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Firstly I'd like to acknowledge what a great inspiration he has been and even though I am under the age of 30 and have only recently become acquainted with his material, I still can't believe such a giant of this music has passed.
Was just wondering how well the Barry Harris method to learning to improvise would work when approaching fusion tunes such 500 miles high, La Fiesta and Spain (yes I'm currently on a Chick Corea binge) or on tunes by Weather Report, Mike Stern and such. I know a lot of these guys had a grounding in more "traditional" jazz growing up and whilst I haven't yet transcribed any of this material (I have mainly been transcribing the bebop greats but I'm thinking of taking a break and transcribing another era for a while to break up the monotony) I suspect I'm going to run into a lot of the same concepts; namely triads, rhythms, approach tones, chromaticism etc.
One thought I had was that Barry seems to emphasise learning to play over movements and not chords, but it seems to me that a lot of fusion seems to be more modal (although I think the above Chick Corea songs I mentioned have plenty of movements, but not sure about the Weather Report material), and I've seen some say that Barry's method isn't that great for modal tunes and that a different approach/mindset may be needed in these instances.
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01-17-2022 12:04 AM
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This should be fun, lol.
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I hope I haven't said anything un-pc with this question
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Nope, not at all. Just a lot of entrenched opinions.
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yeah while probably antithetical to Barry’s taste in music, I have found ways to apply it. I want to apply what I already know wherever I can, and the dominant scale stuff works great on modal vamps and non functional numbers where you get one chord for a bar or more. Take a D Dorian vamp and treat as G7 for instance. Ii V relationship, right?
Originally Posted by Brummy_Guitarist
I think of this is a sort of Cannonball approach to modal tunes. And I who doesn’t love Cannonball?
If you look at many textbooks they will talk
about the ‘bebop Dorian’; in fact this is a mode of the dominant scale in the way we just described G7 on Dm7 (Dorian). If you think about it you might be able to see that not only can you apply all of your dominant bop language on m7 chords, you can also make a bebop Lydian and bebop locrian modes in the same way (Barry didn’t talk about it in this way exactly but the latter was certainly a big part of his teaching.)
This is the IMO best way to use Chord Scale and modal theory btw; you can of course do the exact same thing for your m6 bop lines, as ‘melodic minor modes’.
Secondly any ‘non functional’ tune can be made into a bop tune if you add in some ii Vs lol. Inner Urges first section starts to resemble Tune Up For instance.
I did a video. I keep meaning to do another. It’s not Barry stuff specifically but if you have shedded a lot of dominant stuff (as one would with Barry) this is a way of applying this post modal tunes (not sure why it’s saying ‘video unavailable btw)
Brecker and those guys were very bop influenced in their lines
Another thing; once mastered you can apply the Barry added note rules to ‘bopify’ any mode or scale. Check out the second DVD for more info on how to do this.Last edited by Christian Miller; 01-17-2022 at 07:10 AM.
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I think Spain is pretty functional? Armando’s Rhumba as well. I’ll need to have a look at La Fiesta and 500 Miles High; haven’t looked at those tunes for yonks.
Spain:
I kind of treat the first chord as A7 (‘G Lydian bebop’) and run down to the third of F#7 like a minor ii V (C#m7b5 to F#7) (giving F# ‘Phrygian dominant’)…
note that one note; A l moving to A# is the one that gives you the sort of eight note Spanish scale that combines the F# Phrygian with a major third (A#) but that’s definitely not how we are thinking of it, because the whole point of these conversions is to be able to play bebop on everything.
After that, it doesn’t go to the expected Bm but instead to Em7 A7, so you then move immediately back to A7 again. It’s all just a big V chord functionally…. Until we get to the D
The C#7 to F#7 to Bm is pretty trad (II7 V7 pops up in Armando as well of course) so you can play that as two separate dominants (I’d choose E7 to A7 for the 7b9 sound) or you can just treat it like a Bm ii V I if you like. (Barry trick there.)
Then you have a funny move (‘interrupted cadence’) which is (F#m7b5) B7 to Gmaj7. This can be handled as a straight V-I D7 Gmaj7
Not sure if that makes sense.
