Official Barry Harris Thread

[pamosmusic]

I’ve been known to hit that Bb over the F chord. I wouldn’t consider it a key change since it’s just F major over an F major chord, which is diatonic to C.

I dunno, I’m also ignorant to all the jazz rules and vocabulary.

I believe we’re talking about the distinction between using the B and Bb. Bb would sort of imply a modulation, but also you’re not missing the point here. It’s a very closely related key and Bbs are common over Fmajs that are definitely not outside C major, and #4s are quite common over tonic chords. So it’s six of one, a half dozen of the other an a lot of ways, and mostly we’re talking about a mental/aural orientation that makes a practical difference on the margins.

I am firmly in the camp of You Do You on this one.

[Christian Miller]

I believe we’re talking about the distinction between using the B and Bb. Bb would sort of imply a modulation, but also you’re not missing the point here. It’s a very closely related key and Bbs are common over Fmajs that are definitely not outside C major, and #4s are quite common over tonic chords. So it’s six of one, a half dozen of the other an a lot of ways, and mostly we’re talking about a mental/aural orientation that makes a practical difference on the margins.

I am firmly in the camp of You Do You on this one.

100%

It’s been baked into the very sense of key for ever - the idea of key being a scale being quite a modern idea really - very modern. What we think of as tonal music really saw those sort of mild chromaticisms (Bb and F#) as part of the key rather than modulations per se. And of course it shows up in jazz. Later theory bangs on about secondary dominant chords and so on, but really it comes out of the melody, and the standard basses people would write. Tonicising the II in something called ‘a Fonte’ was very typical. This is preserved in jazz language. If you’ve noticed bebop turnarounds in Bach, this is why.

The middle 8s of Alone Together or Night in Tunisia are classical fontes. Tonicise IIm, tonicise I in modern terms

Barry was ALL about this stuff. Classical music was very important to him.

Modern guitar players I think have very limited exposure to trad western tonality generally compared to pianists. It can be a bit confusing if you are used to the tonality of pop/rock music.

I know it was true for me - I don’t feel I grew up with it. My early background was more in modal and rock/pop based music. The Beatles, Zeppelin, and so on (boomer parents) rather than Mozart or GASB. Vamps, V7sus chords, bVII7s ….

Trane made sense to me right away, Bird less so.

Took me years!


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[Christian Miller]

I mean if I had to pinpoint birds harmonic style apart from say Prez, I’d say it was in that tonicisation of the ii chord. With a VI7b9


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