The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #76
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    Quote Originally Posted by JensL
    Thank you Mike! That's very nice of you to say so! I flattered that you checked out the video!

    In all fairness to Christian I do like a good discussion and can get a bit lost in them because it's entertaining. Though I do stand by everything I've said about it as a system.

    Jens
    Not at all - thank you, Jens. I think you talk sense.

    I like a good discussion, too - but I don't find online discussion to be as satisfying as I find it (and as you describe it) entertaining.

    On the other hand, as MJ sang, "You gotta put your heart on the line if you wanna make it right."

    Because the heart has its own reasons which Reason doesn't know - even while BH and Uncle Wes (yes, I'll call him uncle) do.
    <em>

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #77

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    Quote Originally Posted by JensL
    So it is great and fantastic and it says so in books and does everything but you can't be bothered giving an example or explaining any of the things you have claimed in your earlier posts? There are some very heavy statements here and there

    The funny thing is that I find that there are things I take from it and use and like, I also don't think it would be too hard to make examples of this?



    Thanks man! Why Argue? Because I teach. I have had a lot of students walk in with 6th diminished stuff that was if not ruining then at the very least confusing how they understood tunes, harmony and basic things about making lines and melodies. That is something that I find really annoying with how this system is presented. It is passed of as a great theory from one of the real bebop cats and it explains everything but most people who try to use it can't and it isn't really coherent as a system. The fact that you refuse to go into details with any of it makes you look like one of those students, but that I can't really know from here.

    Jens
    I see where you are coming from emotionally - I kind of get why you are annoyed, too. The 6th-diminished thing is poorly understood by a lot of people IMO and has generated a lot of confusion on the forums. But then that could be said of any theory.

    And anyone in jazz education is kind of in the business of selling things. This inevitable.

    So well OK, I don't know re the harmony stuff for sure because I haven't got that far with it.

    But having acquired the basics and moved towards understanding some the more complicated examples, as well as exploring the scales from the point of view of improvised two part counterpoint, I can see where I could go with it... That's what I mean about the movement thing - getting away from chords. There's more than one way of doing that, of course.

    The improvisation stuff is extending my language, or at least I'm having tremendous fun exploring it... I think it's a really good way of building language. TBH I don't care about any system any further than how interesting and useful I find it. There's lots of stuff on this forum that hasn't yet interested me, for example. Maybe one day it will, maybe not.

    I certainly don't expect consistency. I'm a musician, not a music theorist. I want things I can USE.

  4. #78

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    I don't know anything about Barry's single-note stuff - would that be 'bebop scales' and the like? I never learned a bebop scale in my life, but I did study bebop solos by the greats and picked up ideas from that.

    As to his chord system, I don't think it's necessarily the right place to start for beginners. There's enough to get to grips with just learning the basic diatonic stuff. To me the BH stuff is something to add into the mix later. (about 30 years later in my case!)
    Yeah his stuff is really just a library of rules and ideas to go about creating lines. It includes what are called bebop scales by David Baker, but it goes a bit further into ways you can add notes and so on, depending on context. One of the things I like about it is that it is all about rhythm.

    It's not an overarching theory in the sense that CST is, and you can find similar groupings of stuff elsewhere, I'm sure, but I do find it addresses pretty much all the changes playing through standards I've come across really nicely.

    The 1-7-1 stuff alone is a terrific way to internalise changes. I like to sing through standards changes like this - it gives me the sound of the changes more easily than if I sing arpeggios, for example.
    Last edited by christianm77; 03-20-2016 at 04:48 PM.

  5. #79

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    Quote Originally Posted by JensL
    Actually I have another take on which 2 chords you can do a lot with in terms of harmonizing and comping, but more about this later this week...

    Jens
    I would like to hear more about this. I'm having a sort of 'Year of the Chord' currently!

  6. #80

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    Is there a particular workshop of his online that is good to start with? Are there a few, and is there a 'good' order to watch them?

    To give you some 'current familiarity' context, I have a copy of Kingstone's book, and started working through it a bit. I recognize the "tonic voicing-diminished passing chord - tonic inversion - dim. passing chord - etc" pattern from Randy Vincent's drop-2 book, though I imagine I'll see some differences the further into the BH thing I get, and I know that's just the boiler-plate knowledge for getting the rest of it down.

  7. #81

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    Roni Ben Hur's book Talk Jazz is a good place to start I think... EDIT: for the single note stuff...

  8. #82

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    Quote Originally Posted by ghoststrat
    Is there a particular workshop of his online that is good to start with? Are there a few, and is there a 'good' order to watch them?

