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If you analyze Birds solos, you don't hear many ascending chromatic scale passages. Most chromatic scale passages are descending. It seems to me (from the aprox 100 Parker solos Ive transcribed) he ascends quite often on what Barry calls triads and chords and descends quite often on the chromatic "extra half steps".
Just my observation.
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06-25-2019 08:26 PM
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Originally Posted by Petimar
I am sure for those with formal training this is “Building Jazz Lines 101”, but I had no idea it was so central and consistent. That would explain why BH doesn’t have any guidelines for ascending lines (chromatic or otherwise).
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
(I have long argued that a comprehensive theory of music is actually not a lot of use to the musician anyway)
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To me the second one describes the device using more broadly applicable principles. It's based on chord function, substitution, expansion of harmony within a key with secondary dominants. These are central (tonal) musical dynamics that pop up everywhere and applied in various other contexts. They are very practical and very easily "hearable" theory concepts.
The first one on the other hand to me describes more isolated rules. Yes it might be easier to acquire and apply for someone completely new to music theory. But I think a little bit of investment in studying some basic theory (1/10000 of the time needed to master jazz) pays off in the end.
If you've already studied some theory as many people on this thread have I believe, doesn't it make BH concepts more readily relatable to view them in terms of the more conventional understanding of music?Last edited by Tal_175; 06-26-2019 at 07:00 AM.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
http://www.downbeat.com/digitalediti...art/DB1509.pdf
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As I said, I like the tools Barry Harris provides. I benefited from them and still do. I'm not disagreeing with their pleasing sound making potential. But my point is they are perfectly explicable using the standard theory. I think it would make BH concepts more readily digestible and accessible to wider music community to talk about them in terms of more generally understood theory.
I see the benefits of his material, I just don't see anything that's lost in translation when they are discussed in the more conventional ways.
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Originally Posted by Tal_175
First point: Barry's method and nomenclature is way simpler and more easily graspable than the conventional one.
Second point: Barry's method tells you how to generate and use these sounds. The conventional method doesn't.
Sure, as Berkman shows, it is possible (having first generated the sounds as Barry shows) to rename them in conventional terms. But it is far from clear that there is any utility in doing so. As Berkman says in the article, you don't need to memorize these unusual chord qualities because, using Barry's ideas, you can simply generate them on the fly.
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
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It separates the wheat from the chaff for a particular style. The benefit being we can spend more time practicing and less time studying if this is the style we want to pursue. Otherwise, of course, you can never know too much. It can never hurt, but it might not necessarily help
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The main problem is that chord symbols are shit (necessary evil, but shit), and modern jazz theory is obsessed with them.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by joe2758
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Music is movement not chords.
-BH
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Originally Posted by Petimar
Use them to communicate what is necessary, no more. So we can write out a simple version of a song that can be used for embellishment, or a more complex version, or obviously use staff notation where it would be easier to do so.
But at no point should any jazz musician imagine that any published chords for a song represent more than an imperfect rendering of one version of the harmony for the song, a cheat sheet at best. This stuff has gotten out of hand.
I don't have the scholarship to know for sure, but I would hazard I guess at the history of chord symbols to be that they originated as a very simple aide memoire - so like the verbal description you might make of a standard - 'oh yeah it's C, then E7, then A7, then Dm' - just basic chord colours. The rest is left up to your ears and taste.
Where the chords started picking up extensions would have been in the big band charts. Some arrangers for reasons I can't really fathom (these are swing charts where you are expected to play straight 4s) put the horn parts into the upper extensions of the chord symbols. This extends the system.
So later, you get the Real Book. The RB is written by musicians versed in chord scale theory, so they look at something like Chelsea Bridge and write out the chords, say Bbm(maj7) Abm(maj7), perhaps Ebm9, Ab13 - to reflect the notes in the melody. This is important to these guys because that chord symbol dictates which chord scale to use, whereas in the old days a piano or guitar would lay down a shell voicing and leave you a bit of room. (In fact Basie used to leave the 7th out of a IV7 chord and instead play a 6th to allow the soloist to improvise diatonically over the chord if they wished.)
But the RB is still inconsistent in using chord symbols this way even in the present edition - the older simpler approach prevailed at least a little. Today's charts - such as found in the New Real Book - fastidiously honour the melody notes in the chord chart.
Now there's nothing 'wrong' with any of this, but notice how the usage of chord symbols varies - from a simple sketch of the harmony of the song, to a style of symbol that integrates the melody and chord together into some chord/scale relationship. You don't have to know the melody, because the chart tells you which extensions to include to avoid clashing with it. However the same template is used for soloing - so if you see a 7#11 in the chart, you play the requisite 7#11 notes, never mind the function of that chord.
That's what I mean when I say jazz has become the study of chord symbols.
It's also a notation that presents a very vertical approach to jazz harmony. Each chord is an island. This is needless to say anathema to Barry's approach, and indeed the music of that period. 40s, 50s and 60s jazz musicians were not thinking in chord symbols in this way. Most of the old guys seem to have thought in straightforward basic functions.
Now you have iRealB which many musicians use on gigs - the song has become the chord symbols...
You know, people find it odd that Joe Pass couldn't or wouldn't name the chords he was playing beyond - that's a G7 - but I totally get it. I play loads of chords that I don't have a good symbol for, and it's all straight-ahead jazz stuff.
In the same way as we Barry students play on an F7 chord, but what comes out is all sorts of related harmony and melody, related by the chords, triads and arpeggios of the scale, the added notes, the intervals, the lower neighbours, surrounds, 5-4-3-2-1 phrases, the brothers and sisters, and so on. At no point do we really think about whether we are playing b9 or #whatever over what chord, because we are having way too much fun making good sounding jazz music.
Jazz is a decorative art. You can't decorate if someones done the place up for you.Last edited by christianm77; 06-26-2019 at 04:24 PM.
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Originally Posted by A. Kingstone
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Last edited by A. Kingstone; 06-26-2019 at 07:03 PM.
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Originally Posted by rlrhett
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Hey there thanks for leaving all these amazing resources. I had to edit this post because the Sucuri web protection is blocking my ability to reply from all my browsers and devices.
Basically, A. Kingstone was wonderful enough to post for me the Drop 2 voicings. But I can't understand how the heck to get my 2nd and 3rd fingers to spread wide enough to hit the notes. Is there a standard practice guitar players use to get those fingers to stretch, or is there some trick I should know about? I'm a new player, though I can play Barry Harris movements fairly well on piano and trumpet. Even this first chord seems impossible for my 2nd and 3rd fingers to stretch across the fret:
Here is the message that A. Kingstone has just posted:
***************
Middle 4 Strings - Drop 2
1- CGAE
2314
2 - Same
3 - Same
4 - Same
5 - Same
b6 - Same
6 - AEDC
1312
7 - 2314
***************Last edited by Squirrel; 08-04-2019 at 01:56 AM. Reason: Sucuri is blocking me
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Middle 4 Strings - Drop 2
1- CGAE
....2314
2 - Same
3 - Same
4 - Same
5 - Same
b6 - Same
6 - AEGC
.....1312
7 - 2314Last edited by A. Kingstone; 08-05-2019 at 08:35 AM.
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That stretch is the toughest of all . Try Drop 2 - Middle 4 Strings higher up, say F6 or G6.
This is easier - F6o Drop 2 - Top 4 Strings
1- FCDA
....1324
ALL Diminished Shapes 1324
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Tough stretch but your hand will adapt with practice.
RIP Nick Gravenites
Today, 05:48 PM in The Players