What is your primary reference for practicing improvisation?

[Bobby Timmons]

I do hope that's not your poster boy for simple analysis of boppy things, BT?

Why is that? His single note stuff seems quite simple to me yet ends up sounding very accurately bebop.

[Mick-7]

Why is that? His single note stuff seems quite simple to me yet ends up sounding very accurately bebop.

My comment is based on the fact that I haven't studied his system and so am on the outside (of it) looking in. You think it simplifies analysis of bebop?

[Bobby Timmons]

I'm aware you haven't studied it to make an ignorant comment like that. :P Yes, it's very simple. It's a few months of work to get the basics. Not 30 years of transcribe and listen and maybe you'll get it.

[Mick-7]

It's a few months of work to get the basics.

That's really stretching the definition of "simple analysis."

[Bobby Timmons]

If you conflate assimilating the breadth of it with going over 1 outline of some music, yes.

[Christian Miller]

My comment is based on the fact that I haven't studied his system and so am on the outside (of it) looking in. You think it simplifies analysis of bebop?

I would say it simplifies the analysis of bebop eventually.

Although, mostly it was about playing in class, not so much analysing. But you can do that.

Much of that analysis is categorising of elements. You look at something or hear and a light goes 'bing' somewhere in your brain, and you say 'oh it's that thing'. Such as 'bing' oh it's a descending dominant bebop scale. Oh it's half steps below the chord tones of a triad. Or whatever you call the chunks.

Bop is very much like that.

[pamosmusic]

That's really stretching the definition of "simple analysis."

I’ll tell you that my experience with this (which is limited) is that it takes a little while to explain the system. The diminished symmetry is super super confusing for people and his logic is sort of self contained. So it can feel a little bit like going through the looking glass — why are those dominants related? Because of the diminished chord. Why do we care about the diminished chord? Because it’s symmetrical. Why does that matter? Because it works in place of all those dominant chords.

But the application is incredibly simple. People just accumulate dominant vocabulary. Everything you learn works over everything you play. So rather than learning a new harmonic minor scale for the minor cadence, fumbling over that augmented second, learning your intervals and new harmony, etc etc … you play all your old dominant language off the relative major, toss in a diminished arpeggio and you’re off to the races. You just keep collecting vocabulary.

So you might have to sit with pencil and paper for an hour to understand it, but it streamlines the playing A LOT. And I think that’s objectively the correct use of playing. And his system does this so well that you can start playing without really understanding it and not really miss much. Some applications of chord scale theory (and I’m not an anti-CST zealot) are the opposite … very easy to understand but make the actual playing more complicated.

My understanding of Barry’s thing, which is second hand from Alan mostly and yacking on the forum with Christian, is that he wanted you to understand the theory, but not at the expense of application.

So he’d explain it and then just start playing and you’d maybe get a bit of it and then just get cooking. You’d get a little more the next time or the time after. But all the while you’re accumulating actual stuff to play

[Tal_175]

That's really stretching the definition of "simple analysis."

There are three diminished chords. Given a chord/tonality, two of them move towards it, one of the move away from it.
Eg.
Cmaj:
B dim and C dim moves towards Cmaj
C# dim moves away from Cmaj.

So you can use B dim and C dim to create movement within Cmaj. Why? Cmaj has two related minors Amin and Eminor:
B dim = Abdim which moves toward A minor
Cdim = Ebdim which moves towards E minor.
Bdim also moves towards C root.

The third diminished is C# dim. Here is what I mean by this diminished having the moving away effect from C major.
C# dim moves towards D minor which is the relative of F major. The secondary dominant of F major is C7. So the C# diminished is the secondary dominant version of the chord (ie C major becomes C7).

Everything that's said about these diminishes are true for 4 dominants that share each of them. You can pretty much analyze all common practice harmony (jazz standards, Classical period, pop hits etc) with these diminished chords and the dominants emerge from them.

[Tal_175]

When you use the four dominants that emerge out of a diminished chord, you just have to be careful about the voice movements. Being aware of the diminished chord that a dominant comes from makes finding the "correct" voice movements trivial.

[joe2758]

I'll add to what Tal said and mention the C dim in the example can pull to the ii chord as well

[joe2758]

When I do my arrangements, I think:

#ii dim and its related dominants pull to ii, ii dim and its related doms pull to I, biii dim and its doms pull to I or ii

[AllanAllen]

I'll add to what Tal said and mention the C dim in the example can pull to the ii chord as well

Woooooaah, that's elegant

C6 : x3223x
Cdim: x3424x
D-7: x5355x
G7: x5546x

I like that a lot more than jumping down to A- for a turnaround.

[Tal_175]

Barry Harris comes up a lot on the forum. I don't doubt many find this very annoying. Especially those who haven't delved very deeply into the Barry Harris world may feel like they are constantly being reminded of this wholesome education path to bebop that they are missing out on. But when I (and I suspect many others on the forum) reference BH, it's more like a convenient label for certain common concepts, tools, devices etc. that were part of his workshops but by no means unique to his teaching.