"Six on the Fifth" Barry Harris ... what's the point?

[Jazz+]

I spent an entire day with Mark Levine and Barry Harris in Berkeley, California, in a room in 1987 as the two of them went over their entire systems as the tape recorder rolled. Mark and I later transcribed it. Mark Levine's "The Jazz Piano Book," which I assisted Mark in developing, covered block chording and came out in 1988. I was also the technical editor for Mark's follow-up book, "The Jazz Theory Book," in 1995. Barry Harris's book was published in 1992.

I had already learned all of the block chord jazz theory previously at Berklee in the 1970s, which is where Mark learned it in the 1960s.

[MathOfInsects]

6 minutes ago, Jazz+ said:

I spent an entire day with just Mark Levine and Barry Harris in a room in 1987 and the two of them went over their entire systems as the tape recorder rolled. Mark and I later transcribed it. Mark's "The Jazz Piano Book" which I assited Mark in developing and covered block chording, came out in 1988 and I helped Mark develop it. I was also the Technical Editor for Mark's follow-up book "The Jazz Theory Book" in 1995.   Barry Harris's book was published in 1992.

 

I had already learned all of the block chord jazz theory previously at Berklee in the 1970s which is where Mark learned it in the 1960s.

That's cool. How did you end up in that room? Were you a student of one of them?

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, Reezekeys said:

Since I'm totally ignorant of Barry's teachings, I'm curious - is his stuff geared specifically to playing bebop piano? Or could his concepts be applied by those looking to play more in the Chick/Herbie/McCoy vein? I say this because - and here comes another opinion 🙂 - I see very little utility in learning to play, or concentrating on playing, bebop. It's history, made 80 years ago now. Learn about it, listen to it, understand its significance and impact - yes, yes and yes. Try to go out there and do gigs or make any kind of living doing it - well, good luck. I say this as someone who did listen to a lot of bebop, play (and continue to play) standards the bebop guys played, and very much enjoy playing it occasionally - but I could never have it be the sole focus, or even the major focus of my playing. There's been a lot of development in jazz since the 1940s, and unless you're dedicating yourself to being a "preservasionist" (like Dick Hyman), I can't see anyone, especially younger folks, concentrating solely on developing bebop piano chops. It makes no sense to me.

Barry was very opinionated and in general didn't like Jazz after 1960. Also I won't say the names but he didn't have good things to say about some legendary Jazz pianists.   So Barry mainly is Bebop and Great American Songbook, but his concepts are the fundamentals for Jazz musicians not just pianists to learn.     As for modern players David Berkman and others I've heard teach Barry's concepts and get into how others use Barry's Borrowing technique and sounds in their music.   

 

The thing about Barry's concepts is how many great musician have attended Barry's workshops and don't mention it, it kind of slips out in interviews and in conversations.   Barry is someone who has influenced a lot of musicians. 

 

[Reezekeys]

16 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

Example: to be Pat Metheny’s pianist, you have to be conversant with bebop even though they don’t specifically play it.  It has to be something you’ve digested in your former playing/training.

 

I couldn't agree more. The harmonic, melodic and rhythmic advancements brought by the beboppers formed the basis for pretty much all the jazz that's followed - at least, jazz based on blues and swing. You can even hear some of those characteristics in Cecil Taylor's early music. Herbie, Chick, McCoy, Keith, Bill Evans... all of their music has characteristics whose basis can be found in bebop - they just took those concepts, expanded on them and came up with new concepts - what great jazz players do!

 

I'm not here to tell others what they should like, how they should play or what concepts they should study to be better players - I have enough problems doing that with myself! 🙂 I'll take your word that other pianists have found value in Barry's teachings. If they think it works for them, end of story. I'll only add that I do not share Barry's opinion on jazz after 1960 - and I suspect many other pianists may not either. To each their own.

[jazzpiano88]

14 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

I'm not here to tell others what they should like, how they should play or what concepts they should study to be better players - I have enough problems doing that with myself! 🙂 I'll take your word that other pianists have found value in Barry's teachings. If they think it works for them, end of story. I'll only add that I do not share Barry's opinion on jazz after 1960 - and I suspect many other pianists may not either. To each their own.

 

Agree.  I don't have a dog in the Barry Harris hunt, but agree on the post 60's thing.   The fundamental thing I've found valuable is the derivation of everything from the two whole tone scales, and the 3 diminished 7th chords.    If this is all you get, I think it's valuable. 

 

BTW, Barry's videos with Eli Yamin (Jazz at Lincoln Center) are really fascinating to watch, even if you aren't trying to learn his teachings.

