Chris Parks · Stage 1: Rhythm and time
Feeling the And (Donna Lee)
Chris takes the scale exercises he has always started on the beat and starts them on the ‘and’ instead, working in A flat major for Donna Lee, while still landing scale tones on the beat. He points out that Bird, Bud and Sonny start phrases anywhere in the beat, recalls Barry saying the half-step rules reverse when a phrase starts on an ‘and’, and stresses that this feel only comes from practice.
Step by step
- 0:00Remember the goal of Barry’s half steps: whatever beat you start on, scale tones must land on the beat.
- 0:38Get A flat major in your fingers first: scale, thirds, triads and chords, all starting on the beat.
- 1:15Note Barry’s point that Bird, Bud and Sonny start phrases on any part of the beat.
- 2:28Play a triad-up phrase on the beat, then start the same phrase on the ‘and’.
- 3:04Do the same with a chord up and a scale note down, adding a half step so it comes out right.
- 4:17Play chords up the scale skipping the third note, using Barry’s chromatic rule.
- 6:08Move those three-note phrases onto the ‘and’, with and without the half step.
- 6:50Practise the upbeat starts; the feel will not just appear on the gig.
- 8:02Remember Barry’s rule that the half-step rules reverse when you start on an ‘and’; try triads with a half step below on the ‘and’.
- 10:10Let rhythm, which set Bird apart, guide you: feel every part of the beat.
Barry’s own words on this
In the course
The scale every way: up and down, thirds, triads, chordsComing out right: why half stepsBarry’s chromatic scaleStart on the ‘and’ and the rules reverseFeel the ‘and’
Transcript
- 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 87 of Things I Learned from Barry Harris. I just wanted to make a quick video to discuss something I’ve been talking about with my students a lot. It’s actually really interesting and it’s about this idea of starting phrases that you would normally start on the beat, off the beat, and still making them come out right. And that’s the whole point of putting in any half steps or anything that Barry talks about. With his chromatic scales or anything, it all has to do with coming out right, meaning coming out with a scale tone.
- 0:38Not a chord tone, but a scale tone on the beat as opposed to on the end. So let’s take a look. I thought, you know, we haven’t really talked about A flat major. So let’s talk about A flat major like we were playing Indiana, let’s say, or Donnelly. So there’s our A-flip major scale. And the things we usually practice on it are chords up and down. I mean, scales up and down. Thirds, triads, chords, and so on. So you have to know all that stuff first when you get it in your fingers.
- 1:15Now, what’s funny about those exercises is they all start on the beat. So that’s the way I’ve always practiced them. They all start on the beat. But Barry mentioned something really interesting one time in class about how when Bird and Bud Powell and all the great Sonny Rollins, and if you transcribe them, they seem to start on any beat, any part of the beat. It doesn’t matter. so what I realized for myself was man I all the lines that I create that I haven’t just taken from somebody else and kind of redone and put them into my repertoire the ones that I’ve
- 1:57come up with all seem to start on the beat which is fine but it’s leaving out half of the measure so I started trying to think about like even when we practice triads up Those are all on the beat. So let’s say if we were playing this, started with Donnelly and we said one, two, three, four. That’s a nice phrase, but that’s starting with the triad on the beat.
- 2:28One, two, three, four. That’s a nice one. But what if we started that same phrase on the end? One, two, three, four, ah. Wait, one, two, three, four, ah. You see how it sounds totally different than one, two, three, four. Well, that’s a chord, but let’s do that again in the triad.
- 3:04One, two, three, four. I mean, those are really nice phrases, but why do I always have to start on the beat? Why don’t I start on the end? One, two, three, four, up. One, two, three, four, one. It’s got such a nice bounce to it. How about if I did a chord up? That’s a nice phrase, and then come down a scale note. One, two, three, four.
- 3:39That’s a nice phrase, but what if I started that phrase on the end? One, two, three, four, one. I’ll put in one half step. One, two, three. That’s a nice one. One, two, three. Oh, well, that’s too early. A little sloppy in the middle, but one, two, three.
- 4:17Wait, one, two, three. Maybe I’ll put another half sound. Yeah, I like that one. See, so what happens is it makes you take the things that you’ve practiced for a really long time and start differently. Sometimes when I practice I don’t just do chords, I do a chord. There’s your four note chord. What I do is I like to skip the third note. So that’s a nice, that’s a three note phrase. So one, two, three, four. That’s a nice one to put
- 4:58one of Barry’s chromatic rules. So if you went up the whole scale like this, it would be this. The next one instead of this chord up, you’re going to skip the third note. So You’re going to say, next one from the third, next one from the fourth, from the fifth. Oh man. That’s the one from this one. And so on. Oh, where’s the last one?