In practice I mix up linear bop and more harmonic ideas like intervallic chord scales and triad superpositions etc.
Plus it’s in keeping with the aesthetic of those tunes to be, well, a bit Spanish. So bring on those flamenco scales. While Barry Harris counsels against getting stuck into the harmonic minor, but with Chick that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?Last edited by Christian Miller; 01-17-2022 at 07:48 AM.
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Good video. There is a youtube setting when you upload, ‘allow this video to be embedded in other websites’ or something along those lines, it might be that? maybe you turned the option off somehow. I don’t know if you can change it after it’s been uploaded though. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
(edit: I think it could be the option 'allow embedding', if so it looks like you can switch it back on at any time. It's in the youtube 'Manage videos - edit details' section.)Last edited by grahambop; 01-17-2022 at 12:24 PM.
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Yes I am all about using what you already know and applying it to new contexts. I feel like that's what jazz is at the end of the day, pushing the envelope.
Thanks for that video Christian, really helpful!
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Listening to Spain today and it struck me that a lot of chicks snaky chromatic lines sound very Barry added note scale-like to me, which is to say Bud Powell-like
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You can solo with just the D major bebop scale over Spain’s solo section. That’s what I try to get students to do at first.
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Haha well I was thinking mostly A7 actually… down to the third of F#7 to taste and when required Originally Posted by rintincop
It is in fact the exact same bloody notes
You don’t need to play the A#s though
it gets interesting when you play vocabulary of course. Which is why the A7 is to me more useful; we start with domiannt langauge.
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Sixth Diminished Scales can be used in fusion soloing. I was too dumb not to try it.
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Me too! I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway. Originally Posted by A. Kingstone
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When it comes to treating a D minor as if it was a G7, are saying that all the blue notes, that I can apply over a dominate chord, can be utilized?
Last edited by st.bede; 05-26-2023 at 03:00 PM.
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Either my question is so lame that people are being kind, or it is obvious that I should just see what happens by application. In my sad defense, there are certain things that are not obvious and take a certain approach to make work. Originally Posted by st.bede
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You can play blues licks over anything, in moderation. Parker used to insert them in his bebop lines here and there.
To me they are kind of a separate device in their own right.
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Thank you. I tend to get rigid in application.
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I guess what I am saying is that if you are playing G7 lines in order to deal with a modal tune in Dm (e.g. So What), when you want to play bluesy phrases, they need to be in Dm. I don’t think you can play G7 blues licks on it.
Not sure if that’s what you meant, but hope that clarifies what I was getting at.Last edited by grahambop; 05-27-2023 at 03:04 PM.
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A couple videos that may be of interest....
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Oh, I definitively hope you have! Originally Posted by Brummy_Guitarist
I hope I haven't said anything un-pc with this question
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Here’s my latest offering
this is more about applying Barry harris material on Spain. Which is both straightforward and effective imho.
But you need to know the legendary ‘dominant bebop language’ I always refer to in my videos, which is more covered by the other video above. I’ll probably remake it AGAIN as this is a video I can’t do enough - I’ve done in five or six times already; basic Barry syllabus for line building (and each time I think I get it a bit better). But it’s all in Roni Ben Hur’s book and DVD I basically.
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How do you make it look so easy? That's no kind of jazz face.
Furthermore; has anyone ever seen Jon Oliver and Christian in the same room together.
I thought not.
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I have Manage Videos but nothing called Edit Details. Can you do a screenshot or anything? Originally Posted by grahambop
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My post is over a year old, youtube have probably changed the layout again. I’d need to get on my PC to see it, can’t do that at the moment. I suggest you google it. Originally Posted by ragman1
In any case, you shouldn’t really need it, embedding is always on by default (I have never had to use it).
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We did Spain a couple of years ago in the weekly jam thing and as you say, there’s quite a lot of implied ii-V movement in it, I found I could basically play my usual bop stuff on it, more or less. I think I ended up using a lot of Em based lines, which is much the same as using A7. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I tend to think in minor a lot (like Pat Martino!) for some reason, I’ve always done it.
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