13Practice and philosophy

Idea 1 of 17

What Barry’s class was like

Barry’s classes have no lesson plan: he picks a tune and a spot and goes, sometimes for two hours on one bridge or one movement, with an enormous vocabulary. He hears every mistake, listens to students’ ideas, and keeps searching for new ways himself. His recordings show exactly what he teaches; he keeps nothing secret.

Idea 2 of 17

Barry dictating lines

In the horn class Barry made up solos, sometimes two whole choruses on Cherokee, Indiana or a blues, and called them out in shorthand: ‘start on this note, run up to here, put two half steps, pivot a chord, come down the important arpeggio’. To keep up, students had to know the small pieces cold. Chris sees this as Barry reverse-engineering his own sound into teachable pieces.

Idea 3 of 17

Learning together

In Barry’s classes a pianist or horn player would often come up with a twist Barry hadn’t thought of; he got excited and had everyone try it. Chris keeps this going: many of his variations come from students and friends, such as a half step before the third, a half step inside the pivot, a reversed surround, chained family runs and Thomas Eccles’ elevator. A group focused on one small thing finds ideas no one person would, while everyone still speaks the same language.

Practise it: Share your versions of a small spot (such as the Lady Bird turnback) with other players and try theirs.

Idea 4 of 17

Small things

There are no big things, Barry said, only small things built on small things, and the best player is the one who knows the little things and can do a million of them. His class could spend hours on one bridge or two bars, so take one tiny spot (the first bar of Body and Soul, the first two bars of a blues, a plain D7) and work it until it is all over your instrument, finding endless ways to play it without changing the idea. For Chris this is what separates masters from great players, and after studying since 1993 he is still finding new things.

Practise it: Choose one movement, chord or device per session, slow the metronome down, and play it every way, in every position, in time, before moving on.

Idea 5 of 17

Put it in a song

Running scales up and down is only the first step; the next, which most people skip, is making pretty lines from them. Barry put everything he showed straight into a song, on the spot and often at a fast tempo, and Chris says there is no point learning an exercise unless you use it in a tune: if you can’t, either you haven’t practised it enough or you don’t believe in it.

Practise it: Every time you practise an exercise, find the spot in a tune where it applies and play it there; build as many phrases as you can on one chord from one or two devices.

Idea 6 of 17

Three phases of learning

Chris learns in three phases: discovery (what a Dutch student calls ‘Barry’s playground’), trying an idea like putting a half step somewhere new; then learning it in several keys and positions; then the stage where it is internalised and comes out on a gig without checking. Something you play all the time is there because you took it through the second phase.

Practise it: Take one discovered idea, drill it in a few keys and positions in a tune such as How High the Moon, and keep it until it comes out unprompted.

Idea 7 of 17

Practise pieces connected to other pieces

Knowing a piece on its own is not the same as being able to use it. Chris checks a piece by joining it straight to another (a surround into a chord up, five notes up then a third, three scale notes into a pivot), and often finds a gap that the piece alone hid. A piece is only truly yours when you can drop it in from any note in any situation.

Practise it: For each new piece, practise it attached to two or three others from every degree, such as scale up three notes then pivot, or a surround then a chord up.

Idea 8 of 17

Make your own vocabulary

After practising one of Barry’s devices, Chris immediately tries to make phrases with it in a real spot, accepting that some will sound bad or corny, and then judges honestly what to keep. Pick a few you like and play them until they become your own stock phrases for a chord type, then refresh them with triplets or half steps. The exercises are vocabulary for making your own sentences, not lines to copy.

Practise it: Take one small idea and improvise with it over one movement, noting the phrases worth keeping; use three or four of them until they are automatic, then vary them.

Idea 9 of 17

Use pieces with taste; disguise them

Practised patterns should not sound like patterns. Chris mixes one triad shape with a pivot or a half-step rule so that it becomes part of the solo (‘disguise it’), and warns that any device used too often, even Barry’s chromatic scale, sounds corny. Use only a taste of each piece.

Practise it: Play a practised figure once or twice at most in a phrase, joined to unrelated pieces.

Idea 10 of 17

One phrase on all four dominants

In class Barry takes a phrase and has everyone play it on each dominant of a progression, such as the rhythm-changes bridge (D7, G7, C7, F7) or the Cherokee bridge. Once you can, you vary it so you don’t repeat the same thing on every chord.

Practise it: Build a phrase on D7 and transpose it to G7, C7, F7; then play it on some chords and leave others with only a few notes.

Idea 11 of 17

Practise keys through tunes

Chris admits he only practises a key when a tune needs it, so he uses tunes to choose what to drill. A minor blues means five minor 6 diminished scales, There Will Never Be Another You means E-flat 6 diminished, All the Things You Are means A-flat 6 to D-flat 6. The goal is still all twelve keys.

Practise it: Pick a tune, list the scales of chords it needs and practise those, so each key is tied to music you will play.

Idea 12 of 17

Exhaust the inside before playing out

Before substituting or playing outside, ask what you can play on the plain scale of the change, such as F#7. Chris finds playing inside harder than playing out, and says playing out is fine as a choice but not because you ran out of things to play inside. A soloist owes the listener something worth hearing over every bar.

Idea 13 of 17

There is no ‘having it together’

Each small idea (triads, thirds, pivots) has endless variations of rhythm, ornament and order. In Barry’s classes, just as you thought you had something, he went deeper into it. Chris treats this as what makes music endless, and a reason to keep finding a new angle on what you already know.

Practise it: Revisit a piece you think you know and vary one thing at a time: rhythm, starting beat, an ornament, the direction.

Idea 14 of 17

Barry gives you the why

Chris contrasts Barry with teachers who say ‘just play this scale over that chord’. Barry’s system explains why a sound works, for example why A-flat minor 6 fits G7, and Chris finds the why itself empowering. Barry also gave a way of thinking rather than fixed licks: even ideas Barry never practised (new half-step placements, pickups) grow from his method, unlike learning one Charlie Parker phrase in all keys.

Idea 15 of 17

Freedom and your own voice

Barry gives small rules rather than licks, so students who learn the same things come out sounding different: none of his students sound like him or each other. Chris treats the masters’ music as a language whose pieces you learn and then use to build your own words and sentences, creating phrases Bird never played instead of stringing together memorised licks. The rules are tools that free you rather than box you in, taste is the final judge, and the method works for improvising in any style, with lines and with chords.

Practise it: Build your own phrases from Barry’s tools instead of only copying solos, then listen back and judge them by how they sound.

Idea 16 of 17

Teach Barry’s material accurately

Chris pushes back on online teaching that misreads Barry: soloing with the six diminished scales, ‘reharmonising’ the major scale, treating the scales as a trick, or calling 5-4-3-2 ‘5-4-3-2-1’. Teachers owe their students accuracy and the context of each idea, and should be honest that they are still learning. Put your own spin on the material only after you have understood it.

Idea 17 of 17

Barry’s lineage and career

A Spanish TV programme (narration in Spanish) traces Barry from his mother’s first piano lessons in Detroit to his influences: Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell (whose records he studied ‘like a bible’), Thelonious Monk and Tadd Dameron. It covers his house-pianist years at Detroit’s Bluebird club and his work with Max Roach, Cannonball Adderley and Wes Montgomery. Barry says he teaches so that bebop piano technique is handed on before its players disappear.