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Originally Posted by Bilginey
EDIT: Isaak Raz shows how Barry teached the scale outline for the first A-section of “All Things You Are” (But I think that’s not what you meant) in the beginning of this video:
Don’t let the “absent-minded professor” vibe fool you, you can learn a lot from Isaak’s videos.
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08-28-2022 12:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Bilginey
In both examples we have a bIII dim. Of the four dominant scales we can relate to this chord, II7, IV7, bVI7 and VII7 the most diatonic to the overall key are the II7 and IV7 and of the two the II7 seems to work the best; if we run this down to the 1 of the dim chord this gives the most natural sounding choice. (But obv try the other ones)
Another way to say it for the first example Bb7 (II7) down to the third of G7(b9) (VII7b9)…. VII7b9 is a great sub for biii or #iv dim, you can hear bird using it on his recording of Stella for example.
At least that’s my inference. I didn’t hear Barry discuss this first hand in class. No doubt Chris has a video about this.
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
- You learn the form of the tune by
- using similar phrases that put the chord notes on the beats and put fitting passing notes on the “and-s”.
- Thereby you internalize the sound of notes that fit over the changes. Of course you have the whole chromatic at your disposal but the scale outline is a good basis.
Those phrases are (in the most basic form) either one bar, a scale up to the seventh (count 1–&–2–&–3–&–4), or two bars (scale up to 7th 1–&–2–&–3–&–4 and back to root &–1–&–2–&–3). As I have pointed out in my post above, to make the diminished scale example fit into the one-bar pattern I have left out one note. And Bilginey has tried to go the same way.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Regarding the changes I disagree with Chris. In the original sheet music there is clearly an A–7 with a natural 5th in the first bar of the bridge (“… angel glow …”). And the last bar that connects Emaj with F–7 in the last bar is Ab+ which is often played as C7/#5 (C+ = Ab+ = E+), so i would play a whole tone scale there.
I listened to many versions of ATTYA (I have collected over 120 versions) and none of those has a II–7/b5 in the first bar of the bridge, including the classic bebop version that introduced that intro that is taken from a Rachmaninov motif AFAIK:
Milt Jackson (MJQ originated from Dizzy’s band) lands directly on the natural fifth of A–7 in his first chorus.
EDIT: But there is of course A–7/b5 D7 in the last bar before the bridge, also indicated by the melody.
EDIT 2: A second look at the original sheet music shows me that there is no minor II–V written there, but it is usually played.Last edited by Bop Head; 08-28-2022 at 03:15 PM.
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Originally Posted by Bilginey
In the second half it modulates from F to the relative minor D–. The Abo serves to modulate back to F, I have yet to think about why that works. The scale outline is like G7 down to the 3rd of E but played backwards. I guess it is maybe played upwards for better voice-leading in the transition to the next bar F down to the 3rd of D played downwards.
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
The original changes are somewhat different (listen to Louis, I really like them too. The ODJB recording actually starts on VI7 which is wild.)
If I’m not mistaken the example in question is from the first Howard Rees produced Dvd Set - the last few bars there. So these are the changes in the handout …
The bIII dim is a classic ‘turnaround chord’ and the example from ATTYA also features in the last few bars of the last A. The bIIIdim chord can either go to I or ii/V depending.
A classic Barry thing is to talk about the the way that IIm7/IV6 leads incredibly smoothly to I6. In C
C E G A
C Eb Gb A
C D F A
This can work either way, it’s like a sort of harmonic pivot
A classic Barry rant was how no one plays bIII dim anymore and everyone subs it. It’s interesting how many of the non functioning subs in tunes like Stella, Darn that Dream and Alone Together are actually bop era ii V subs for biii dim. As Ethan Iverson noted, Barry’s harmonic aesthetic was much more grounded in dim chords than many of his contemporaries… it kind of grounds him more in a romantic era type of harmony. of course he adored Chopin
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
Milt Jackson (MJQ originated from Dizzy’s band) lands directly on the natural fifth of A–7 in his first chorus.
EDIT: But there is of course A–7/b5 D7 in the last bar before the bridge, also indicated by the melody.
EDIT 2: A second look at the original sheet music shows me that there is no minor II–V written there, but it is usually played.
there’s some nice details there.
I tend not to check that out that sort of thing as much as I should. What do you use as a source?
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Originally Posted by Bilginey
I am missing two things here:
- the strong emphasis of the note g in the melody (on “vine”) which is not part of the Bo7 but one of the potential roots of the Family Of Four Dominants. This is why you should learn the melody first so you are aware of such a strong note and can integrate it into your improvisation. Learning the lyrics really helps (also with the feeling of a tune). The last of Barry’s weekly Tuesday NYC classes was always the singing class where people would learn tunes by singing them.
- I am also missing a little bit the chromatic connection from Ab6 -> lower two notes and get Bo –> lower them one more half step and get Bb–7.
