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Well that JS Bach fella played the organ too….
Just saying
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02-22-2024 04:24 PM
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Yeah, I'd better get it together.
(Bach improvises a 4 part fugue.)
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Yeah also I feel like this is true for everything but especially for chords/harmony … something doesn’t always need to be literally applicable to be super useful and really interesting or influential in the things I actually play.
Like spending some real time on this might change the way I think about improvising in some small but interesting way. Who knows.
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There is an unstated insult to great players like Ted Greene-Jimmy Wyble-George v Eps-Steve Herberman here. Steve alone has MULTIPLE classes on counterpoint alone.
Anybody who has studied jazz seriously knows the first principle of becoming one with your instrument is to realize that, at any given point, at any moment on the fingerboard, the availability of the applicable CHORD-ARPEGGIO-SCALE must be immediately accessible and interchangeable.
The guy criticizing BH doesn’’t know crap about it, saying “no one uses it”. Pasquale Grasso and Roni Ben-Hurr certainty do. Learning the INVERSIONS (definitely drop 2, drop 3, drop 2 and 4) across all string sections and groups is integral to BH. Roni Ben-Hurr has a 3 hour video called CHORDABILITY that my teacher thought was very useful to teach us chords-grips. It was all drop 2-drop 3-drop 2 and 4.
Personally speaking, if one is going to play solo guitar, one has to have a serious overall harmonic and fingerboard framework internalized. I’ve worked really hard to base any song I play using the BH system.
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As if BH is so tough to grasp. It isn't understanding it that is the challenge, it's actually working it into your facility. I haven't heard much fluency with it on this forum. I didn't say no professionals use it.
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”As if BH is tough to grasp”. Here you say it’s “ADVANCED STUFF” that we shouldn’t bother until we work out our inversions.
Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
So which one is it? Anyone who has seriously worked with the BH material, which is nothing more than ensemble of fundamental-elemental materials that are progressively assimilated, knows that you have to work out all the “inversions with the melody on top” when you try to integrate the BH concepts. So that tells me you don’t really know what BH teaches. And the first thing we’re taught is, of course, “understanding” alone is useless, we have constant;y do it and internalize it with constant repetition until it becomes muscle memory. That should be obvious., captain.
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I already explained. Or were you too busy raging? The difficulty comes from working chord movements into your facility for each beat rather than the usual longer amount of beats the chords to the tune usually pass, half a measure, full measure, 2 measures etc. The challenge is technical, not intellectual. Yes, I'd still say the majority of the players on this forum would do better with just practicing chord melody using the normal spacing of chords to the tune without adding more complexity. You can be plenty musical with that. I do think the BH system is very beautiful if you can get it into your playing. The labyrinth of limitations guy is very creative with it, making melodic chordal BH ideas rather than only going along the scale of chords linearly.
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 02-22-2024 at 11:57 PM.
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Yes, I think Thomas Echols, the L of L guy, is GREAT. I’ve championed him here. He uses the “elevator” system, which incorporates the open voice drop chords with triads and dyads to…wait for it…HARMONIZE the TOP NOTE. Like Alan Kingstone, Roni Ben Hurr, Pasquale Grasso, they all teach BH’s “Scale of Chords” system. In order to property learn the Scale of Chords System, you have to internalize all the inversions and root positions for triads-spread triads-drop 2s-drop 3s-drop 2 and 4s. I don’t know what “normal spacing chords” are, but the BH Scale of Chords system is a GREAT way to learn the conventional open voiced “Drop system” inversions. In fact, it’s’ mandatory. So if you are counterposing the regular drop system of inversions with the “melody on top”, Barry already has that covered. That tells me you are dismissing the BH system without really understanding it.
I studied with the best jazz and classical guitarist in Chicago. He didn’t teach the BH system. But he used Roni-Ben Hurr’s “Chordability” to teach chords-chord inversions associated with the drop voicing system. On a couple of occasions, I got to meet Oscar Ghiglia, the great Maestro, though my teacher. One time, Oscar was expounding on the most fundamental harmonic movement and aspect to western tonal music: the V7-I cadence. Thomas Echols is an actual student of Maestro Ghiglia. In fact, BH’s system is probably an elaboration of the V7-I. That’s why you can use the diminished chord when the harmonic rhythm is slow- or as you say, “the usual longer amounts of beats a chord passes”. You are creating little V7-I movements even on a static chord.
