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in my opinion the biggest key is rote muscle memory practice.. remember if were over 200 bpm i for one do t have time to think much
then once you/i (because im still working on this) can play the tune on auto pilot, we will be free to get creative
at least i hope
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09-07-2018 11:47 AM
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I think there needs to be a Howard Roberts Super chops type thing for the Barry Harris improv method. Combine that with transcribing and his chording and you'll be the most in demand guitar player...
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Barry Harris Hot Licks VHS "Betcha can't Play this!!!" featuring Don Oz
Originally Posted by don_oz
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don't forget all the movements you can play through the changes, instead of just sticking to the scale outlines! Endless stuff to practice. Originally Posted by joe2758
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it literally is. It's daunting sometimes, but I'm grateful to have a clear cut path to where I want to go as a player. There's so many interesting things it's hard for me not to jump around, but when I focus on getting all these things in my fingers I make the most progress (though it can get boring). I'll be practicing the ABCs for years; just getting those exercises up to 200 bpm or so in major and dominant in all positions is enough to test my reserve. Originally Posted by don_oz
Most people here understand all this stuff, but shedding it is serious work
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Well, Major and dominant is just the same scale so that makes it a bit easier! Originally Posted by joe2758
If your goal is 200bpm, if you haven't tried it, try practicing close to 200 as possible. Pasquale even said so himself - you have to practice playing fast to be able to play fast!
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good point about major and dominant. i'll still practice them as distinct, but in terms of muscle memory they will be the exact same. thanks donny ozmond!
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Originally Posted by don_oz
I agree. The one thing about these exercises is that they are just that: exercises. I know that is a tried and true method of building chops and muscle memory, but there is another school that says always practice musically. Not only does that keep you more engaged, but you practice what your real goal is.
Practicing the scales up and down, or practicing them in thirds/chords/with chromatic approach is great but an audience listening to you would get bored very quickly. And if you are engaging your ears, you should too. Likewise, running through Rhythm Changes playing nothing but BH's chromatic scale, for example, fatigues the ears as much as the fingers.
I know there will be some that will say, "toughen up snowflake! My grandpappy practiced his scales and transcribed off vinyl, and that's good enough for me." That's fine. I'm not saying that can't work. But for those of us who think staying engaged in practice as well as performance is a prefered way I do wish we had a compendium of actual musical ideas to get these concepts under our fingers. Musical ideas using 5-4-3-2 and/or chromatic scale and/or the scale in chords from the third, etc., that we can run over Rhythm Bridge or the Blues or some other well know basic progression.
Perhaps there are some BH "licks" out there I don't know about? I have the first Howard Rees DVD, perhaps it is buried somewhere in the four disks and I just missed it? In his YouTube videos I can see "Chris" easily make up musical ideas from the exercises. I wish I was half that talented. I've been planning to contact him for a Skype lesson to see if he could guide me on some exercises, but he has no contact information on his YouTube channel and I don't even know his full name (anyone?).
In any case, I think that having some actual musical exercises to build that muscle memory and understanding would be great!
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If I knew the Barry Harris scale stuff I would quite happily write out some exercises, I quite like doing stuff like that. Unfortunately I only know the harmonic (chords) system, not the scales.
I guess I already learned how to play lines from records years ago, so there’s less appeal for me in investigating the BH scale system now. But if I had more time, I probably would look into it.
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It’s not really rocket science and it’s great for just mapping everything out and warming up a tune
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I agree with rlrhett. Even the greatest masterpiece will start fatiguing ear after playing a 100 times, nevermind scales. Playing scales ascending, in thirds etc. over a tune should be the first few minutes of the practice session. Benefit is more doing it everyday rather than for an hour at a time.
What I started doing is, after doing the "scales", I invent short phrases that "sound" the chord. Any phrase that made up of chord and scale tones that emphasizes some of the chord tones would work. Then I move the phrase around as the chords change. Phrases also use different rhythms. That not only keeps it fresh, but I feel it's more effective in training ears and fretboard knowledge.