- 5:32And then you’re back to this one. So that’s all of them where you’re skipping one of the notes of the chord, the third note of the chord, and then you’re putting in one of Barry’s chromatic rules. And by chromatic rules, I mean like if you have a chromatic, you use it. If it’s a scale tone, you jump up to the next higher scale tone. But these are also on the beat. One, two, three, four. That’s a pretty phrase, but let me see if I can work that out. one, two, three, four, one. That was on the second beat.
- 6:08One, two, three, four, one. Right, one, two, three, four, one. That’s a nice one, but what if I did it on the end of the one? One, two, three, four, uh. Now, no half step. One, two, three, That’s a nice one. Two, three, two, three. Oh man, I like that. But my point in showing this is we have this tendency to say, somehow when we solo, we’re going to just, there’s going to be some sort of divine intervention and we’re going to feel
- 6:50it. Or, you know, that’s our favorite thing to say. Well, we’ll feel it when it comes time to solo. And it’s really, that’s such, that’s really, feeling it is very important. But unless you practice, at least for myself, unless I practice these phrases starting on the upbeat, I’m never going to feel this. Never. There’s going to be no divine intervention or all of a sudden I’m going to be playing on a gig and all of a sudden start playing these. I have to practice them and feel them. The same way you have to practice your half steps is the same way you have to practice your chords.
- 7:25everything you practice, eventually you can move into the category of you’re not thinking about it and it’s just coming out naturally. So this is also one of those things, but this is purely rhythmic. And I’m telling you, it was such a, and actually the way Barry put it was when he was talking about his half-step rules for descending dominant scale, and he said, just happen to say it, and I remember I was feeling really confident about, I really knew my half-step rules, you know, he wasn’t going to get me on these, if he started to say something about half steps, I was going to be completely on top of it, at least in a couple of positions. And then when he said, well, actually, and
- 8:02if you start on the end, all the rules, all the rules reverse. And I remember thinking to myself, oh my God, that’s a whole other thing that I’m going to have to practice because I don’t even know what that feels like. So it was something that I had to really try to focus on. And still, I’m still practicing it, but it’s not only with this, it’s with everything that we do, everything that we practice. So, you know, sometimes we also practice like triads, but then we do the thing where we practice a half step below. So that’s nice, but that’s on the beat. One, two, three, four. That’s a nice phrase, but what if we put that on the beat, on the and? One, two, three,
- 8:434, 1. See, that’s a totally different feel. Oh, let’s do it from the 3. That’s a pretty one. That’s a pretty one from the 3. 1, 2, 3. Oh, wait. I mean, these are so nice.
- 9:32Now, see, that one’s nice on the beat. One, two, three, four. That’s a nice one. that’s a pretty phrase but I like it on that I have I want to see the thing is it’s pretty on the beat or off the beat it’s pretty on both spots so why would I want to exclude all this other pretty stuff that I could be playing just because I can’t feel what that feels like one two three four that’s a pretty one let’s see one two
- 10:10See, I might have never played that phrase like that. See, I might have never played, as a matter of fact, not might have, I never would have played that. So it’s just something to keep in mind about your own playing. And, you know, we get a lot of times we get caught up in the notes and we get caught up in what we’re playing, which is what we’re supposed to do. But the rhythm is what differentiated, I think, Bird and Bud Powell and all the other musicians.
- 10:57Because all the other musicians, I mean, I think Dizzy said at one time where Dizzy was saying, if I’m not mistaken, Dizzy said something like, we all had those notes together. we had the substitutions, we knew about that stuff, but Bird really put it together in a way that we had done. And I think what he was referring to is Bird’s rhythm seems to be so superior, like he really has such a beautiful sense of rhythm. He can really feel every part of the beat, and that includes the and. So anyway, it’s just this one of these things that I noticed I was lacking in my own playing. And I thought it might be helpful for some of you to see if you
- 11:35figure out how to play the same runs that you’ve been doing but starting on the beat. Instead of on the beat, starting on the and. Anyway, until next time, have fun practicing feeling the and. Thanks.