    To give you some 'current familiarity' context, I have a copy of Kingstone's book, and started working through it a bit. I recognize the "tonic voicing-diminished passing chord - tonic inversion - dim. passing chord - etc" pattern from Randy Vincent's drop-2 book, though I imagine I'll see some differences the further into the BH thing I get, and I know that's just the boiler-plate knowledge for getting the rest of it down.
    If you want to get deeper with Barry Harris material, your best bet, apart from attending a number of his workshops in person is to pick up the Howard Rees Workshop videos. Incidentally, the second in the series features forum member Alan Kingstone on guitar:

    Howard Rees' Jazz Workshops | The Barry Harris Workshop Video
    Howard Rees' Jazz Workshops | The Barry Harris Workshop Video Part 2

    You may also want to check out David Berkman's recent Harmony book published by Chuck Sher which has a whole section devoted to Barry Harris. In the context of this thread, it's interesting that Berkman confesses to initially overlooking BH's methods but he's recently become fascinated by their implications.

    Like Christian, I found the most immediately useable aspects of the Rees videos to be line-related. One thing I grabbed and ran with was his idea of the chromatic major scale. Basically, it's a major scale filled out chromatically with a jump back to a previously heard diatonic note wherever a semitone would normally occur in the sequence. For example, a descending F major scale - F, E, D, C, Bb, A, G, F - where the semitones occur between F & E and Bb & A would be transformed into F, (G), E, (Eb), D, (Db), C, (B), Bb, (C), A, (Ab), G, (Gb), F. From this scale, I created a 'looped' ii-V-I exercise using a descending scale that covers the whole range of the guitar and starts on the 7th, 5th, 3rd and root notes respectively:

    Barry Harris &amp; Wes Montgomery-chromatic-major-scale-jpg

  9. #83

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    nice post, PMB.

  10. #84

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    I want to post this here, because it is the most interesting thing I have come across for a long time.

    https://www.artofcomposing.com/aoc-0...eid=588aece28f

    According to this scholar, the important knowledge of great composers from the 'late baroque/early classical era' through to Nadia Boulanger's school was not in functional harmony or counterpoint, but in these 17th/18th century exercises called partimenti. Partimenti (according to this guy) were the key tool that equipped musicians to be able to improvise and compose very quickly according to a set of available licks and material by working from a bass progression. Sound familiar?

    According to him roman numeral analysis, sonata form and other classical theory tropes were essentially inventions of the 19th century academic music world. The great composers did not think in terms of functional harmony at all, according to him, but had a vast array of licks and vocabulary they could use to make music.

    I find the description of this reminds me of the way the Barry Harris system works (the guy in the podcast actually compares it to Aebersold patterns, he also talks about linguistics.)

    To me this is what actual jazz education is about - not about 'rules' or 'theory' but actual examples of language you can use right away.
    Last edited by christianm77; 03-21-2016 at 10:59 AM.

  11. #85

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    I want to post this here, because it is the most interesting thing I have come across for a long time.
    Thanks for posting this. Listening to it now. (More later.)

  12. #86

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    Partimenti style : Instant Mozart


  13. #87

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    Quote Originally Posted by rintincop
    Partimenti style : Instant Mozart
    Fascinating. Thanks for posting that.

  14. #88

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    Thank you, everyone who posted responses to my question about the BH approach. I'm digging into it.

  15. #89

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    Quote Originally Posted by JensL
    Actually I have another take on which 2 chords you can do a lot with in terms of harmonizing and comping, but more about this later this week...

    Jens
    Hi Jens - are you referring to min7 and min7b5 as in your latest YouTube lesson? I looked at the PDF. It's interesting, but I already know this approach from the Barry Harris method.

    Your drop 2 chords on the top 4 strings are the same voicings as Alan Kingstone's 'Barry Harris' chords and are applied in a similar way. i.e. his maj 6 shapes are the same as your min7 shapes, and his min6 shapes are the same as your min7b5 shapes (and are used in the same way to cover dominant, altered and min7b5 sounds).

    The only difference is that you are leaving out the diminished chords which Barry adds to create the steps between the main chords, if I add these in it's identical.
    Last edited by grahambop; 03-25-2016 at 05:01 AM.

  16. #90

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Hi Jens - are you referring to min7 and min7b5 as in your latest YouTube lesson? I looked at the PDF. It's interesting, but I already know this approach from the Barry Harris method.

    Your drop 2 chords on the top 4 strings are the same voicings as Alan Kingstone's 'Barry Harris' chords and are applied in a similar way. i.e. his maj 6 shapes are the same as your min7 shapes, and his min6 shapes are the same as your min7b5 shapes (and are used in the same way to cover dominant, altered and min7b5 sounds).

