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I find it helps me get in shape before hiking. I'm a Bach-Parker...
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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11-10-2025 08:06 PM
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Cheers guys, regarding classical pieces, I think they are great, not only Adam Rogers, I heard Metheny, Stern and others recommending those violin pieces.
Sorry if I did not explain myself correctly, what I meant when I said that is easier for someone like me to start playing outside using minor melodic scales, diminished, modes, etc... cause I got the fingering down, I spent too much time probably playing all that stuff in 12 keys, etc... and then I realize I was going the wrong way cause I ended sounding more like a fusion guy, which I dont really like much, so when I started digging then I figure out that Parker, Peterson, Wes, etc... did not practice that way and I really like how they build their lines, sounds like music to me, the other thing sounds more like I can move my fingers really quick but I dont say much about the harmony or tell any story.
Hope this helps.
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Sounds sensible. If you want to sound like a bebop/hard bop style player, it's all about the idiom and the specifics of the style. I think that's best learned by attentive listening and singing and playing what you hear. Not just solos either - a tune like Along Came Betty will teach you a tremendous amount about bebop language, and you can play it on gigs or at jams. Originally Posted by Basshead
Modern styles - like fusion as you say, but much modern jazz in general - can be more "theory rooted" (i.e. chord scales normally) - but all these people seem to know their bop stuff. It's the bedrock of modern jazz language. This stuff even crops up in Holdsworth to some extent. If you learn how jazz phrasing flows, then it's a lot easier to turn things like chord scales into convincing jazz.
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Don't learn solos from tabs. Originally Posted by Basshead
Thanks Brent but I think I can handle it
is all based in the same chord boxes as you mention, the swing feel and phrasing are the important things IMO. Ima not memorize a whole solo for now but I like to play and sing small bits of it in different keys and try to start using them in my flamenco/bluesy compositions.
But if you want something nuts, lets go hardcore with this one, probably the best bebop improv ever
but you are right that its better to start with CC and then move slowly to Wes or Parker, I spent too much time with the whole chord scale scam, which is ok for some things, but this is a completely different minset, more chord tone based, small clear phrases, bluesy vibes, perfect!
It might seem perverse to say, because it takes longer, but it builds your musicianship and that's way more important. Playing from tabs is a shortcut. Things learned by ear are much richer. For instance - the phrasing with which Parker plays things is as important as the notes themselves.
If you want to be a strong musician, it's important to get away from tabs as much as possible. Focus on the ears #1 priority. Reading is useful too.
Aside from that, if it were me I'd take this and start working on small chunks on different tunes to internalise the language into my own playing.
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Again, I wouldn't recommend this at this stage. See above. Originally Posted by brent.h
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I understand, get stuff from tabs feels like cheating but if you get a short lick, sing it and play it in different keys then I think is a decent complete exercise but yeah, I transcribed some Miles and Gran Green solos, never memorize it, just pick it by ear and it is much more musical.
I know Barry Harris and Ive watched that channel you mention few times, the other day they did that video with open studio and it was not the frist time that I see all those options for a D7, I can play most of that stuff slowly but when it comes to do some enclosures with 4 note arps and going back to the third as bass players do then it gets pretty brainy to me but puts you in place with one chord in a second, nice reality check.
Classical wise, if you analyze pieces like tico tico, turquish march, czardas... you can see where enclosures come from IMHO
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Cool, sounds like you are doing the right sort of stuff. I'll shudup. Originally Posted by Basshead
I understand, get stuff from tabs feels like cheating but if you get a short lick, sing it and play it in different keys then I think is a decent complete exercise but yeah, I transcribed some Miles and Gran Green solos, never memorize it, just pick it by ear and it is much more musical.
I know Barry Harris and Ive watched that channel you mention few times, the other day they did that video with open studio and it was not the frist time that I see all those options for a D7, I can play most of that stuff slowly but when it comes to do some enclosures with 4 note arps and going back to the third as bass players do then it gets pretty brainy to me but puts you in place with one chord in a second, nice reality check.
Classical wise, if you analyze pieces like tico tico, turquish march, czardas... you can see where enclosures come from IMHO
The Barry stuff has been most useful to me in conjunction with looking at music such as heads and solos. It works very well for that, which is no surprise because that's how Barry came up with it.
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Great question, I didnt wanted to play at that jam, I only slept 3 hours that night, my friend told me to play and I almost never played chicken with guitar, always with bass (I used to play bass a lot) so I was basically surviving and improvising like dont know what Im doing plus I hate strats, the strap was a bit low... not really in my confort zone, being said that, yeah I can not scat sing that random solo, I have practiced a lot to sing everything I play but really slow, intervals, triads, chords, scales, chord tones following standards, melodies, riffs, etc... but always bit a bit and slow, I can only scat sing for a solo if its based on a scale with maybe a couple of passing tones, like that Barney Kessel old video or singing melodies with different modes against a pedal bass note so you hear the color of the mode (funtional/emotional ear training) but NOPE, I can not sing that solo and if you can hear it Im using chord tones, lydian dominant, some minor pentatonic over C7 specially, major penta over Bb7 too, but yeah it is more brainy than ear driven plus normally I try to think only in groove/pocket, Dizzy style, rhythm first.
