My Funny Valentine
Barry used My Funny Valentine as his example of a title that must be sung the way it is spoken, and in a Hague class as a melody to harmonise with the chords of the sixth diminished scale.
- moments in class
- 5
- recordings
- 2
- Barry plays it
- 1
What he teaches through it
Phrase a song so it sounds as natural as speech. Barry objected to singers who make a big thing of the last word, which is like stressing the end of ‘I went to the show’. My Funny Valentine has to be sung the way you would say it; only then, he said, does it make musical sense. Phrasing is what he worked on most in class.
In a Hague class on the sixth diminished scale, after students had played chords up the plain major scale and then up his scale, Barry had a student set a phrase of My Funny Valentine with the scale’s chords, starting from the fourth chord and coming down. The chords are pretty, he said, and quite different from the major scale’s, with fourths appearing in them.
In his own words
I believe in what it is. I went to the show. My Funny Valentine. That’s the way it’s got to be sung.
In class
Every moment he works on it, with the ideas of the method it shows.
Interview: Bud Powell and teaching singers
Introducing the sixth diminished scale
Barry plays it
- Barry Harris Trio - Live at Dizzy’s, New York, June 2017 Part 2New York City, 2017, 61 min YouTube
In the method
The ideas of the method these moments show, and how many moments each.