Official Barry Harris Thread

[A. Kingstone]

Still working on chapter one, the basics. I'll be there the rest of the month, maybe into next month.

I remember saying to Barry at a workshop upon some interesting revelation, "great, now I'm going to have to live until 106."

[christianm77]

BTW something that's come to my attention a lot recently are progressions like this:

Gm7 C7 | Em7b5 A7b9 | Dm

But these things are everywhere when you start looking for them. They could be seen as an ugly Berkleeoid way of writing this progression, of course:

C7 | A7(b9) | Dm

Here are three examples off the top of my head, but there are millions more:

It Had to Be You
Limehouse Blues
East of the Sun

Now I always used to struggle with these, but the scale up and down to the third of the dominant thing handles this stuff so naturally. So you play C7 up and down to the third of A7b9. (C#)

Or as I would describe it:

C7 --> (C#) --> Dm (backdoor into Dm, or interrupted cadence in F)

Which of course as we see in David B's example is really an extended minor ii-V-I so to speak.
David has Em7b5 | A7b9 | Dm

Thsi particular form of the progression I had overlooked really and always played the two II-V's as separate entities which is pretty awkward actually. This approach gives you away of joining them together with almost no effort.

Now you also have this closely related progression:

Gm Gm/F | Em7b5 B7b9 | Dm

Here, we can swap in C7 for Gm, as before, and play the same thing.

Black Orpheus (RB Changes, I don't think the authentic changes have this)
Green Dolphin Street (RB Changes, perhaps not the originals)
The Days of Wine and Roses
I Thought About You
etc

Summary (TL;DR)

Em7b5 | A7b9 | Dm
C7 | A7b9 | Dm
C7 | C#o7 | Dm
Gm7 C7 | Em7b5 A7b9 | Dm
Gm Gm/F | Em7b5 A7b9 | Dm

All can be expressed as the C7 to the third of A7 an then into Dm. All are manifestations of the same thing.

Obvious to some I'm sure, but again the way progressions are written, voice lead and embellished can make them seem unfamiliar.

Also for me, something like the minors dominant stuff profits from being approached from lots of different directions. I've spend 20 years thinking m7b5's and dominants are two different things. It takes a lot to intuitively grasp that they are two sides of the same coin.

[christianm77]

BTW am I the only person who feels jazz harmony is basically a form of Algebra?

[Bobby Marshall]

BTW am I the only person who feels jazz harmony is basically a form of Algebra?

How so?

[christianm77]

How so?

In the sense that you have axioms, proofs, ways of reducing complicated notation into simpler more elegant forms. You almost have a form of notation you can use as algebra with chord symbols. Almost.

[christianm77]

Here's 20+ minutes of me talking through the progression of 'Indiana'. Unfortunately the camera died whilst I talked through the final four bars of the tune, but they're easy enough to analyse!

I'm not holding out myself as an expert on any of this material or a strong player. We're all learning this together. In fact, I'd never looked at the tune 'Indiana' before posting that I would do a video, so it forced me to sit down and do some work!

Good clear video, nice one.

Now this might seem unbelievably anal, but I say this for good reason. Be specific about enharmony. Ab is not the same thing as G#. Why?

A lot of people think this stuff isn't important, but (and I don't mean to go full on rain man here ;-)) I think it is. A sharpened note has a different gravity to a flattened one.

In general, the function of a sharpened note in diatonic harmony is as a leading tone a temporary major 7th, syllable TI of a temporary tonal centre, often the root of a chord within the key.

A flattened note on the other is usually functioning as a temporary 4th, the syllable FA - resolving down to the 3rd of another chord.

(In Kodaly signs TI points up, while FA points down, incidentally, to show these natural tendencies)



So - for example,

C G7 G#o7 Am - we are turning the G# into a temporary 7th (leading note) of Am.
C C7 F - the Bb is the temporary 4th of F, resolving into the 3rd (A) of the F

These aren't quite true modulations - in the Partimento book Sanguinetti describes these as scale mutations, a term that I like. (18th century musicians used MI not TI for notes resolving up a semitone, incidentally.)

This is as true of bop as it is of Mozart, so I think being a bit classical about it is appropriate. As Barry himself says 'the harmony is classical.' Everything Barry Harris is talking about here can be found in the music of Mozart and Bach.

Now in jazz you can do some clever stuff with enharmony - for example, respelling G# as Ab on an E7 chord in the key of C can allow to use F melodic minor, for example, but it's good to know the basic rules IMO.