 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

From watching, listening and reading the Barry material that has been referenced here from time to time it seems (to me) that Barry Harris as an educator was very big on offering students a new concept that built on things they probably already knew.  Giving them a path to see something by explaining it in simple and obvious terms that they could quickly visualize while playing to get the desired result.  As opposed to say - explaining it within the context of the much larger theory.  In other words, look at it like this - do you see it?  Play.  

[Joe Muscara]

Despite the OP's confusion about the "added complexity" brought on by this other way of looking at it, much of Barry's teachings as I understand them really simplified the approaches to jazz playing. For instance, his method considers chords you might play outside of the sixth diminished harmony as "borrowing". He even considered the major seventh chord as the sixth but you borrow the 7th from the relative diminished scale. As someone else described above, you can move voices between the sixth and diminished chords and get some interesting tension and resolutions. You can also move in half steps between the two types of chords for those notes and get even more stuff. And all of this is very helpful and usable when you have something like one chord on a lead sheet for two bars. You can create movement with tension and resolution even though the chart doesn't show any.

 

(What I think is really happening is that the diminished chord is hinting at the five-seven of the six chord, because two notes of the diminished chords are the third and seventh of that five chord.)

 

Try this. Play C major 7 with the B on top (C6 with the B borrowed from D diminished substituting for A). Move the B down to A, then to Ab, then back to A. Pretty little movement, right? You can do movements like that with all the inversions of C6 such as having F instead of E as the top note, then do E Eb E. Some you may like better than others, or will work better or worse depending on context.

 

As far as the sixth on the fifth, it's similar. Say your called for chord is C6. Play the G6 aka six on the fifth. Now play the closest C6. You've just played a movement without really changing the chord because you went from what's basically a C9 to a C6, both C chords, by moving two notes. You can also move in half steps, which passes you through a diminished chord (G dim in this case) on your way to the C6. Again, movement without changing the chord, really.

 

That's the point. His method gives you another way to look at this stuff, and options for things you can do especially to create movement. Are there other ways to say the same thing? Sure. Supposedly he got his theories by "reverse engineering" what the greats of bebop did. They may have thought of this in totally different ways. That's fine. Whatever works.

 

I learned all of this stuff from Chris Parks and Adam Maness at Open Studio, mostly via Open Studio Pro but Chris now has prerecorded courses on this on regular Open Studio. 

[Joe Muscara]

On 1/12/2024 at 4:15 PM, Jazz+ said:

Barry Harris's book was published in 1992.

What book? I have never found a book by Barry, but several by various students. 

[16251]

Here's another take I've been formulating for myself as to how I can get more out of Barry's idea of playing 6th on 5th.  It seems like it's his way to label inversions of a chord, in a way that makes them more easily accessible (?) when soloing in the heat of the moment (Again, this is an evolving  idea.)

 

Say I'm approaching a C7 chord. One way to think is a Mixolydian scale and its derivatives, my mind has always struggled with this academic method (I'm not knocking it and am getting better thinking this way.) So, with Barry's way,  I see a Gmin6, I see that shape with a second on top, or I can see E-7b5 with the root being the 3rd of the dominant chord, or see the 3rd inversion, etc. I also can explore the academic idea, instead of Mixolydian, maybe I can think Locrian or min6 for scale ideas (I need to explore this more.)

 

As I said in my first post, I try to add this practice to routine, this way I'm hoping my brain will make connections.

 

I think it is best to work on all of Barry's ideas (1/2 rule, chromatic scale, 54321, etc.)

[CyberGene]

Sometimes I think what diluted jazz to its current state is the mass YouTube-ization, and I don’t mean YouTube literally but rather in more general sense all that ready chewed know-how that is omnipresent in various methods, prescriptions, patterns, licks, calculations, scale-to-finger internalizing and whatnot, you name it. Of course all types of music have strong theory backing it but with jazz it’s ridiculous. That’s probably the art that has suffered the most from turning it into a mass craft. That’s not a rant against jazz though, don’t get me wrong 😀 I have myself swallowed a lot of jazz theory and it brought me knowledge and fun. But also somehow killed the joy too. Or, maybe it’s just one of those days for me again… sorry 🤦🏻‍♂️

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, CyberGene said:

Sometimes I think what diluted jazz to its current state is the mass YouTube-ization, and I don’t mean YouTube literally but rather in more general sense all that ready chewed know-how that is omnipresent in various methods, prescriptions, patterns, licks, calculations, scale-to-finger internalizing and whatnot, you name it. Of course all types of music have strong theory backing it but with jazz it’s ridiculous. That’s probably the art that has suffered the most from turning it into a mass craft. That’s not a rant against jazz though, don’t get me wrong 😀 I have myself swallowed a lot of jazz theory and it brought me knowledge and fun. But also somehow killed the joy too. Or, maybe it’s just one of those days for me again… sorry 🤦🏻‍♂️