Seems I have to work on the diminished connections more myself
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
One Saturday night a few months ago I was so bored that I watched the Eurovision Song Contest. (That kind of music is really not my taste but I was also interested in the result for political reasons as there was a team from Ukraine participating that won then in the end.) While watching the UK performance I think: “I have seen that keyboard player before.” (after 1:10 in the video; I saw him also sitting at the UK team’s table later while they where waiting for the results)
I do some research the next day and it turns out, yes, it was really Jay Verma, Shan Verma’s nephew, whom knew from the following video, where he teaches a masterclass on Barry Harris sixth diminished scale at a YouTube channel specialized in modern gospel piano (a style I do not like very much either — I DO like bluesy, funky old school gospel — but that video is worth watching).
Last edited by Bop Head; 08-29-2022 at 05:01 AM.
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There is a new YT channel illustrating how songs were taught in the tuesday NYC singing classes including the warmup.
In this little documentary starting from about 6:40 there are excerpts from the singing classes of a BH workshop in Rome so you can how those classes were happening in real life.
DISCLAIMER: As I wrote quite a lot in this thread in the last days I have to admit that I never went to a BH class / workshop myself. But since I have discovered his stuff (which was a real eye-opener for me) I try to collect all the bits and pieces I am able to find on the www and meanwhile I think I have quite a good grasp of the method.
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
From maj6-dim to null points
(this ought to confuse Americans lol)
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I think it’s great that all documentation of his actual classes exist. The Hague stuff is obviously very important as are the Howard Rees DVDs. It’s good to have someone talk about the vocal classes. Singers and singing were very important to Barry.
if you just focus on the theories you miss the spirit with which they were taught; the songs were part of it ‘I can sing the whole tone scale’ but beyond that the joy that was part of the vocal classes in particular.
a lot of the instrumentalists wouldn’t stick around for the vocal class after the absolute roast of the improvisation class (I note that Barry at age 90 possessed better powers of prolonged concentration than I have) so I only went to a couple, but it was totally different. Harmony class - often exploratory and open ended, Improv class - often focussed and challenging. singing class - very human, warm.
There was a spirit of serious fun in the classes in general; we could easily spend half an hour pratting around changing the words ‘you and me’ in jazz standards (pretty funny if you haven’t done it) or being absolutely roasted repeating lines by ear on Cherokee at around 240 bpm. It was all part of it….
In reality plenty of people went to Barry’s classes and were disappointed and never went back. I think they were used to more conventional jazz education things, and I’m sure that going forward people will teach Barry’s ideas like that. As far as I can tell Barry had zero interest in any of that, I can’t imagine him fitting in as a professor at a music school. (Which is not to say his teaching philosophy lacked method at all.)
You kind of had to hang out for a few of them to start picking things up here and there (at least in my experience.) It took me a while to really get what was going on ….. the more you hung, the more you learned and all the things you could use pretty much right away to become a better jazz player (or singer.)
I can also recommend the book Thinking in Jazz by Paul Berliner which covers the whole NYC jazz scene of the 50s and 60s but has a lot of time devoted to Barry.Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-29-2022 at 06:10 AM.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I think someone said that people like Tommy Flanagan or Hank Jones would always go back to the original sheet music so I decided to find some. I found out that some American universities have collections of digitized sheet music. My starting points were those I think:
IMSLP:Universities and Libraries - IMSLP: Free Sheet Music PDF Download
Sheet Music Consortium | Home
But it was quite time consuming to get a collection of almost 200 tunes.
Recently I got the music for some tunes from Ethan Iverson. You can ask him after you have subscribed to his newsletter.
https://ethaniverson.com/original-sh...azz-standards/
There are videos of him playing piano so you do not have to figure everything out by yourself but can pickup things by ear.
Recently I also came across this mostly old-time jazz oriented site:
Sheet Music Singer – Bringing vintage songs back to life
On the right there is a huge alphabetical list of tunes but it is more for people who are more into Buddy Bolden and Bix Beiderbecke than into Bird and Dizz.
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Another source are older songbooks where they recycled the hand-engraved original sheet music (with newer computer-typeset music you do not know for sure if the original piano arrangement is edited).
Compare this: The first one is the originally published vocal / piano arrangement with guitar chords.
The second one is from a Gershwin songbook from 1979.
You can clearly see what is kept, and what is changed or thrown away. But the original staves and the lyrics remain.
EDIT: I just realized they left the “guitar tacet” although there are no guitar chords any more. And they deny George’s brother Ira as lyricist.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
Sheila is an interesting connection between Lennie Tristano and Barry Harris. She grew up with Barry and Kenny Burrell and remembers sitting with them on the trashcans behind a club in Detroit as kids waiting for Bird to come out. Later in NYC Lennie Tristano was surprised that she could already sing every Charlie Parker solo by rote, so he made her learn Lester Young solos.