Hope this makes sense, again, that chicken video is not my best, probably is about 65% what I can do in a better situation, that same day I played Sowhat, cantaloupe and chamaleon in other jam with a PRS guitar and it was much better but I dont have a video of that.
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I have been working on forum member Rob MacKillop’s Complete Bach Cello Suites: Arranged for Plectrum Guitar. It is a great book printed in nice clear legible standard notation. I find the Cello Suites to be much more accessible to me then the Solo Violin Partitas and Sonatas. Originally Posted by Basshead
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Yeah, Ima start singing short bits slowly to stop playing too much and saying nothing as you can see in my latest IG video improv over Impressions, not my best to be honest but the issue is clear, I got more chops than ears
InstagramLast edited by Basshead; 11-11-2025 at 09:50 AM.
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I am curious, then why not ask the student to spend a year getting the fretboard together? A teacher can provide a fretboard organization and a pedagogical plan that facilitates gradual progress. It'd be an immensely useful foundation for everything they'll do for the rest of their lives in their musical journey. I believe fretboard skills often hinder many jazz learners. A good teacher can save a student a lot of time in that regard. I always wonder why people don't prioritize the fretboard more. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
What transcribing licks teaches, as you said, is that a lot of jazz lines are made up of scales, arpeggios, and other simple building blocks. The only barrier to writing one's own licks from these building blocks, a la Barry Harris or Joe Elliot is fretboard fluency. Would you not agree?
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I would imagine he’d probably advise getting the fretboard together while you learn the Charlie Christian. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Lots of Charlie Christian sitting in pentatonic and major scale shapes.
Obviously it would be advantageous to have the fretboard together, but most people will want to play some music while they get it together. Generally we have to work on a couple things at once for balance and just for what people will generally stomach at once
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What exactly does "getting the fretboard together" entail?
I'm guessing that it's usually learning patterns based on the CAGED system, or something like that, but I don't understand exactly what constitutes "together" from that point of view.
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Christian mentioned that most guitarists do not have the necessary fretboard fluency for Barry Harris approach to learning improvisation. So this is not just learning patterns in abstract but being able to apply building blocks to create phrases and connect them through the changes on the fly. So Barry Harris would say something like go up a 1235 from the fifth then play the scale down to the third of the next chord with a half note on the seventh etc. You are expected to build such phrases over any chord change fairly quickly. Of course the goal is to get good at building your own phrases over tunes using these melodic building blocks. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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I think getting better at fretboard fluency requires discipline, focus and a dedicated practice approach. It often means temporarily putting less focus on other things. It's not uncommon for serious students to make that a deliberate priority for extended periods of time. But of course you have to meet students where they are. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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1) The main answer is I don't learn like that. Now, other people might like that way of learning, and there's some (culty IMO) teachers who demand that sort of thing for their students - but I think that if you get into the mindset of learning a bunch of stuff that supports music but not actually doing music at the same time, you won't actually get around to any music. Originally Posted by Tal_175
People are always waiting to be ready, then. But that's not healthy IMO. You can spend a lifetime waiting for stuff. I think it sets up bad psychology.
We can play C Jam blues NOW, while at the same time working on stuff for the future.
Maybe it's an appropriate for degree level students - 'you must play no music until you rebuild your technique by practicing these exercises'. Old school - you do hear odd stuff like that. And some people do need to rebuild their technique ... but even then I think it's a bad way to handle things..... Conservatoires are awash with bad mental health anyway. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I also hate the idea of being the sort of Guru gatekeeper that says 'yes padwan, now you have spent a year learning the scales/mopping the floor, now you are ready to play C Jam Blues'.
I think I'd always foreground actually doing music, with whatever means you have at your disposal. I would always rather start with music and let the music teach you. Who actually wants to practice scales for a year? I mean, maybe some people lol. I'm not sure if they are the most musical.
None of which is to say that you shouldn't learn drills, patterns, fingering positions. People should know that stuff. If you study with me, I will put you through the wringer on that stuff. But it will be calibrated to your level, and that's not all I will do with you. And the Barry Harris stuff is great, but it isn't year zero tabula rasa, how to play jazz 101, in my opinion, especially on guitar. And I got that from the way the classes were in terms of difficulty - it was a roast - and also from my own issues with trying to teach it to students. There are more accessible ways to get started, and they can be expanded into the Barry stuff quite organically.
