Stop Using Scales 

Wow, I'm going to try that out!!! Because I'm still trying to figure & understand the fretboard for Jazz and composing original music. I really like that solo idea!!! Thank you so much for sharing that!!! ❤️🐱🤗🤗🤗❤️❤️

delay n reverb are your friends

Effects plus open strings, thumb and different tricks to get those sonorities you're after. The extensions can sound cool in pairs fourths or fifths separate from voicing the lower chord tones

11:13 for example stuff like this

This was a brilliant reply

Yes, we can rarely play major or minor seconds in our chords like pianists, but we can play spread voicings that are physically impossible for most pianists.

Upper octave 3 is such a great way to sum up that signature ringing jazz guitar chord sound, thanks 👍 Can’t speak to intelligibility for keys-only players, I did wind then guitar before keys, but it definitely made me go “oh yeah, that, I do that a lot”!

Thanks for the extensive explanation!

Totally! The piano with the desk in the middle is a great idea. It would be nice to visually see the notes being played too!

Yes! Now I just need a friend who also plays piano… 😢

@@brianzhamilton you got me baby! 🥴😘

that's what I've always thought

I'm sure you meant otherwise, but "schtick" is a bit derogatory if you're talking about any sort of serious endeavor.

@zdogg8 I understand what you're saying, but I think, well a few things. Sorry if it's a long reply, although you can't say it's not serious. (1) In a way you're seeing it backwards from the way I am. Barry Harris himself hated the formalization and undue reverence of jazz, or jazz theory anyway, and thought that taking it as too serious an endeavor, with modes and charts and theory, etc., was part of the problem, a way for big heads at jazz schools to profit off of it. He always stuck with very informal ways of talking about his ideas. At the same time, (2) nobody was more derogatory to other genres of jazz than Barry. He had strong opinions because he cared a lot about what he was doing, and his language reflected it. Listen to what he used to say about Berklee or Miles & Bill Evans and modal jazz! Derogatory is putting it lightly. Well watch videos like this and decide for yourself on points (1) and (2): ru-vid.coms-ZPdaW0m8E Then (3) I like Barry Harris & his system, so in no way do I think it's trivial, and I still think schtick is fair, but I think any kind of systematization is kind of schtick. Well I started as a Barry Harris skeptic, but he won me over as I got to know him & his system. But I still keep a lot of my initial introduction to jazz piano. In the school I was taught, which came out of David Baker's approach, or the way some people taught him, you didn't want the rules to be too strict, and you wanted to always be a little skeptical of them. You wanted to have some rough guidelines (chord tones on down beats, approach notes, motifs & language, etc.) but you should feel that you have a lot of freedom around them, and rules can take that feeling of freedom away. So from that kind of upbringing, any kind of rules are a schtick and deserve a little skepticism and healthy irreverence, tools you can use, but they’re not sacrosanct. Well I can think of a 4th thing too. It also reminds me of one jazz artist that used to say it's the duty of every upcoming generation playing jazz to not only admire and learn from the giants before them, but also to look down on them and want them out of the way. Of course influence and genius should be acknowledged, but jazz is a living art, and it stays living by wanting to take things in a new direction and get away from "the old sound" and be tired of it. A measured amount of playful irreverence that down pegs that old sound can help keep jazz vital and alive (the same that past masters had for the generation before them), as long as at the end of the day you recognize the greats and why they were great. Well more basically, to sum all of this up, taking something too seriously saps the life out of it and makes it into a cold math problem or some music that arrogant fatcats would sip cognac over in tuxedos who wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room as the artists making that music outside the club. Jazz is alive for me, and Barry Harris more vitality to it than most artists. So I think some informal slang and humanizing and even a little healthy irreverence, if it’s playful and still out of love for the art, is helpful to keep it alive like that. Also talking about the pros and cons of it in exchanges like this are good too. So it’s even good that you bring it up. Strong opinions mean that people really care, and that’s what’s most important. I respect your take though. The tent is big and welcomes all kinds. Also, ultimately the respect I have towards Barry Harris doesn’t have anything to do with what I say, but the fact that his ideas are in my playing and thinking about jazz. You can’t show a jazz pianist any higher respect than that.

@@cademosley4886 As most educated persons know, in the USA, schtick (obviously Yiiddish) is mostly associated with the comic routine of a given individual, and though it has broader applications, those are much more rarely employed, so it refers to comedy or something that resembles or reminds one of the comedic. While, certainly, you are entitled to your own opinions, and however you might want express those, still, I don't think Barry deserves that, nor any serious jazz artist, quite frankly, (and I did assume, at the gate, and I did express the idea, prominently so, that you probably did not mean it that way), not when you talk about something he takes quite seriously, no matter how light-heartedly he might deliver those lessons. I'd been in Barry's workshop, one time, but that really is neither here nor there, I would say the same no matter who it was regarding the serious teaching of jazz. When one has chosen to leave his country, city, state to go teach others, as Barry had done, even into his nineties, you're not fooling around. Barry was quite opinionated and could say injudicious things, yes, especially regarding Mr. Evans, but two wrongs do not a right make. Bottom line, I've never heard the word schtick employed when talking about the more serious expositors of jazz. Dizzy Gillespie might be an more fitting exception.