The Jazz musicians hated the codification of Jazz from the early days and especially in the 60's when Jazz schools started.   Even today many don't like it.    Today many go to Jazz school, but it's partially because of the lack of places to play but they mainly go to make contacts and try to get their first really pro level sideman gigs.  From all my years working in and being around Jazz education the big names that came out of the schools were the people who only went to polish their skills not to learn the skills.    As the old saying goes about Berklee....  If you graduated you probably weren't that good.    The really good musicians that went to Berklee left after about two years because they left because they picked up good gigs. 

[MathOfInsects]

Once this stuff gets codified and academized it loses the exact element that defined it, which was a reinvention of all the norms. You can't BE the norm and also claim to be a punk knocking over mailboxes. 

Flip side, the "academy" is really the only thing keeping jazz relevant. (Same with classical music.) Otherwise the big-band era would have been its last public hurrah, and bebop would have succeeded in its mission to take the music away from "the people" and put it back in the realm of "musicians only."

But Bebop's "music Olympics" approach to jazz kept me from ever getting over the hump and going full bore (term used advisedly). I can cover a cocktail hour but if it's a true playing-down-of-charts gig my moves get pretty old by song 3. For that stuff you need @Bobadohshe!

The ones really keeping the form alive are doing a bunch of "non-jazz" stuff like looping and playing off-the-rack voicings not usually found in harder jazzbo contexts. Looping DJs who play while they spin might be making the "new" jazz, when we look back on this era from the future. 

[Bobadohshe]

On 1/14/2024 at 9:53 AM, MathOfInsects said:

But Bebop's "music Olympics" approach to jazz kept me from ever getting over the hump and going full bore (term used advisedly). I can cover a cocktail hour but if it's a true playing-down-of-charts gig my moves get pretty old by song 3. For that stuff you need @Bobadohshe!

 

That's a kind thing to say buddy. Of course the way you feel about your own playing is the way I feel about mine. Fun how that works!

[USb6major]

The easiest answer I can say is that the “sixth on the fifth” opens up way more MOVEMENTS than say a stagnant chord. 
i.e C7, if you know the sixth diminished scale on the fifth of C7 is Gmin6, then in Barry’s world you should know the movements  from that Gmin 6th diminished scale. (Gmin6 + A diminished) 

Then its more than just playing Gmin6 and A diminished in their different inversions, there’s the borrowing of notes from each other, it could be one, two, or three borrowed notes. Then there’s the drop 2, drop 3, drop 2+3 movements. The combinations are endless. Any of those could now be played over C7 and because you’ve now learned how to move within the Gm6 dim scale, this now gives a stagnant sounding C7 more “life.” 
This became more clearer to me after I began watching videos from Chris Parks on Youtube “Things I learned from Barry Harris.” 
I’m a jazz pianist, and I thought I had the basic B.H concepts down - until I began following Chris’ Y.T channel. (He’s a fantastic jazz guitarist and student of Barry’s.) His insightful videos have helped break down questions such as the one you’ve asked. 
 

[Legatoboy]

I did like this Barry Harris inspired jazz guitar video based on his solo ideas... I can now use a basic 'enclosure' on all my Dom7's when I want to in my solo line. Pretty easy if you work it through a couple of keys to get it going and get the feel and the sound.... A bit off the Dom 7 chord sub topic about Barry  ... I will play the last grand piano he played next month in a public performance which was less than a week before he passed..  at the Flushing Town Hall, Queens NY  ... maybe some of those advanced harmonic ideas will flow into me better after I play it... .. I said 'maybe' !  I'll bring a little NO Mojo and put it in my back pocket!  I have spoken with Barry once at the Vanguard!  My old teacher told me BArry was a great player, but to never forget he was one of the copiers of Bud Powell in the way that Sonny Stit was to Lester Young (and to 'Bird')..... so! There are many ways to play and learn..... I still think though there is alot to learn from Barry... (RIP)   

 

[Delaware Dave]

On 1/12/2024 at 4:55 PM, Jazz+ said:

Page 1 is from my teaching syllabus

Page 2 not shown, gives examples for Cmi7 b5,  C7,  and C7 ALT (#9 b13)

 

 

 

 

Far out man .....  i dont know how i made it playing this many years without this knowledge.    🚬

 

P.S.  What is a Barry Harris?  Some new cannabis flavor?