Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 10: Movement

The secret to soloing: practising movements

Episode 117 · 12:09 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Once you can play Barry’s rules, pivots, triads and chromatic scale on G major, Chris says the next step is movement, as Barry called it: one chord going to another. He runs G major into each of the twelve dominants and names a standard where each move happens, so that practising one movement prepares you for many songs, in the spirit of Coleman Hawkins saying he played movements, not chords.

Step by step

  1. 0:36The next step after the material on one scale is movement: G major going to another chord, a move that links many standards.
  2. 1:44G to G7 happens in a blues or whenever a tune goes to IV; G to A flat 7, the tritone of D7, is like I-V-I.
  3. 2:16G to A7 is the move in Watch What Happens.
  4. 3:02G to B flat 7 is the tritone of the sixth dominant, and part of Giant Steps.
  5. 3:47G to B7 goes toward the relative minor, as in All of Me.
  6. 4:22G to C7 is I to the IV dominant, as in How High the Moon; as Barry people, just play C7 for the minor bar too.
  7. 4:56G to D flat 7, the tritone of G7, as in This Is the End of a Beautiful Friendship.
  8. 6:06G to E flat 7 happens right at the start of Darn That Dream.
  9. 6:41G to E7 (I to the VI dominant), G to F7 (I to IV minor), and G to F sharp 7 (through the VII dominant to III).
  10. 8:33Play each change as one movement, not two chords; Coleman Hawkins played movement, and Bird practised short two- and four-bar pieces.

