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The later solo goes on longer, but is more frenetic, as though Parker feels that he’s running out of time. Where the ’52 solo is more shorter and more playable, the ’53 solo is more virtuosic.
#THE BARRY HARRIS HARMONIC METHOD FOR GUITAR AUDIO EXAMPLES SERIES#
Parker uses the ‘seven down to the 3rd’ scale in both his ‘What Is This’ and ‘Hot House’ solos to outline the C7b9 chord in measure 10, but where the 1952 solo stretches the scale over the course of two measures, the 1953 solo flies through it at the end of a fast series of 16th notes. These patterns can be heard on the first phrase of each A section in this scale outline of ‘What Is This Thing Called Love’. (In my class, we practice minor ii-V-i patterns in which this descending scale is preceded by patterns that use what we call the ‘locrian pentascale’, which can be thought of as the third to the seventh degrees of the seventh scale from a major third below the root, or scale steps seven through four of the major scale beginning a half step above the root. Building off of this admittedly lengthy name, I call the second half of this scale the ‘7 down to the 3rd’ scale. In my class we call this scale ‘E flat 7 up and down to the 3rd of C’. Also, when the ‘seven down’ half of the scale is ended on the note a half step above the scale’s root, it outlines a fully diminished chord that functions as a rootless voicing of the V chord.
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This scale choice has multiple benefits: for one, it is a pitch collection which is consonant with the m7b5 chord but avoids accenting its root. Rather than assigning two different scales to the two chords of the minor ii-V, as many improvisation methods do, Barry uses a ‘seven up and down’ pattern with a seventh scale starting a major third below the root of the ii chord (or a minor third above the root of the V chord). Barry’s approach to the minor ii-V, like many of his other teaching concepts, is based on the ‘seventh scale’ (a.k.a. As shown below, the minor ii-V progression has the same ascending-fourth/descending fifth root motion as the major ii-V progressions discussed in the last post, but the ii chord is a minor 7 flat five (rather than simply a minor seventh) and the V chord, in simplest version of the progression, is a dominant seven flat nine chord (rather than simply a dominant). This name comes from the scale approach that Barry Harris teaches to the minor ii-V progression. One of the licks that Parker uses in both these solos is what I call the ‘seven down to the third’ scale. (This reminds me that while playing a Bird transcription accurately can sound good, it is not in his spirit of constant creativity.) When I compare the two versions I am fascinated by how Parker used a number of the same concepts and patterns in both of them, and yet never sounded repetitive. So far as I know, although Parker studied the solos of Lester Young, he never performed any of them.) The more I listen to these solos, the more I think Parker was on a journey of ceaseless exploration rather than a quest for some kind of musical mountaintop, and so the most interesting question is not ‘which solo was better?’, but ‘how did Parker’s musical journey evolve over the course of these two solos?’. (The tradition of revising one’s own solo is perhaps a modern extension of the older jazz tradition of revising a solo by another player which I explored in my post ‘Oh, Play That Thing!’. Billy Taylor’s various versions of his tune I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, discussed in another post, are another example of this kind of process. I would suggest that these two performances are different stages of a work that was constantly in progress, although not necessarily progressing in a linear way toward a single ideal of perfection.
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On two of these performances, a 1952 studio version of ‘What Is This Thing’ with a big band and a live 1953 version of ‘Hot House’ (a Tadd Dameron tune which uses the same changes), Parker takes two different solos, but he can be heard working with some of the same material in both. Charlie Parker recorded a number of solos on the chord progression to ‘What Is This Thing Called Love’.
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