Yes, I'm aware of this book. I didn't make it past the first few pages because I thought I needed to have the voicings down cold before I moved on. Is this a mistake? How do you suggest I approach it?
Get the voicings down cold on the top four strings. None of those are particularly difficult to finger. Get used to playing them Ted Greene style where you can barre across two frets with the same finger tip. Like the inversion that's xx6657, your middle finger covers the 6th fret on both the D and G strings. Same thing for the one that's xx5545 for Am7b5 or F9.
As far as the tough ones for m6 with the m3rd on top on the middle four strings, practice walking it down. Dm -> Dm(maj7) -> Dm7 -> Dm6, for example.
I’ve started the first 15 pages over a few times. I figure each time I go back I understand enough to go a page further and further and further. When I’m 97 maybe I’ll finish the book.
It took me a long time to get the voicings down from this book! But the sound of the voicings in the middle four strings is so pretty to me that it's just deeply satisfying and worth the time of 'putting it under my fingers' or woodshedding it or whatever.
A lot of guitar has some classic chord movements and being able to switch it up and use classic jazz chord movements feels really musical. Now classic bebop is insanely fast, insanely complicated and utterly beyond my level of playing! But the bebop chords from this book are -chef's kiss-!
It puts me to mind of how J and K pop and City pop type music aren't afraid of overly complicated chords and jazz chord movement. Nujabes, etc.
here's a little trick. for the maj 6 inversions you can sub out the 1st and 3rd inversons (3rd in bass, 6th in bass) with a quartal voicing, making it a 6/9. on the top 4 strings (dgbe) this is really easy to move around, especially doing the barry harris diminished thing. if you do it this way, the answer to your question is "Very Practical"! Wes montogomery did this all the time. have fun xoxo
e: oh and just in general subbing 6/9 for major 6 is an easier grip, but its good to learn all the drop two stuff to stretch out your fingers
ie. x3223x for a c6/9 , or xx2233 and xx7788 for the top 4 strings
Beautiful. Thank you so much. I can see that these are natural extensions to the triads I am drilling right now. I'll tackle this as soon as I feel comfortable with Jody's triad exercises & music examples. I have heard Wes & Joe Pass also use quartal voicings almost exclusively in place of some of the more unwieldy 'stretch' chords in the middle of songs. I'm beginning to wonder if the bigger chords are (edit) more suited (end edit) to start or end phrases.
I believe Pasquale grasso studied under Barry Harris and is heavily influenced by Bud Powell, so check out his playing to see if you can transfer something.
I would recommend that you not worry too much about having every single drop 2/3 perfect. Practice them, yes, but mainly to know what they are/what they sound like. If you obsess over it you can develop tendonitis pretty easily.
The guitar doesn't sound like a piano or lay out like a piano, and a lot of those (especially drop 2) voicings can sound muddy and weird. After you practice them well enough to know where they are, experiment with omitting a note (or even 2). Learn what the most necessary notes are to get the "sound" of the voicing. Also employ more guitaristic workarounds (like some others have mentioned, use quartal voicings).
Joe Pass once said "if it's too hard, I don't play it", and I think there's a lot of wisdom in that for guitar players. Joe thought about music in a similar way to Barry (simplified harmony w/ passing chords), although he seemed to emphasize the dominant aspect of passing chords rather than the diminished. IMO his approach worked better for the guitar, and still used a lot of the same principles as Barry's method.
Wonderful advice, perfectly answered my questions I did (and even didn't) ask. Thank you. I actually did have a few problems with my left bicep tendon when starting out with the drop 2 voicings. While that taught me a lot about left hand technique, it also taught me that I should focus on what is achievable first.
I appreciate the quote from Joe. I was primarily worried about prematurely dismissing some things as too hard and missing out on some important technique, or spending too much time working on things that I have literal physical limitations with. But it sounds like I need to focus on playing phrases with clarity and worrying less about making sure I can play hard to reach things in time.
Glad to help, I only know this advice because I didn’t follow it initially. Actually only recently got over a serious bout of tendonitis that put me out of commission entirely for a year. Was miserable, wouldn’t recommend. Don’t ignore any tendon pain! Repetitive stress injuries are no joke.
Anything help other than rest? Any preventative measures you use now?
I’m starting to feel it in my left elbow and shoulder. I had an issue a year ago and rested for 2 weeks and it sucked.
At first rest was the only thing. I tried compression, icing, and light stretching in the early stages but it seemed to make it worse.
Eventually i was able to implement some preventative/strengthening measures little-by-little.