Sheila introduced Stephan to Barry Harris (and encouraged him to study with Billy Bauer as well, Tristano’s favorite guitarist).
One year ago Stephan started a YouTube channel so far mainly dealing with scale studies (he uses the CAGED system).
The following video is a systematic study on the guitar of what Isaac Raz uses in the video above as scale outlines for ATTYA and what in the Barry world comes closest to what Chord Scale Theory calls modes (also in non-modal harmony; “real” modal tunes for me are things like “So What”): starting a major scale from different notes and playing up seven notes (one bar) and maybe back down (two bars).
[Barry Harris AFAIK hated the modal thinking (“I have never used no mode in my whole life!”) and for myself it is also easier to think “C major up from the 3rd” than all the Greek names (although I know them and can use them to communicate).]
Stephan plays the seven note two bar phrases down-up as well which one could use as an alternative for scale outlines.
Stephan’s first videos made me also aware that the scale outlines have the effect of giving you a feeling for one bar and two bar phrases.
I think I have to meet him one day as we’re living in the same city. According to his website he has studied (amongst others) with Sheila, Barry, Billy Bauer, Ted Dunbar, Kenny Barron and Larry Ridley. The list could be worse .Last edited by Bop Head; 08-30-2022 at 10:04 AM.
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Three interesting videos from Open Studio’s Adam Maness about substituting chords with 6th chords. He is a pianist, so some things are quite piano specific, but most things are adaptable to guitar, especially the substitution principles. (Invert drop 2s only, leave out of closed voicings — unless you’re Johnny Smith LOL)
What Adam is not talking about in those videos as far as I see: When you substitute with a sixth chord you can always use the diminished of the according sixth diminished scale as passing chord between inversions of that sixth chord.
And as a spicy bonus a special way of borrowing: borrow three notes from the “other” chord of a sixth diminished scale while harmonizing a melody:
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Gonna start working on some BH. Enough's enough with the boring chords lol. This guy does good applied demonstrations. The demo is at the end. My teacher, Tony, showed me diatonic chord melody and I think if I add some BH it will be great.
Here he applies it melodically in the demonstration.
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 08-30-2022 at 04:46 PM.
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
If I had to characterise the BH line method it’s a set of tools you can use to make scales into music and streamlining changes for maximum freedom; a bit of a missing link as far as I can see. They are all pretty applicable to chord scales. (Otoh chord scales do have daft names.)
I would characterise Barry as a ‘parent scale’ or ‘derivative’ scale guy; Allan Holdsworth is similar in some ways which I find interesting. You have a small number of scales and deal with practicing those in a million ways and applying every which way.
Stephan sounds interesting. I’ll have a look when I feel I need more input to think about! Atm I’m already failing to practice the stuff I already know about haha. (The proliferation of really good Barry Harris channels is the reason I don’t do Barry Harris content much anymore btw.) I’m sure Berliner talks about Sheila somewhere; need to dip back into that book.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
[There is another interesting book “Basic Mediantic” (available in English as well) where he shows a way to play (mainly) seventh chord arpeggios as improvisational skeletons over every chord according to certain principles and fill those with the remaining chromatic material, e.g. D–7 – G7 – Cmaj7 would become D–7 – D–7 – E–7, just two shapes a whole step apart. This might be close to Martino’s method, not sure.]
But it took me thirty years to discover Barry who stressed “rhythmically correct” playing, meaning chord notes fall on beats and passing notes fall on “ands”, as can be practiced in his scale outlines for chord changes of tunes (that give you form, chord changes and basic improvisational material) and in his half-step rules (recently it dawned to me that the use of more than one — two or three — added half-steps to a 7th scale outlines a dominant 7/9 chord. The 7th scale a.k.a “mixolydian” is the only major “mode” that got its own name.)
Of course syncopation exists (the word be-bop describes ending a phrase on an “and”) but it is good (not only for the absolute beginner) to remind oneself through practice where the chord tones are in relation to their neighbours.
Regarding “Db scale but with the G”: In his video on ATTYA Isaac Raz uses Db major as first and “Ab from the 4th” as second choice. He talks about his personal preference of Db as short modulation to the key of Db. Maybe it was Barry’s preference as well and that was why he derived the name from Db (“but with the G”) in this case instead from Ab (“from the 4th”) as one would think. Speculations. I vaguely remember Isaac Raz or Shan Verma talking about Ab7 as passing chord preferred by Barry to the Db which would speak for the stressing of the Db tonality from which “Ab from the 4th” would be a deviation. Speculations again.
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Israeli pianist Alec Katz has posted on his YouTube channel some longer videos from a BH workshop in The Hague (not included in those videos uploaded by the late Frans Elsen):
Moffa Mithra
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