Moving In Harmony - Week 2
Barry Harris is undoubtedly one the titans of jazz. His influence stretches far and wide and while I myself have never met the man, I've met many whom have worked directly with him. The internet is littered with videos (the famous Den Haag Conservatoire clips come to mind) and articles in honour of him and we couldn't be more grateful for it. In this intallment I'll be sharing an exercise, inspired by Harris, that I must have started implementing in my studies close to 2 years ago.
For a while, I made use of a self-made routine chock-full of drills to engrain certain patterns and movements into my playing. The source of the topic at hand started here:
The video above labels it as the "Torture Exercise" but I'm confident that there are many a Chopin Etude to which the term 'torture' would be more fitting. It's one of his more well-known exercises and serves as a beautifully melodic way to harmonise the major scale. More importantly, it serves as a means of transport. It makes use of the iv minor of C (F minor) which acts as a ii minor to go to Eb.
This sheet is just an exhaustive version of the exercise. It's not as melodically satisfying and doesn't modulate after the IV chord. I'm adding it here anyways just for those who are interested in seeing how it would keep developing if one were to keep going up the whole scale.
This is the video from which I've taken the inspiration. Sean is a fantastic teacher in my books, and has many other videos related to ear training (I found his "10 Chords Pianists Must Recognise" particularly interesting), gospel voicings and a lot more. In this video he explains the original exercise in depth and then presents his own version too, with a neo-soul influence. I was quite a fan of it - however I was a little more interested in modulating up a semitone after each cycle and so made my amendments.
The form is lengthened, first and foremost. The fourth bar is a bar of 2 counts instead of 4 and the last bar is meant to be played a piacere as opposed to regimentally in time as Sean shows in his introduction. I've included the chord symbols to the best of my knowledge, however I just want to mention that I wasn't necessarily chasing some kind of functional harmony nirvana. Lots of trial and error has led me to where it's at currently; I'm open to suggestions.
As a closer, I'd thought I'd share this beautiful clip of Harris playing Monk's 'Light Blue'. I think this particular recording really highlights how much emotion some well-placed rudimentary voicings can ellicit in combination with great tone. But more on Monk and tone another time.
- DS