Giant Steps
Barry used Giant Steps to show why thinking chord by chord fails: you have to move from key to key at once, about a beat at a time, using the notes the keys share, and still sound melodic. He admitted he never wanted to learn the tune.
- moments in class
- 17
- recordings
- 5
- Barry plays it
- 0
What he teaches through it
Knowing chords at the piano does not teach you to improvise. Horn players who learn chord spellings and play the written notes end up unable to run Giant Steps. A player should be able to take a phrase from any starting note, as over rhythm changes in B♭, and almost do Giant Steps the same way.
You cannot think about chords on this tune. The only way Barry saw to play it musically was to give a key about one beat, on B, and move straight on to D: you have to be changing immediately, thinking almost one beat at a time.
What makes the quick changes playable is what the keys share. B has notes in common with D, and every note has other notes around it, so the line can pass from one key into the next.
He wanted it melodic, not a stream of eighth notes, with some triplets mixed in. He praised one student’s version as about the best he had heard.
Barry was frank that he had never wanted to learn the song; working through it with the class was the first time he had tried to play it, and he had never really played it with a rhythm section.
The progression was not new to him. In Detroit the pianist Will Davis used to end his ballads with it, before it was made into a tune, and Barry played Davis’s ending for the class.
Giant Steps in the piano class13:30Artists House Master Class Barry Harris - Student Interviews After Concert10:06
In his own words
They try to play it thinking of chords. And you can’t think about chords, man.
The only way I can see to play giant steps is, you play one beat of B. And immediately you play D.
That’s the first time I’ve ever tried to play it. Because I never wanted to learn the song.
his ending that he would play at the end of a [ballad] was giant steps
In class
Every moment he works on it, with the ideas of the method it shows.
Giant Steps in the piano class
- 0:34
Hague piano class: you can’t learn improvising from knowing chords at the piano.
- 1:08
Chord-thinkers couldn’t run Giant Steps; start a phrase anywhere, as on rhythm in B♭.
- 1:44
- 2:20
Plays it: only one note of B, because he hesitated, then D.
- 4:13
- 5:26
- 6:39
Works through the tune with a student and shows what he dislikes in it.
- 7:48
The first time he has tried to play it; he never wanted to learn it.
- 8:59
- 10:20
- 13:30
Artists House Master Class Barry Harris - Student Interviews After Concert
- 10:06
Will Davis ended his ballads with the Giant Steps changes before the tune existed.
Around Giant Steps, part 1
- 1:10
Spain 2008: shows a phrase of his own on G major within the changes.
Around Giant Steps, part 2
Giant Steps
In the method
The ideas of the method these moments show, and how many moments each.
- 7.1Think in scales and phrases, not chords4
- 10.8Endings and introductions2
- 14.1Start with the basics; practise slowly, exactly, in time; repeat until it is yours2
- 7.3Getting through changes2
- 1.4Triplets and thinking in six1
- 13.2Rhythm changes (‘seven songs in one’)1
- 6.5Surrounding notes (approach from above and below)1
- 6.9Triplets in lines (eighth- and sixteenth-note)1