[MarkRhodes]

BTW something that's come to my attention a lot recently are progressions like this:

Gm7 C7 | Em7b5 A7b9 | Dm

But these things are everywhere when you start looking for them. They could be seen as an ugly Berkleeoid way of writing this progression, of course:

C7 | A7(b9) | Dm

Here are three examples off the top of my head, but there are millions more:

It Had to Be You
Limehouse Blues
East of the Sun

Now I always used to struggle with these, but the scale up and down to the third of the dominant thing handles this stuff so naturally. So you play C7 up and down to the third of A7b9. (C#)



All can be expressed as the C7 to the third of A7 an then into Dm. All are manifestations of the same thing.

Obvious to some I'm sure, but again the way progressions are written, voice lead and embellished can make them seem unfamiliar.

.

It certainly wasn't obvious to me. I'm getting there. Happens that "It Had To Be You" is a tune I'm working on, so now I have something new to practice there! ;o)

[MarkRhodes]

Now this might seem unbelievably anal, but I say this for good reason. Be specific about enharmony. Ab is not the same thing as G#. Why?

A lot of people think this stuff isn't important, but (and I don't mean to go full on rain man here ;-)) I think it is. A sharpened note has a different gravity to a flattened one.

This makes sense to me. "It depends on where you are going" (whether a note is a G# or an Ab).

[phil79]

Great thread!
I bought the Roni Ben Hur Masterclasses at Mikes Masterclasses a long time ago, which show the exact same thing with How high the moon and Confirmation. But I never understood how to make music with this exercise. Or is it just a way to say "play C-mixolydian (= E-locrian) for the Em7b5 and change only the C to C# for the A7 (which would be D harmonic minor I suppose)"?

[christianm77]

Great thread!
I bought the Roni Ben Hur Masterclasses at Mikes Masterclasses a long time ago, which show the exact same thing with How high the moon and Confirmation. But I never understood how to make music with this exercise. Or is it just a way to say "play C-mixolydian (= E-locrian) for the Em7b5 and change only the C to C# for the A7 (which would be D harmonic minor I suppose)"?

The point of it as far as I can see is that you can use all your dominant scale language to handle minor ii-V's also. You can also use them for diminished chords and stuff too.

(As Groynaid points out on another thread you can ALSO use dominants on minor, so that's four uses for one bunch of material.)

Minimum language, maximum application, always.

The Barry Harris school is an approach based mostly on the study of the dominant scale (as David B points out.)

(The flip side of the same coin might be Pat Martino's approach which is about playing minor on dominants and half dims etc. Same logic, different perspective.)

[MarkRhodes]

The Barry Harris school is an approach based mostly on the study of the dominant scale (as David B points out.)

(The flip side of the same coin might be Pat Martino's approach which is about playing minor on dominants and half dims etc. Same logic, different perspective.)

I wonder if it has anything to do with the instruments they play. The minor lines Pat favors (-at least in "Linear Expressions") lay out nicely on the guitar and are easy to move around.

[christianm77]

I wonder if it has anything to do with the instruments they play. The minor lines Pat favors (-at least in "Linear Expressions") lay out nicely on the guitar and are easy to move around.

Probably. Even though I use the BH system conceptually, I still feel a lot of what I am doing is based on minor shapes still.

[phil79]

The point of it as far as I can see is that you can use all your dominant scale language to handle minor ii-V's also. You can also use them for diminished chords and stuff too.

(As Groynaid points out on another thread you can ALSO use dominants on minor, so that's four uses for one bunch of material.)

Minimum language, maximum application, always.

The Barry Harris school is an approach based mostly on the study of the dominant scale (as David B points out.)

(The flip side of the same coin might be Pat Martino's approach which is about playing minor on dominants and half dims etc. Same logic, different perspective.)

Ok, so it's a lot like Sheryl Baileys Family of Four (+1), am I right? In terms of using dominant language on minor7, dominant7, alt7, m7b5 and major7 chords?!? But I still don't see the application of the exercise...

[christianm77]

Ok, so it's a lot like Sheryl Baileys Family of Four (+1), am I right? In terms of using dominant language on minor7, dominant7, alt7, m7b5 and major7 chords?!? But I still don't see the application of the exercise...

That's kind of backwards. The family of four is one you can do to a dominant chord to play something cool. It's kind of the same relationship but in our case we don't deal with the major chord.