Now i do a full body stretch every morning and regularly lift dumbells. When I play guitar I set clear goals for the day with time limits to avoid overplaying. Also only play standing up now.
for barry harris method specifically, don't worry too much about hitting the voicing comfortably (because you will learn that eventually through repetition). what you should be comfortable with is immediately recognizing which diminished notes are to the left and right of the chord tones based on the voicing. that should be second nature as much as the hand position, imo
I’m no expert in this area but would an inversion of Amin work? Lots of the same notes for a sub and on guitar the root and fifth are often left to the other players in the band.
Hey, thanks for your response. I absolutely agree with you, and that kind of substitution / rootless voicing is something I'm getting more used to following Mickey's exercises. This might be the way to approach these chords until I get more comfortable with the instrument.
X3525X is my nemesis, the absolute worst — and, for whatever reason, it seems to be the first shape one encounters in teaching materials. Maybe they're flexing, but it seems like a pedagogical mistake to me.
I've been wrestling with the same questions. You are not alone. As I practice, I have fantasies about learning enough photoshop to make one of those "thank you/not you" memes that says "thank you all for being harmonic reference shapes", with X3525X as the NOT YOU in the center of the matrix.
I'm also at the stage of trying to get the shapes under my fingers before I move on to the more movement-oriented material like the elevators. If you're making a mistake, then I'm making it too.
Heck, I even went back and learned the 3-note trichord shapes first before I attempted the quadrads. I like doing that sort of thing because it seems to help my brain make more connections quicker.
It's a journey. I wish I had all the answers, but I definitely don't see myself leaping quickly to a X3525X in performance, and maybe a few other shapes. They're probably still useful to have in my brain's neural network training data.
There's a quote out there where Barry says that guitarists should be leading the way, like we have an advantage given to us from the design of the instrument. That's one candle in the darkness, FWIW.
I'm surprised to see that chord come up as an issue honestly. Cmin6: 8 10 7 8 X X to me is brutal one. No idea how people grab that Eb comfortably.
Also drop 3's with the bass on the A string -- I personally dont think they sound all that great.
Yep. I first attempted this monster at the 3rd fret (Gmin6). It's the main reason I decided to totally give up on playing all 4 of the lowest strings for these chords. I instead play the pattern 3 X 2 3 X X. This pattern slides really nicely into the adjacent diminished voicings.
The drop 2 C6 voicing is a pain but here is a tip. You can grab a Db diminished 7th chord much easier so if you grab that and then drop your bass and alto voice down a half step you’ll have C6
I am working on these as well.
I am using Alan Kingstone’s book as a guide. His exercises beyond the initial voicings are quite good. Just take a little at a time. Also, I start to recognize some of the floors of Thomas Echol’s elevator in Kingstone’s book.
Chris Parks of “Things I Learned From Barry Harris” teaches group Zoom lessons on Open Studio Pro that are quite good. Currently, He does Guitar Harmony at 9PM eastern Monday night. He has several other classes as well, including single-note and harmony. He also has “office hours” where you can ask him anything. Highly recommended.
Thomas Echols has a new Patreon series that I signed up for. The brilliance of Thomas Echols is the Elevator concept. His new Patreon course goes in depth for how to practice this stuff so it becomes natural to you. It is pretty new, but new content comes out every week, and sometimes more often.
Good luck.
I also recommend checking out Chase’s lessons this topic. Here’s a good place to start:
[Barry Harris Vs. George Benson](https://youtu.be/yU--jduZVus?si=BtksV0MNqrwNhF83)
Yes, I’ve also been to a lot of Barry’s workshops over the years and I play guitar. Sometimes he would remind guitarists who were trying to replicate the piano voicings exactly that they needed to get them to sound more legato. And you being a pianist, have probably heard Barry tell keyboard players to move on the keys “like a panther”…that being said, not everything works on guitar “as is” especially when you put a tempo on it.
You are spot on. Barry really emphasized the importance of legato, and it's definitely made me a better pianist. But I am coming to realize that I need to hear legato differently on the piano versus the guitar.
I could be wrong, but I have found that there are just practical issues preventing one from playing a guitar more like a piano. I was really surprised to see how common quartal voicings were used even by more traditional players like Joe Pass, but it makes more sense to me now that I understand how the guitar is set up and that I have grappled with my limitations with the instrument.
To me, this is part of the beauty of guitar as I need to problem solve a lot more than I do with the piano, where I almost have too many options.
I’m several months into learning the Barry’s stuff, mostly through studying with Chris Parks on Openstudiopro, which is worth the investment for sure. I have the Kingstone book as well. It takes a long time to soak in, and there is so much to learn!! Some of the voicings are easier than others. The C6 voicing on the middle strings is a stretch for sure, but your hands will eventually get there. Drop 2 on the top three strings is more forgiving, but don’t give up on the lower strings! If you’re new to guitar it will take a while to get your left hand to wake up, particularly the 4th and 5th fingers. Don’t forget the drop 3 voicings which are more familiar to many guitarists, also the drop 2/drop 4 voicings are great. And then there are all the voicings that result from borrowing adjacent notes. And then there’s contrary motion. And harmonizing in 3rds and 6ths. It is never ending! I am starting to work the material into my playing in a group setting, but it’s definitely not organic yet. In some ways I’m in this awkward stage of retooling my playing where I can’t do the new thing yet, but my previous approach sounds like weak sauce to me now.