Barry’s own words on this

10.1 Be a movement player7.3 Getting through changes

In the course

Think the dominant: put the ii awayBe a movement playerMajor to every dominant

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 117 of Things I Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would talk about what do we do after we’ve learned how to play some things on let’s say a major scale. So let’s just today say G major. So let’s say you’ve learned how to play your half step rules, you’ve learned how to do your pivots, you have your scale up and down, you have your triads, you did your chromatic scale, you have all those things together. and you’re able to play them on G major. Okay, so the next step is what a standard
  2. 0:36consists of or a song that you’re going to play is this chord going to this chord or what Barry refers to as a movement. So G major, let’s just say we’re in the key of G, G major is going to move to another chord, to some other chord. And what I find interesting is when you start practicing a movement like this chord moves to this chord, it brings you closer to the other standards that you might know, and it connects them because you say, oh, I see in this song, the G major goes to, let’s say, E flat 7.
  3. 1:09Oh, that happens in this other song too, which I’ve practiced, so I’m comfortable with playing that movement. So I think this is a really good way to take a look and say, okay, I’m going to try to cover all the bases, all the different kind of movements that I can think of. So for instance, if we started on G major, let’s say, and let’s say we want to move to any other dominant chord, any other one, all 12 of them. So the first movement would be G major to G7. So that’s a movement.
  4. 1:44That happens in a blues. That happens in any tune that’s going to the 4 major, any tune. Any tune that goes from one, one dominant to 4 major. So that’s G major to G7. Now let’s look at G major to A flat 7. So you say, okay, why would I move G major to A flat 7? Well, A flat 7 is the tritone of D7, so you’re going to use it all the time. G major. You’re going to definitely use that. G major to A flat 7 happens all the time.
  5. 2:16happens all the time it’s like playing one to five to one how about g major let’s just keep moving up so we said g g7 we said g a flat seven let’s do g to a7 so what’s a standard that does g to a7 um oh there’s a standard called watch what happens moves to A7. So there’s a perfect example. You got two measures of G major and then all of a sudden it goes to A7. So you have to learn how to play G major. Let’s see. That was all
  6. 3:02running G major into A7. Then it runs into D7. But see, there’s a reason. I have to know how to play G major to A7 because that tune calls for that. Now how about G major to Bb7? So G major to Bb7 is interesting because you can say, okay, G major goes to E7 a lot. That’s the 6th dominant. So this is the tritone of the 6th dominant. true so you have to know how to play that was just running it into afterwards D7 but see another thing you have to know is like this is the this is part of giant steps which runs into E flat
  7. 3:47so that’s another reason you have to know it oh G major runs to B flat seven because I have to know that because it’s in giant steps. There’s your reason. How about G major to, let’s see, B7. That’s any time you go into a relative minor. You have to know that. So let’s say if we were playing All of Me. Let’s see. There it is. You have to know that for that. Or if you were even playing, I think it’s the first change of Sunday, My Prince Will Come.
  8. 4:22But I think that one moves to the 4 after that. But do you see? That’s a reason that you have to know G major to B7. There it is. Now how about G major to C7? Well, that happens a lot. That’s 1 to the 4 dominant. So you could say, even in how high the moon. Here comes C7. you have to know how to run G major into C7 because the next chord is G minor C7.
  9. 4:56But as Barry people, we know we just play C7. Now what about G major to Db7? So Db is the tritone of G7. So anything we did for the first one, like G major, then I ran into Db7. But there’s actually a song that goes right to that. It’s called Beautiful Friendship, or This is the End of a Beautiful Friendship. That actually plays that chord.
  10. 5:29G major, D, D, D, D, D. Goes to that. It’s a pretty song. But that’s a reason that you have to know how to run G major to D flat 7. Now, G major to D7, that’s easy. That happens. That’s 1 to 5. That’s every song, really. So that’s an easy one, G to D7. Now what about G major to E flat 7? So E flat 7 we could say, oh, out of nowhere. You have to know how to run G major into E flat 7.
  11. 6:06And back to G major So you see you have to know how to run G major into E flat 7 Also Oh Dawn of that dream Right away, the first movement is G major to E flat 7. So you have to know how to play that.
  12. 6:41The next one would be, let’s see, G to E7. Well, that’s 1 to 6 dominant. That happens in every song. You have to know that one. Now, how about G major to F7? well G major to F7 happens a lot that’s like playing 1 to 4 minor that happens all the time so we have to know how to run
  13. 7:19G major to F7 anytime you have 1 chord to the 4 minor how about G major to F sharp 7 That’s a pretty one. That’s this movement kind of. So it’d be like the I chord going to the III, either major or minor, but you’re going to go through it through that VII dominant. So you have to know how to play that. Which is really pretty.
  14. 7:51you have to know how to play that that’s the one to the um to the seven dominant but the concept is that you should know how to move from any chord to any chord so when you take a standard the purpose of learning a standard is not necessarily to just say okay i just memorized these chords this chord goes to this great now i have it now maybe i can play it in a few keys that’s great but the next step is, well, what can I play on it? See, you don’t want to treat it as like, okay, the sheet music says G major. Okay, now I have a bunch of G major stuff. Okay, good. Now I’m good. Oh wait, now it
  15. 8:33says E flat seven. Okay, now I have E flat seven stuff. You want to be able to connect those things as if it’s this one thing. It’s not two movements. It’s this movement. This goes to this. And that’s why Barry talking about how Coleman Hawkins used to say, I don’t play chords, I play movement. I think that’s what he was referring to like you have to be able to move from this chord to this chord but and it’s the ones that can do it really in the slickest way that’s that those are the best ones i i saw i briefly i remember seeing this interview i think it was uh joe lavano interviewing um uh wayne shorter and if i remember correctly wayne shorter was saying he had this tape of bird
  16. 9:18practicing, and the tape basically consisted of Bird practicing these two and four bar things. So I can only imagine that that’s the kind of stuff that he was looking at. Like this chord goes to this chord. Like even this, like the one that we did, if we say G major to B7, that’s going to the relative minor. Well, that’s also like, that happens in a million songs. so I can imagine I could almost hear Bird practicing G major running into the B7 and all the different ways that he did it that he could practice it and that’s why when you hear Bird on any tune he’s
  17. 9:57totally comfortable with it because it’s not the first time that he’s come across these movements so really the most important thing is when you learn a song you should really know everything about it so if a song goes from this chord to this chord and it’s kind of a strange thing you have to take the time and work on it and say, well, how do I make it sound not strange or make it sound not abrupt? And every one of those chord changes, G to G7, G to A flat 7, G to A7, G to B flat 7, every one of them has different or many different approaches to make it sound slick and smooth. Now, just think if your soloing consisted of you practicing several different movements,
  18. 10:40Then no matter what a song is called, if you know the changes to the song, it means from your perspective, you really have discovered those changes. You know everything about them. So nothing’s going to throw you off. So it’s like a really, I think it’s almost a better way than, I think it’s really important to learn a lot of songs. true, but I would rather a person learn fewer songs, but really know all those movements in those few songs and can really play a lot of things on it. See, there are people that know a thousand songs, but when you hear them play, they don’t really, they can play through the changes correctly,
  19. 11:17but they’re not playing all that much on it. If you really listen, if you say, oh, what did that person play from G major to E flat seven, and then you listen to that spot, and you’re like, oh, Not that much. They really didn’t play that much. And that’s one of the other beautiful things that Barry’s given us, is it makes you aware of really what you’re listening to. You know, okay, this chord moves to this chord. Okay, so let’s see how that person does that. And more important, let’s see how I do that. Let me really try to get good at it. Let me try to get better at it. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this little lesson on learning how to play movement. because I think it’s one of the most important things that I learned from Barry
  20. 11:59was thinking about these things as movement as opposed to just saying, oh, I know how to play this song. So until next time, enjoy practicing your movements.