At the end of the day, Barry Harris is a way for people who can already play a bit of jazz to extend their improvisational and harmonic fluency within the bebop style. That's it.
2) Most guitarists are just used to being told where to put their fingers. The main thing for most guitarists is to get them away from things like tab and get them into hearing and playing music. Scales can be like that too. Barry Harris can become yet another system where people think they can math their way into playing bop, and it doesn't work. You need to be a musician.
Another way of putting it. You have two main aspects in this game
1) be a musician
2) operate the instrument
I think you need a balance of the two as you develop.Last edited by Christian Miller; 11-11-2025 at 06:39 PM.
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I have not found it to be a fixed target. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
The thing I would tend to emphasise these days is being able to play a given musical phrase in different places on the neck, along strings, across strings, etc etc. (A scale, arpeggio or pattern is a type of phrase.) That's something one can do while learning music, and you develop flexibility.
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I consider mastery of the instrument part of musicianship. To me the craft is not separate from being a musician. There is no doubt that the right balance is different for different people. I don't know if I agree with the generalization that students who primarily focus on fretboard skills for, say, a year tend to be less musical. I know examples of very musical people who have gone through extremes of this. Mostly because the jazz programs they attended demanded hours of daily practice of scales and patterns in the first couple of years. But one of the strengths of schools is the structure they provide.
Regarding Barry Harris type of approach, if a student works on building phrases over tunes using building blocks reasonably consistently, but the process never develops their ears and remains a paint by number math, then I would say that the student is probably particularly unmusical. I don't know if learning licks or any other method would help them become a better musician. Christian, I vaguely remember reading that you really learned how to play bebop once you started attending BH sessions. The way you worked on jazz before didn't get you to play jazz. Am I mistaken? But I guess stuff you did before then worked well as a primer.Last edited by Tal_175; 11-11-2025 at 07:38 PM.
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My two cents, technique is in the repertory, it is great to do some technique and fretboard knowledge but if you want to play a delta blues just go for it, if you want to play ACDC riff go for it, wanna play octaves like Wes? start now, wanna play Joe Pass All the things you are? learn the first chord today... unfortunately I find young players with great technique, a lot of theory stuff from youtube, chops but no repertory, like hey man lets play beatles, hendrix, eagles, a bb blues, minor blues, pink floyd, stardards, jobim, mozart... anything... and they be like I know 100 thousand licks and chops, riffs and pieces of tunes but I cant play a tune or even follow one so yeah, its good to learn tunes or at least be familiar with them, I not going to memorize CC solos or tunes this week but Im listening to some recordings that I did not listen in few years and listening and singing some if this stuff puts you in a particular mood then you listen to classical or flamenco guitar and is another world so its ok to go in phases too, like Ima be into blues or bebop or a particular player or a particular method like Barry Harris for a while and focus on get the most of it cause one thing thats easy this days is to get confused by so many YT lessons.
When a I was younger I learnt to read music pretty good but my ears were way behind my technique, still kinda now but I did two big mistakes, did not use metronome till I was 22 yo or so and I did not sing much but one thing that I did right is to learn a million tunes from rock to boleros, from pantera to jobim, santana to paco...any book or score that I could get or photocopied so at least you get chops from classic tunes and not from instagram licky flashy 30 sec videos...I guess Im getting old and miserable LOL
Someone mentioned learning bebop heads before and that actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it!Last edited by Basshead; 11-11-2025 at 07:22 PM.
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Personally, I learned the fretboard from playing tunes. That, and needing to find notes and chords above the 5th fret.
Luckily I knew how to read music from my Bert Weedon book when pretty young by playing single notes on open strings with different rhythms through to nursery tunes. When I started to do jazz standards it was basically the same thing only more complex.
But I can still only do the treble clef. Had I learned piano it would have been two clefs at once. In fact, had I done, say, cello it would have been three.
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I think people can be bad at assessing what the right balance is for them, and can go down rabbit holes that suit them. Mathy people get mathy. Arty people sometimes lack structure. Good to have input. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Operating the instrument is somewhat separate to being a musician, in that musicianship is universal between instruments. The instrumental side of it is just about getting the music out on the instrument. That's a somewhat bounded and finite task. It's not nothing - we all need time on the instrument. But a lot of it is simply muscle memory.
OTOH being a good musician is where about 90% of the work is done - and a big part of that is knowing what you want to come out of the instrument and what it should sound like. It's sounds silly, but that's like most of it. The level to which you know that and can hear it is something you can get deeper and deeper into - but that's it. I hear more than I did ten years ago. Five years ago. I don't think I can play faster than I did ten years ago lol.
It's why good musicians can pick up unfamiliar instruments surprisingly quickly - right? Most of the work is already done - you just need to match what comes out of the instrument to what you hear, as best as you can. Then it's practicing into muscle memory after that. Might not make you a virtuoso, but you can learn to play it. (It also helps because you have prior experience in practicing an instrument, so you get the process for doing that and don't waste time.)
