get it.

So you have a fingering, say, for I and ii and iii etc, and organize the fingerings around chord tones for that particular chord?

If that’s the case, it doesn’t sound super different than how my guitar teacher presented other than that you’re avoiding the obnoxious Greek names I think it’s an awesome way to break people out of the strict positions, but it seems to people like maybe more work than the big positions. ***

I really like using these, and I don’t practice them in isolation much anymore but use single octaves when I improvise pretty much every day. So I think they’re very useful, but I’ve always had a little trouble justifying them to students when they actually seem like a bit more work than the CAGED patterns, for example. Randy Vincent’s tetrachord stuff seems like it might be instructive and I should probably get back into that.

Anyway — Lay it on me.

*** follow up question: have all of you mostly learned these and used these with students as follow ups to the big patterns? Or have you taught or used them literally in place of larger more positional patterns.

My experience was similar to Christian's that I first learned the big patterns. Later I found them to be too cumbersome to use for outlining changes. I scratched it all and re-built the fretboard mapping from octaves.

My approach is idiotically simple. I discovered later on that it is very similar in a way to Joe Pass's approach (It wasn't originally based on Joe Pass's as I wasn't aware of it). There are three chords in his approach major, minor and dominant (I had minor7b5 also). I internalized these chord types as sort of distinct entities. I separate an octave into chord tones and non-chord tones.The idea is that the chord tones provide the core skeleton. Non-chord tones can vary depending on the harmonic situation. My goal initially was really to nail the chord tone references down and leave the non-chord tones as a secondary intervals that I can drive from the chord tones. A scale is a four note chord and the three extensions after all. This hierarchical view is the main insight. Fareed Haque also teaches this way I think. There are many ways of imposing a structure over the fretboard in order to make it more manageable, for sure.

[pamosmusic]

I did a lot of voice leading diatonic triads too through cycles and random dice roll progressions. Helped to think globally about the neck/key/shapes at the time.

That same guitar teacher of mine was a Goodrick Cycles partisan so definitely got triady.

Actually one thing when I teach is sort of a less intense version of Jordan Klemons’s thing. So after they do scales and they do the triads, we’ll add notes back in as neighbor notes to the triads. So you sort of rebuild the scale a few times around the triads. So those end up overlapping quite a lot with the one octave patterns

[Christian Miller]

That same guitar teacher of mine was a Goodrick Cycles partisan so definitely got triady.

Actually one thing when I teach is sort of a less intense version of Jordan Klemons’s thing. So after they do scales and they do the triads, we’ll add notes back in as neighbor notes to the triads. So you sort of rebuild the scale a few times around the triads. So those end up overlapping quite a lot with the one octave patterns

Seeing the overlaps between things is nice. Usually I start off as totally partisan about whatever I’m into that week, but over time I drift back to a centre. That said sometimes I do learn something that shifts me irrevocably. Barry’s stuff is like that. Looking into classical improv stuff has completely shifted my attitude towards learning improv, but it links up to Barry.


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[GuyBoden]

One Octave patterns will be at least 7 patterns. (Beware P4)

Yes/No?

[bediles]

One Octave patterns will be at least 7 patterns. (Beware P4)

Yes/No?

Yes, but I would present the different # of string patterns major root to root first before working out all the 3 string rotations. Bc it's all informed by the parent scale.

The caveat to all of this IMO is don't spend more then 1/4 of your practice time on unmisocal exercises/mapping bc all other practices informs your conception/knowledge of where the notes are, what the shapes are.