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I use the BH 6/dim stuff quite a lot, it’s a good way to harmonise any melodic line (so very handy for chord melody/solo guitar), also good for playing Wes-type chord solos (he seems to have used a very similar approach to Barry’s).
I recently got interested in doing some big-band arranging and it really came in useful there too. (Because it’s also a common arranging method.)
How early one should jump into this kind of thing I’m not sure, in my case I didn’t really discover the BH stuff until much later on. (Internet was not a thing when I started!)
No harm in trying things out and saving them for later if they’re too advanced, I guess. At least it might introduce you to concepts you hadn’t thought of, or make you look at things a different way.
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BH 6dim system is actually perfect for beginners to chord-melody. It's a theoretically clean, technically tidy simplification for creating chordal motion and harmonization. There are many approaches to passing chords, substitutions and (re)harmonizations. For example Wes would also harmonize, say, D minor with inversions of Dmin and E min and do the opposite to harmonize major chords (in this case C major). You can also drop the substitution and inversion concepts all together and view the motion as constituting of bass, melody and middle voices. Another approach is to superimpose various cycles over individual chords (like Conti's source code). But they are theoretically looser concepts that rely more on experimentation.
BH's system also goes much further than just alternating diminished and 6th inversions. Like almost everything BH taught, it's a starting point for your explorations.Last edited by Tal_175; 02-23-2024 at 09:17 AM.
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Yeah something in my gut says the BH stuff would be tough for a beginner but I can’t quite put my finger on why … which makes me think at least some part of it would be that most people coming into that material have been taught in a very different way for a while. So it’s hard to say what would happen if that were someone’s first experience w jazz. And even if it were a little harder, most jazz stuff is pretty hard, so I’m not sure if there’s a huge cost to starting with Barry stuff if the end result is more satisfying.
The single note stuff would be tough just because of the tempos he asks on things out of the gate … he expects those basics to be very together, it seems.
Though someone with the first hand experience could correct me on either point
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When I refer to beginners, I don't mean beginners to guitar or jazz. I mean beginners to arranging or improvising chord-melodies.
The single note stuff is not hard to practice on your own. What was hard for a BH beginner was to show up to a BH workshop and try to keep up with students who've been working on the stuff for much longer.
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Whether the end result of BH single note and chord-melody approaches are more satisfying than other approaches or not depends on personal preferences. Some people remain entirely within the BH universe, for others BH is matter of musical and conceptual diversification. I'm more in the second camp.
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Yes I kind of mix in BH stuff with what I already knew before that, plus I use some quartal chord stuff to vary it a bit and avoid using the diminished sound all the time, it can sound a bit 1940s/50s at times. Which is not a criticism, just that I want to get other sounds too (like getting as far as the 1960s!)
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You should at least know (= being able to hear) the chords on the steps of the major scale and the minor scales, basic II-Vs and turnarounds, dominant and II-V chains and tritone substitutions before starting with Barry's stuff. I only discovered his methods about 5 years ago and sometimes wish I had discovered it earlier. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Yes, absolutely to the above: as I said, the BH system is a great way to play so called “chord melody” and arrange and improvise over tunes using block chords that are internalized as so-called grips. What I like about this book is its goal to seamlessly transition from three note structures to lines and so forth. To break down and dissolve and transition from chords to lines. This is what Thomas Echols does with his Elevator System, by the way.
A wonderful sense of freedom is the ability to transition seamlessly and effortlessly, in an improvised way, from three and four-note structures to dyads (octaves, 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths, 9ths, 10ths, 11ths, etc—of these, I woud say octaves-3rds, 10ths, 6ths and 13ths are more vital) to single note lines. In order to achieve this, to arrive at this, all kinds of movements are to internalized, i.e, transformed into muscle memory, so they can be executed effortlessly, without thinking, as if it was second nature.