Good analogy !

Gitarists can play 6 notes at a time, or am I missing something?

@@whoopwhoop90four fingers, so most chords you’re playing aren’t in tune with the open strings - that’s also explicitly what all these special tunings are for, to allow those open strings to ring and allow 5 and 6 note chords. But then you’re more limited in what you play, retuning for every song. So for maximum tuning flexibility you only have 4 for most situations.

@@kaitlyn__L Ah I see where you are getting at. You can bar several notes with one finger though, less flexibility of course, and less options. Or some guitar players tend to use their thumb to play the low E string, so in that case it is 5 notes at the same time :)

Yeah exactly, the efficiency of the approach comes from the limitations of recording and getting stuff to sound right with a set number of parts. Same stuff happens when you have limited polyphony on a synth.

In thinking from a 12 Tone mentality, subbing the 5 EXTENDED notes AGAINST the chord notes or scale your are thinking, colors it just fine. My meaning is taking the Cmaj7 Scale from an Ionian standpoint and using the NAMING NOTES of the chord which is C and E, adding Ebmin7(11) in a melodic thought sequence, does the same in spicing the ears up. So , I can say the solo centers around the C Ionian Scale, then b9#9b5(#11)#5 and b7 EXTENDS, tweak the ear😂😂

@@Hiphopdabop Hey, cool concept! And once you play altered scale you can spice up the alteration by using the Ionian notes. 😅

Glad you liked it!

Well described!

I'll remember it because the key thing is always to represent 1-3-5-7 but the actual notes, other than the bass, can hinge up or down. Except for between qualities of 7ths.... easy to remember

There's a good RU-vid channel called "Things I've Learned From Barry Harris" worth checking out.

Barry Harris's parallel concept to this is what he calls "borrowed notes". Basically BH works with pairs of two chords at any given time, and one of them is always a fully diminished chord. If you take Cmaj6 (CEGA) and Ddim (DFAbB) you have effectively split the C major bebop scale into two chords (C D E F G Ab A B). As for borrowing - its the same thing that these guys are talking about but you are specifically borrowing one of the notes from the other chord in the pair. So in Cmaj6, you can raise the A to Ab and thus "borrow" Ab from the diminished chord.

That sounds really interesting. Can you expand on that? Where can I find more info?

Thanks. There's no more info anywhere because I made it up! What questions do you have? What I'm assuming is given is to use rhythmic vocabulary to phrase in short and long sections. Practice the topics individually to the tune or chord pattern you're working. Just work the scales, just work the arps, just work intervals. Chromatics are harder to practice. They can be viewed as approaches or enclosures. Then create a pattern using several of the topics and work it out. Such as chromatic leading tone into an arpeggio up and then a scale down. Or an interval into scale passage. I can make a video if you want. Here's a Pebber Brown video on intervals that inspired me to make the paradigm of complete melody shape. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5B5IhqT3q-8.html Here's a video which demonstrates Barry Harris's teaching of scales, arps, and chromatics. Add intervals for how melody is actually shaped in the wild in music. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-R-d4PmAXsms.html Let me know if you want me to make a video demonstrating the whole thing.

The state of music education if normal practice of basic techniques is explained like someone's made up individual routine.

Yep. No offense taken. It is kind of silly that noone can explain melody. I had to scientifically figure it out on my own. I've literally never heard it explained accurately. I mean somewhere, some good teacher probably is doing it justice, but it damn sure isn't common.

@@clintjones9848the part about practicing approaches and enclosures reminded me of all the saxophone fingering exercises I was taught 20 years ago, which stuck in my ear and made their way into my guitar and keys playing and seemingly came out of nowhere for those teachers haha

One of the great all-time underrated geniuses

It's about listening not looking

@@balcomoz You're right, but there are situations where both listening and looking are warranted and helpful for those that can't pick it up just by listening.

I’d agree that would actually be ultimate value for both visual and audio learners ❤

They do that in the Open Studio videos. I think they just don't have that production for this since it's intended format is a podcast.

Agreed. I'd have to watch this a bunch of times, maybe slowing it down, to get the concept. I mean, it sounds like it could simplify aspects of harmony on the fly, but with the guys completing each other's thoughts, speaking in incomplete sentences and going from one thing to another so fast, there's something fundamental to this concept that I'm just not getting. When Adam says to hinge from the root to the nine I'm like, what? I think that's the first thing I need to grasp. I'm also a visual learner, so that may be part of it for me.

That is a jazz concept that Barry Harris (and also modal players like Mccoy Tyner) developed. It has always been present in jazz to the extent that the II chord serves the same function as the V chord. Therefore the same voicings used iver the V chord csn be used over the II chord

P.S. The comment about thinking like a guitarist was helpful in relation to this ..