ABOUT
What you will find herein are the structural components, as mapped out and developed by jazz giant Barry Harris, that will guide and aid you on your own personal road to discovery. Imagine, a system for learning jazz harmony that actually embraces the concept of improvisation.
As I see it, there are two paths for a chord player to go down. Either one becomes a “hitter” or, one becomes a “mover”. The “hitter” sits up and works out a couple of beautiful sounding voicings for each kind of chord (or worse, learns someone else’s from a method book) – and from that point on, plays them exactly the same way. These vertical groups of notes are “hit” or “struck” on the instrument – with no thought to creating movement. The “mover” on the other hand, understands that chords come from scales and thereby learns to approach chording in a more fluid fashion. As well, one realizes that the interesting spots in music, whether you are comping, harmonizing a melody or writing an arrangement, are the places in between the chord symbols. In fact, I prefer to think – movement-to-movement – as opposed to chord to chord. When was the last time you listened to the symphony, for instance, and said oh yeah, Am7b5 – D7. It’s not that the classical folks don’t play chords, they just know something about getting from one to the next in an unobvious manner. Suddenly the musical ceiling gets raised and points us back to the purpose behind this book.
Having had the pleasure of seeing Alan grow musically over the past 20 years, I am delighted that his insightfulness and hard work have found their way into a form that others can benefit from. I am confident that guitarists everywhere who are fortunate enough to pick up this book will thank him again, and again. Howard Rees
- Drop Voicings
- Common Chord Types & Their Sixth Equivalents
- More Movement: Home & Away
- Major to Minor to Minor with the 6th in the Bass
- Brothers & Sisters
- Monk Moves
- Borrowing (On the Sixth Chord)
- Surrounding
- Borrowing On the Diminished Scale
- Practising Scales
- Putting the Pieces Together: Like Someone in Love