Or, as Barney Kessel said, “the instrument has to be transformed into a comfortable pair of house slippers”.
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Oh yeah that’s the context I’m using for “beginner” too. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Barry's classes were a roast.
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I think a preoccupation with drops can be problematic. Good material to know ultimately, not the best jazz guitar chords for basic B jazz guitar. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
(Is it just me or is comping in drop 2's really annoying? The chords always seem to end up where I'm wanting to play my lines haha.)
That's emulating horn and piano stuff on guitar, always more challenging.
OTOH not every guitarist to study with Barry is trying to sound like a pianist.
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I think it'd be a good idea for a "non-drop must know jazz chord grip" thread... Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Like the 736(13)R 13th chord voicing on the inner strings...man I love that one
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Yeah that’s actually something I’ve found particularly useful. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I hate playing drop 2s … I don’t mind the sound but I have chronic wrist stuff that I have to really keep in check and the drop 2s ALWAYS aggravate it eventually.
Do a lot of the time what I do is play drop 2s with the tenor voice removed.** It covers the same string sets as the shell voicings so it’s super useful for bass motion when I’m playing duo or something. But for two inversions I’m dropping either the third or the seventh so they can sound a little dull if I’m just comping … but they work quite well w the Barry stuff because the idea is motion. So if one voicing doesn’t have the third, the next one will, so the cumulative result is nice and colorful even if each individual chord is not.
** in a sixth diminished scale, this amounts to a spread triad in first inversion.
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What I learned from studying Barry’s materials is you should always have material or, to use a pottery example, ample clay on hand, you can mold. Same way Barry viewed something like the “5432” system. It gives you something to play at any given moment that you can use and mold. The chief way of molding it is rhythm. Rhythm and phrasing are the most important aspects to this music. Not what scale over what chords. Grips are elementary, basic things everyone should have in their muscle memory. Just like learning licks. With the “scale of chords” you combine both actually-grips played as licks, as lines. I.e, a block chord solo. There’s been some articles written analyzing Wes, and how much his work, methodology, and how his output basically paralleled Barry’s thinking. Wes used a lot of block chords and grips, they were his meat and potatoes. More up and down the neck than across. But he used them, as he used everything, pretty much perfectly. Wes is the standard for our instrument.
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The genius of the 6th diminished system is for each chord type, the movement within that chord including all voicings, extensions, substitutions, passing chords (diatonic or dominant) are all viewed within the scale. You're encouraged to see the whole fretboard, vertically and horizontally in relation to the chord. You can build voicings by adding notes horizontally or vertically to any voicing, you can use 2 notes, 3 notes or 6 notes, all come from the harmonic function of the chord. That scale is your white keys in that harmonic context and it includes tensions.
Drop voicings are there to protect the student from all that fretboard (or keyboard) complexity all at once. You'll have the rest of your life to discover the possibilities.
Note this is very different than the traditional view of this stuff where diatonic passing chords, functional substitutions, tonicisations etc are viewed as separate chords applied with certain rules. In the 6h diminished system all these chords are seen as different scale tones (potential voices) of the chord. It allows smooth transition between seeing the harmony as moving voices and as grips. Not to mention, the chords you can build go beyond the chord symbol system.Last edited by Tal_175; 02-23-2024 at 12:50 PM.
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Yeah, I'm into this. Now that I'm studying big band rhythm jazz guitar I'm looking for exactly this. Grips to get me through a sheet. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I think it'd be a good idea for a "non-drop must know jazz chord grip" thread...
Like the 736(13)R 13th chord voicing on the inner strings...man I love that one
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I;ve been working on playing Families together, interchangeably, at any given position and across string sets: to seamlessly interchange from any of G7-Bb7-Db7-E7 and/or Dm6-Fm6-Abm6-Bm6. To go from Fm6 to Bb7, what is that? It’s the good old back door dominant in C. I can use this on any song, with some basic degree of skill, not quite absolute fluency. But it’s a progress. I am thankful I took the time to practice Barry’s stuff extensively, every day, for the past 2 years. It takes a LONG time to internalize it! Originally Posted by Tal_175
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