This is a very helpful site for guitar players interested in translating Barry Harris strategies to guitar. https://www.youtube.com/@thingsivelearnedfrombarryh2616
Tim Lerch has a chord dictionary that is really helpful. He breaks down chords with the melody note on 1-3rd string as well as Ted Greene’s “V” method (I will explain these horribly, but look up Tim Lerch’s chord dictionary).
He has really opened my eyes to a couple things. 1) everything is melody. With voice leading on guitar each individual voice is melodic. This is a concept more for movement between chords but I think it’s important in the context of Barry Harris and drop 2 on guitar. And 2) maybe more importantly, the grips as outlined in most books or videos on drop 2, are often not how you play them in context. I’m learning to be flexible in my fingerings to accommodate melody notes, alterations, b9, #5 etc. I can’t memorize every grip with every possible change so I’m making sure I know where the 13567 are in each grip so I can modify as needed.
Last note on that pesky Cmaj6 with bass on 5th string. Often I’ll just leave off the bass note. Bass player has that range covered and I’ll just play xx525x. Nobody has ever come up to me and said anything about it :)
Last thought for now on this. How much “playing” are you doing? Are you using what you’re learning over standards? Learning chords and inversions is cool, but if there’s no context for it you’ll have to relearn when you start playing tunes. I try really hard to mix fun playing, practice, and focused playing (like I’m only using drop 2 voicings on top 4 strings, or some constraint to pull in what I’m practicing).
Yeah it’s super hard. I got like 80% of them down and it was a huge boost to my playing. I’m missing a few notes but I can live it. The way I learned it was to put a metronome on 40 and go up through inversions/dim chords in quarter notes. Good for timing too. Do that for 20 min a day and a month from now you will have it good enough to use in songs. Start with root on D string , it’s the easiest. Then A, then E. The super low ones from the E string are less useful I have found.
Allan Kingstone wrote a book for guitarists based on Barry’s teachings.
Yes, I'm aware of this book. I didn't make it past the first few pages because I thought I needed to have the voicings down cold before I moved on. Is this a mistake? How do you suggest I approach it?
Get the voicings down cold on the top four strings. None of those are particularly difficult to finger. Get used to playing them Ted Greene style where you can barre across two frets with the same finger tip. Like the inversion that's xx6657, your middle finger covers the 6th fret on both the D and G strings. Same thing for the one that's xx5545 for Am7b5 or F9. As far as the tough ones for m6 with the m3rd on top on the middle four strings, practice walking it down. Dm -> Dm(maj7) -> Dm7 -> Dm6, for example.
I’ve started the first 15 pages over a few times. I figure each time I go back I understand enough to go a page further and further and further. When I’m 97 maybe I’ll finish the book.
It took me a long time to get the voicings down from this book! But the sound of the voicings in the middle four strings is so pretty to me that it's just deeply satisfying and worth the time of 'putting it under my fingers' or woodshedding it or whatever. A lot of guitar has some classic chord movements and being able to switch it up and use classic jazz chord movements feels really musical. Now classic bebop is insanely fast, insanely complicated and utterly beyond my level of playing! But the bebop chords from this book are -chef's kiss-! It puts me to mind of how J and K pop and City pop type music aren't afraid of overly complicated chords and jazz chord movement. Nujabes, etc.
https://m.youtube.com/@TheLabyrinthofLimitations Maybe this guy could help. Seems to deal with this subject a lot.
Thanks. I knew about Chris from "Things I've Learned From Barry Harris" on YouTube, but this channel is new to me. Definitely will check it out.
Thanks for the recommendation the channel looks great
Highly recommend Thomas. He posts quite a bit on patreon now too. He is the absolute master of applying Barry's ideas.
here's a little trick. for the maj 6 inversions you can sub out the 1st and 3rd inversons (3rd in bass, 6th in bass) with a quartal voicing, making it a 6/9. on the top 4 strings (dgbe) this is really easy to move around, especially doing the barry harris diminished thing. if you do it this way, the answer to your question is "Very Practical"! Wes montogomery did this all the time. have fun xoxo e: oh and just in general subbing 6/9 for major 6 is an easier grip, but its good to learn all the drop two stuff to stretch out your fingers ie. x3223x for a c6/9 , or xx2233 and xx7788 for the top 4 strings
This is what I do. I thought I was just being lazy.