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Perhaps there are some BH "licks" out there I don't know about? I have the first Howard Rees DVD, perhaps it is buried somewhere in the four disks and I just missed it? In his YouTube videos I can see "Chris" easily make up musical ideas from the exercises. I wish I was half that talented. [/QUOTE]
steal licks from the transcriptions above! he can do that because he know them inside and out individually without thinking. i have full confidence you could come up wih a ton of lines yourself by combining these things, but maybe just not as instantaneous as that guy. how about you construct a line taking your time, and drill that? i guess that goes back to ear fatigue...
i just can’t imagine being able to play bebop up to speed without any amount
of hardcore shedding.
so that’s my practicing. then there’s when i practice performing which is trying to combine the stuff in real time, and thats what i meant in that bit where one can be surprised at what comes out. I think maybe that sharp divide in personal routine made me sound one sided. sounds like tou guys combine the two more; thats cool.
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Ok, but this isn't just hypothetical stuff. Can the people actually advocating this stuff PLAY? All the examples I see indicate "yes". Dude in the video, Christian, BH himself. Originally Posted by rlrhett
So, I have never understood the attitude of over analysing - by potential, would-be students of these methods. As if BH has to sell someone on their thing. If the thing which gets you there was obvious, everyone would do it, and if it was simply playing music, again...everyone...
I think there are better questions personally. If you can't play these basic patterns up-and-down easily, is boredom with getting to navigate them over a whole tune really your main issue? I think we miss a lot with basics as guitarists. Unless I'm mistaken, it's probably guitarists that have the hardest time hanging at these workshops with basic skills etc.
That's the feeling I get from dude in the video , at least in the beginning , but again, now, he can PLAY. I know I am always banging on about this, but horn players in pianists can cover the stuff in seventh and eighth grade. I don't understand why we always think that THAT point is irrelevant for us as guitarists. We're special or something. Everyone has to make allowances for our shortcomings.
Meanwhile, we're also mostly self-taught as well. Then, when the methods break down for us, we question the METHODS of great players, insisting that they prove something to US. " Yeah, where do you use that an actual tune?". (Mic drop). The horn player is shaking his head at this point going, "Why would you NOT want to know how to play a basic scale?. How is that HURTING anything?".
In the last couple of years, after much navelgazing and auditioning professional players in over scrutinizing their methodology because it was too hard, I finally buckle down and worked on some technique. Now, getting back to real music, I find that all of these new musical things which I've never practiced are suddenly much easier. Again, don't listen to me. Listen people who can PLAY.
Very often, the THING itself isn't necessarily the thing which GETS you to thing. Very often, there are OTHER THINGS which get you to thing, whether you're talking sports, music, or any pursuit in life. I think this other attitude is very prevalent with guitarists, for whatever reason. Basketball and tennis students don't scrimmage 100% or play full matches every time. There are very basic reasons why.
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i can always count on you to back me up and express what i meant to say eloquently, Matt!
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I agree 100% with Matt. I’ve seen those posts where people who have clearly put no thought into BH’s methodology post threads asking for proof of the method. Ever since I discovered BH it has radically transformed my playing and understanding of music. Those people are their own worst enemy. BH doesn’t have anything to prove to anybody.
That said, I can’t understand how anyone thinks that practicing phrases is a bad thing. To use your analogy, baseball players don’t just endlessly swing a bat without being thrown a ball or just stand opposite each other playing catch. Sports science tells us that the closer the exercises are to performance the better. Personally, I would love to ADD some BH phrases to my existing BH practice. Not sure why that would be a bad thing, but different strokes...
As far as eight grade horn players go, I did not have the luxury of music lessons as a child. I worked hard to get good grades to go to an Ivy League school and eventually Law School so I could work 80 hours a week putting food on the table. I didn’t even know there were people who went to four year college to learn to play guitar. I still can’t understand that. I am entirely self taught starting playing as an adult by putting in the hours shedding late at night AFTER a 10 hour day at work for the sheer love of the sport. But I have no illusions that I will ever match someone who had a private tutor from age four followed by years of college level study.