So - Sheryl

G7 --> G7 Bm7b5 Dm7 Fmaj7

(This is like one of a large plethora of different possibilities BTW. Even with this we have options on adding things like Lower Neighbours, using Pivots and so on. There's also no reason why we have to use four note chords.)

What I am saying is kind of the opposite.

Bm7b5 Dm7 (or Dm6) G7 can all be expressed by language belonging to the G dominant domain.

E7b9 can be handled by a small alteration of the G dominant domain - you raise G to G#. This also gives you G#o7.

- Now say you are the kind of person who has collected a bunch of licks on dominant chords from your favourite players. You can now go to work applying one lick on every chord progression you know.
- Or you might have derived all those lines from running Barry style patterns from scales. Do the same.
- Or both (it's important to know how licks are constructed but it doesn't matter for this purpose.)

So let's take the Fmaj7 on the family of four purely for illustration - I'm only doing this because it's easy for me to write down. Here's one of my favourite motifs based on Fmaj7, especially with the A C E transposed down an octave or pivoted so that the first note is the highest:

G F# F A C E

I will call this G7 lick, but harmonically this is far from a simple G7 sound. It's closer to a G13(sus) sound harmonically, but we don't really need to think about that beyond - 'do I like this sound?)

We'll be using transpositions, so the one in C is the C7 lick:

C B Bb D F A

Harmonically kind of a C13(sus) sound... And so on.

How can we use this arpeggio in tunes? Well, first useful thing is the line doesn't have a G in it except right at the start, so we can ignore the G-G# business. but you can stick a G# in there if you want. So how can we put this arpeggio to work?

Dm7 G7 C --> G7 lick C
Bm7b5 E7b9 Am --> G7 lick Am
Em7b5 A7b9 Dm --> C7 lick Dm
C C7 F7 F#o7 --> Cmaj7 C7 lick F7 lick F
C C#o7 Dm7 G7 C --> C C7lick G7lick C
and so on

Notice how are licks are on C, F and G or I, IV, V. A guitarist should be able to handle that, right?

We do need to find some things that can join the chord onto the resolving chord, and you will need to find ways of extending lines to go into two bars, for example. For example for Dm7 G7 | C, G lick into C

G F# F A C E F D | D# E for example... Notice that I have put the E on the + of 1 to stop the phrase sounding too square. You can put E on the beat by getting rid of the D.

These are all classics and there are many examples in the music. BTW you could then experiment with other ways altering that maj7 - flatting the 3 is a classic.

You don't have to be a devotee of the BH approach, but I think it's a very good idea for any jazz musician to get into applying stuff they already know in new contexts. If you think about it, this is no different from the modes. It's just looking at it from a relative rather than a parallel perspective.

Hope that makes some sort of sense... I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it is.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Ok, so it's a lot like Sheryl Baileys Family of Four (+1), am I right? In terms of using dominant language on minor7, dominant7, alt7, m7b5 and major7 chords?!? But I still don't see the application of the exercise...

Among other things, it would seem to be a great beginning point for ears and fingers, especially because the focus is on the ONE note which changes in relation to the key of the moment, rather than thinking of an entirely new scale. I would think that the exercise, itself, teaches your ear to hear that abstract idea and make it very concrete.

I mean, anything works on paper.

[christianm77]

Ok, so it's a lot like Sheryl Baileys Family of Four (+1), am I right? In terms of using dominant language on minor7, dominant7, alt7, m7b5 and major7 chords?!? But I still don't see the application of the exercise...

I've just had a better idea. Rather than giving you a wall of text, why don't you propose a well known dominant line - a line on a dominant chord, maybe from the bridge of a Parker rhythm changes head or something, and I'll record a short video showing how I would use that material in different ways using this concept?

[phil79]

[IMG]file:///page8image128[/IMG]
Thanks for the offer. How about the last two bars on this page?

[christianm77]

[IMG]file:///page8image128[/IMG]
Thanks for the offer. How about the last two bars on this page?

Can't seem to see it.

[phil79]

Now?

[wzpgsr]

Second attempt worked for me.


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[christianm77]

Now?

That's good now

[phil79]

I've edited it. It should work now...

[phil79]

perfect

[christianm77]

I'll make the vid tomorrow morning. It's a good line; it sounds to me like that second bar also works very nicely on C7.

TBH I would probably chop it up into two phrases to make it a little easier to use.

[wzpgsr]

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