For someone who is not a musician learning guitar for example - it's a much slower process. I see this even for kids that have done a couple of years of piano. They just get it much quicker, because they are already musicians.
It's why Tristano taught the way he did. Sing the solo first - play later.
No I didn't say that. I said for anyone musical the idea of working on only scales would most likely be a bit dry and not enjoyable of itself. Someone musical might be willing to put the hours in if you felt that it was going to get you something in the long run.I don't know if I agree with the generalization that students who primarily focus on fretboard skills for, say, a year tend to be less musical.
You are talking about undergraduate level students. Which is, incidentally, a good level to be getting serous about the Barry Harris approach if that interests the student.I know examples of very musical people who have gone through extremes of this. Mostly because the jazz programs they attended demanded hours of daily practice of scales and patterns in the first couple of years. But one of the strengths of schools is the structure they provide.
It's a different context. You'll have different teachers and classes at a music school. Your super strict guitar teacher might be telling you to do x or y drills ONLY, but you still have other classes where you are expected to play music on your instrument, transcribe solos and so on. An instrumental teacher in that environment is focussing on instrumental skills.
If I have someone come to me privately I am probably teaching a wider cross section of stuff - unless a higher level student comes by wanting specific input, which does happen.
I would still question its value as an approach to teaching - I still think it's unnecessary, and I still don't like it.
I would say that you can do a lot with 15m a day truly effective practice on things like technique and scales. There's no need to be neurotic about it.
It's complicated. I went to Barry's classes for a bit and didn't quite get it. Learned some things, but not that much. Then I started working more on solos and heads. That taught me a lot. I could already play jazz to some extent - I was gigging. So I was transcribing Parker and Bud Powell, and that brought me back to Barry. Then it made sense as a complete way of encapsulating that stuff.Regarding Barry Harris type of approach, if a student works on building phrases over tunes using building blocks reasonably consistently, but the process never develops their ears and remains a paint by number math, then I would say that they are probably particularly unmusical. I don't know if learning licks or any other method would help them become a better musician. Christian, I vaguely remember reading that you really learned how to play bebop once you started attending BH sessions. The way you worked on jazz before didn't get you to play jazz. Am I mistaken? But I guess stuff you did before then worked well as a primer.
But even now, you know, I can play with Barry stuff and come up with nice things, chord scales you name it, but the best way of getting the creativity flowing is to go through some music.
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yeah what I would teach the theoretical blank slate student is different than what works best for the actual student in front of me. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Some is my own experience too … I did learn that way and honestly kind of burned out and stopped playing guitar for two years. So I know the fretboard really well now but I would go about it differently if I did it again
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Yeah, I think mental health is important? Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Also, the body reflects the mind, and I see a lot of capable, but rather tense players come out of jazz school to be honest.
My favourite example of bad psychology in jazz education is the term Avoid Note. Oh great, tell people NOT to play a note. That's genius that is. Have these people never dealt with children?
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Also - here's a another MASSIVE thing.
Learning is not linear. Doing X does not predictably lead to Y. You are not a computer.
Also - learning is not based purely on explicit information given by the teacher. A lot of it is experiential - based on picking up things without sometimes even realising it. Often this will take precedence over verbal information. Which is why listening and playing with people are the two most important things.
(How teachers demonstrate/model things is really important, maybe as much or more than what they tell the student.)
Neither truth is especially well accommodated by formal education environments.
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Hey Christian, nice video but who told you that Wes used the altered scale? just curious, Peter Farrel said the other day that Wes used more what would be Db mixolidian instead of G altered(ab melodic minor) and I find this a bit confusing to be honest. I used to use the altered scale and the lydiant dominant for other secondary dominants like in the chicken from D7 or that Db7 in Cantaloupe but I recently discovered that those old school guys probably used the basic mixo scale??
For instance if i got this progression: Cma7 - Eb7 - Dm7 - G7
C lydian - Eb lydian dominant - D dorian - G altered could be a choice, I studied this stuff lonf time ago from books that might be more fusion-ish I guess.
B minor penta - C minor penta - Am or Em penta and Bb minor pentatonic could be another option among others.
To me the altered scale sounds better with minor II V like blue bossa, summertime...but in songs like All the things you are works much more better to try to wrap the chord tones with basic enclosures than going to chord scale mode, what you think?
The way Ive learnt Blue Bossa, unfortunately, was like C dorian, F dorian, F minor melodic for D half diminished, G altered...then Eb dorian, Ab altered, Db lydian, F melodic minor, G altered and C minor hamonic...great scale exercise but pure hell if you really want to improv, I think Jimmy Bruno and those guys are pretty clear that is not possible to really improv with all that info in mind, better to surf around the chord tones, which is not easy tho
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