    The only difference is that you are leaving out the diminished chords which Barry adds to create the steps between the main chords, if I add these in it's identical.
    Thanks for checking out the video!! Makes my day that you do!

    I don't know Alan Kingstones book (I somehow managed to learn jazz almost completely without books ) I had a piano teacher and a guitar teacher point out that you could use these chords like that. It obviously works regardless of it being Drop2 voicings.

    The way it was presented to me was from looking at the upper part of dominant chords and Maj7(9) chords. I explain that in some of the altered scale lessons in a bit more detail because it is very useful to find an arpeggio over an altered dominant.

    Yes you could add a diminished chord to it and get minor and major 6th diminished scales and then use that as a foundation of thinking, but that would just clutter up the usefulness of this with a lot of extra theory that you wouldn't be using anyway when you are trying to play the chords.

    I don't know if I would really describe that is "the only difference" since it would kick out diatonic chords and disguise functions as suspensions etc.. But that is obviously just my opinion

    Jens

  17. #91

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    Hi Jens - it sounds like a system I came up with - I think m7 and m6 personally... Got the idea from Charlie C.

    And yes, you can sequence it in with Barry stuff - (he would say 6 not m7...)

  18. #92

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  19. #93

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    Quote Originally Posted by JensL
    Thanks for checking out the video!! Makes my day that you do!

    I don't know Alan Kingstones book (I somehow managed to learn jazz almost completely without books ) I had a piano teacher and a guitar teacher point out that you could use these chords like that. It obviously works regardless of it being Drop2 voicings.

    The way it was presented to me was from looking at the upper part of dominant chords and Maj7(9) chords. I explain that in some of the altered scale lessons in a bit more detail because it is very useful to find an arpeggio over an altered dominant.

    Yes you could add a diminished chord to it and get minor and major 6th diminished scales and then use that as a foundation of thinking, but that would just clutter up the usefulness of this with a lot of extra theory that you wouldn't be using anyway when you are trying to play the chords.

    I don't know if I would really describe that is "the only difference" since it would kick out diatonic chords and disguise functions as suspensions etc.. But that is obviously just my opinion

    Jens
    But to me they are just chords, I don't really mind whether they are called 6th or 7th, they can fit into different contexts so having got familiar with them, they become multi-purpose. So I don't think about theory or chord names much when I play, once I've got the sounds in my ears and the shapes under my fingers. Adding the diminished chords doesn't clutter it for me, it just fills in the gaps between the main chords. Again I am finding now that I know instinctively by ear when I want to grab a dim chord for a certain note or to fill a gap in the sequence, I don't have to think about the theory.

  20. #94

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    By 'only difference' I just meant that if I add diminished chords in between your sequence of drop 2s on the top 4 strings, the result is identical to the maj 6 dim chord scale in Alan's book, even to the exact voicings used.

  21. #95

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    Military bop scales! 'Give me 20 Dominant scales from the 3rd with 3 added half steps, soldier!'


  22. #96

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    I like the way he refers to gigs as 'performing musical missions as a saxophonist.'

  23. #97

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    But to me they are just chords, I don't really mind whether they are called 6th or 7th, they can fit into different contexts so having got familiar with them, they become multi-purpose. So I don't think about theory or chord names much when I play, once I've got the sounds in my ears and the shapes under my fingers. Adding the diminished chords doesn't clutter it for me, it just fills in the gaps between the main chords. Again I am finding now that I know instinctively by ear when I want to grab a dim chord for a certain note or to fill a gap in the sequence, I don't have to think about the theory.
    It doesn't clutter it for you because you like the dim chords in between and already know the scale and how it sounds that takes time...

    I am trying to teach people that with 2 voicings they can play a lot of different chords. I am not trying to teach the scale. If that is the goal then teaching them 2 scales they have never heard of is not important and would just be in the way.

    Surely you can see that the principle stands well on it's own with out any mention of 6th dim stuff? (it is after all older than the 6th dim scale)

    You should also be aware that the dim chord sound is connected to one style or period and does not fit in all genres of jazz, which can't be said for the voicing idea. You're probably not going to hear a lot of 6th dim from McCoy or Hancock.

    Jens

  24. #98

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    edit: reg. the musical mission specialist
    Last edited by joe2758; 03-25-2016 at 08:42 AM.

  25. #99

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    Actually joking aside, this video covers the BH approach to improvisation in a really through way, using more familiar jazz edu language. Quite dry though - I'd have fallen asleep in that lecture haha...

  26. #100

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    yeah man I couldn't get past the first 3-4 minutes. reminded me too much of work