My Ideal
My Ideal is the song Thelonious Monk had Barry play with him, chorus after chorus, one day at the piano in the house they shared. Barry retold the story often, in lessons and interviews, and drew from it the lesson that you must practise playing, not only practise.
- moments in class
- 7
- recordings
- 4
- Barry plays it
- 3
What he teaches through it
Living with Monk at the Baroness’s house in New Jersey, Barry sat at the piano with him one day and Monk started playing My Ideal. Monk took a chorus, then Barry, back and forth in tempo, over and over. Barry always wished it had been recorded; the Baroness usually had a tape recorder running but caught none of it.
Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York27:2728:37The last train to Monk: an interview21:40Victor L. Schermer (interviewer); Barry Harris, Barry Harris: Iconic Jazz Pianist and Keeper of the Flame ¶27Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶127
The message he took from it: most of us spend our time practising what we don’t know, but jazz musicians, who get only a few gigs a month, must practise playing. Monk practised playing, one tune in tempo for ninety minutes, and the My Ideal session was the closest Barry came to doing it Monk’s way.
Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York27:2728:0328:37Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶128Ted Panken, For Barry Harris’ 82nd Birthday ¶21
Telling the story in a lesson, he was asked whether they changed keys. No, he said, they stayed in E♭ the whole time: the point was not changing keys but playing well in that key and playing different things.
The count changes with the telling: about a hundred choruses each on radio in 1988 and to Ted Panken, fifty each in the Smithsonian oral history and to JazzTimes in 2011, maybe fifty on Italian television, over an hour in a 2014 interview, and maybe 25 in a 2015 interview. To JazzTimes he added that it never happened again.
Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York27:27Interview on Italian television1:40The last train to Monk: an interview21:40Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶375Barry Harris, Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program ¶318unknown (JazzTimes; the byline is missing on the current site), Barry Harris: Teacher Man ¶9Victor L. Schermer (interviewer); Barry Harris, Barry Harris: Iconic Jazz Pianist and Keeper of the Flame ¶27
In his own words
The closest I’ve ever come to doing like Monk was when he made me play My Ideal. And we must have played it a hundred times a piece.
So Monk started playing a tune. It was called “My Ideal.” He played a chorus, I played a chorus. He played a chorus, I played a chorus.
Where he was hip, Monk didn’t practice practicing. Monk practiced playing.
It wasn’t so much a matter of changing keys. He said it was a matter of playing in that key and playing well and playing different things.
In class
Every moment he works on it, with the ideas of the method it shows.
Jazz theory, part 7: Monk and Stella by Starlight
The last train to Monk: an interview
- 21:40
2014 interview: one song for over an hour; the Baroness’s tape recorder missed it.
Interview on Italian television
- 1:40
Italian TV: living with Monk in New Jersey, they played My Ideal maybe fifty times.
Barry plays it
- Barry Harris The Bird Of Red And Gold2021, 57 min YouTube
- My Ideal - Barry Harris Sextet2020, 3 min YouTube
- Barry Harris - Luminescence! ( Full Album )2018, 39 min YouTube
In the method
The ideas of the method these moments show, and how many moments each.