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who thinks that, someone you know? i don’t see anyone who said that here Originally Posted by rlrhett
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Hmmm... what do you take that post you claimed was so eloquent to mean? Seems to me to be saying that woodsheding musical ideas was somehow (and this is the part I really don’t understand) a lazy man’s attempt at getting out of the real work of playing scales, that guitarist in general don’t play enough scales, and that the person posting the thread had a major breakthrough when he stopped playing musical ideas and buckled down to play scales. Originally Posted by joe2758
In the context of don_oz and I saying it would be a great additional practice resource to have phrase based exercises applying BH improvisational ideas, I’m not sure what other meaning you could take.
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took it to mean that stuff needs to get done. and the real players that teach this stuff stress to learn the stuff thoroughly. I did have a breakthrough when focusing on the stuff because that is how i came to be able to create lines out of it in time (i mean i’m BETTER at it at least). ive been gleaning licks and shedding them from the transcripts above, and matt and i both happen to be shedding a jimmy raney solo.
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Ok, I understand. You didn’t see it as a response to anything, just a general statement of the importance of knowing your scales. I think that is something no one was arguing against, but I guess it’s useful to have restated.
Your suggestion to grab two bar phrases from the transcription and shed them is a good one. I still maintain that it would be a useful learning tool to have specific exercises that illustrate and incorporate in a musical context a “4” phrase, for example, or descending added chromatic notes. I am certainly capable of doing that for myself, but the point of learning from others is to share our knowledge, explore things we might miss on our own, and avoid trying to reinvent the wheel.
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i don’t know of a resource for that, but you did remind me of another wayi used to organize phrases that i should get back to. i went through the omnibook (but you could use any bebop solo) and took very short phrases (same length as the 5432 ones) and filed them as alternate ones depending on what note they started with. I also had some 1 7 and 6 phrases. i should get back to that, i do t know what side tracked me. you could build a whole solo that way and it would probably be better than 2 bar phrase chunks since it uses smaller “blocks” Originally Posted by rlrhett
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My belief is, if what I'm practicing feels easy, than I'm not practicing, I'm just fooling myself. Of course sometimes I just play which is fine. But if I'm doing "practice material" then it should not be easy. It should require concentration. After I'm warmed up, playing scales up and down over a tune that I know doesn't posses enough challenge for me to feel like I'm training. That's not a statement against practicing scales at all. Finding new ways, hopefully musical ways to practice them is the key for me.
Reverse is also true, if what I'm practicing feels hard, no matter what it is, and after practicing it feels easy, I know grew a litte bit as a musician.Last edited by Tal_175; 09-08-2018 at 06:40 PM.
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^^^^ Originally Posted by Tal_175
This.
There was an interesting article (TV show?) from a few years ago where a brain scientist said that “mild frustration is what learning FEELS like to the brain”. That has really stuck with me. He said that the trick to efficient learning is to keep yourself in that state of mild (and he stressed MILD) frustration.
Too frustrated and you stop learning, no sense of frustration and you haven’t started. Finding that balance, and maintaining it for hours, is itself not easy. But I believe I practice much more effectively keeping this principal in mind.
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yeah man i agree, if playing those things at 200-250 bpm is not a chgallenge i wouldnt continue to practice them either
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Man those Barry workshops are like a session at the gym. It can be overwhelming at first, but even if you catch a line here and there, you can work with it.
So yeah, practice should feel difficult, if it's effective. It's my belief one can only do short periods of effective practice. That said, Barry's classes go on for 2 hours each with no breaks. #oldschool
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Yeah, judging from the DVDs, those workshops would have me squarely in the “too frustrated” category :-0
Watching those students reminds me of how many truly excellent musicians there are out there.
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