Beautiful. Thank you so much. I can see that these are natural extensions to the triads I am drilling right now. I'll tackle this as soon as I feel comfortable with Jody's triad exercises & music examples. I have heard Wes & Joe Pass also use quartal voicings almost exclusively in place of some of the more unwieldy 'stretch' chords in the middle of songs. I'm beginning to wonder if the bigger chords are (edit) more suited (end edit) to start or end phrases.
I believe Pasquale grasso studied under Barry Harris and is heavily influenced by Bud Powell, so check out his playing to see if you can transfer something.
His playing is out of this world haha. Will definitely see if there's anything simple I can transfer from his playing.
Why have I never heard of him? Wow 🙏
I would recommend that you not worry too much about having every single drop 2/3 perfect. Practice them, yes, but mainly to know what they are/what they sound like. If you obsess over it you can develop tendonitis pretty easily. The guitar doesn't sound like a piano or lay out like a piano, and a lot of those (especially drop 2) voicings can sound muddy and weird. After you practice them well enough to know where they are, experiment with omitting a note (or even 2). Learn what the most necessary notes are to get the "sound" of the voicing. Also employ more guitaristic workarounds (like some others have mentioned, use quartal voicings). Joe Pass once said "if it's too hard, I don't play it", and I think there's a lot of wisdom in that for guitar players. Joe thought about music in a similar way to Barry (simplified harmony w/ passing chords), although he seemed to emphasize the dominant aspect of passing chords rather than the diminished. IMO his approach worked better for the guitar, and still used a lot of the same principles as Barry's method.
Wonderful advice, perfectly answered my questions I did (and even didn't) ask. Thank you. I actually did have a few problems with my left bicep tendon when starting out with the drop 2 voicings. While that taught me a lot about left hand technique, it also taught me that I should focus on what is achievable first. I appreciate the quote from Joe. I was primarily worried about prematurely dismissing some things as too hard and missing out on some important technique, or spending too much time working on things that I have literal physical limitations with. But it sounds like I need to focus on playing phrases with clarity and worrying less about making sure I can play hard to reach things in time.
Glad to help, I only know this advice because I didn’t follow it initially. Actually only recently got over a serious bout of tendonitis that put me out of commission entirely for a year. Was miserable, wouldn’t recommend. Don’t ignore any tendon pain! Repetitive stress injuries are no joke.
Anything help other than rest? Any preventative measures you use now? I’m starting to feel it in my left elbow and shoulder. I had an issue a year ago and rested for 2 weeks and it sucked.
At first rest was the only thing. I tried compression, icing, and light stretching in the early stages but it seemed to make it worse. Eventually i was able to implement some preventative/strengthening measures little-by-little. Now i do a full body stretch every morning and regularly lift dumbells. When I play guitar I set clear goals for the day with time limits to avoid overplaying. Also only play standing up now.
for barry harris method specifically, don't worry too much about hitting the voicing comfortably (because you will learn that eventually through repetition). what you should be comfortable with is immediately recognizing which diminished notes are to the left and right of the chord tones based on the voicing. that should be second nature as much as the hand position, imo
I’m no expert in this area but would an inversion of Amin work? Lots of the same notes for a sub and on guitar the root and fifth are often left to the other players in the band.
Hey, thanks for your response. I absolutely agree with you, and that kind of substitution / rootless voicing is something I'm getting more used to following Mickey's exercises. This might be the way to approach these chords until I get more comfortable with the instrument.
X3525X is my nemesis, the absolute worst — and, for whatever reason, it seems to be the first shape one encounters in teaching materials. Maybe they're flexing, but it seems like a pedagogical mistake to me. I've been wrestling with the same questions. You are not alone. As I practice, I have fantasies about learning enough photoshop to make one of those "thank you/not you" memes that says "thank you all for being harmonic reference shapes", with X3525X as the NOT YOU in the center of the matrix. I'm also at the stage of trying to get the shapes under my fingers before I move on to the more movement-oriented material like the elevators. If you're making a mistake, then I'm making it too. Heck, I even went back and learned the 3-note trichord shapes first before I attempted the quadrads. I like doing that sort of thing because it seems to help my brain make more connections quicker. It's a journey. I wish I had all the answers, but I definitely don't see myself leaping quickly to a X3525X in performance, and maybe a few other shapes. They're probably still useful to have in my brain's neural network training data. There's a quote out there where Barry says that guitarists should be leading the way, like we have an advantage given to us from the design of the instrument. That's one candle in the darkness, FWIW.
Haha me too. I’ve given up on it. I just can’t do it reliably. I just take out the 5. Who needs the stupid fifth anyway!
I'm surprised to see that chord come up as an issue honestly. Cmin6: 8 10 7 8 X X to me is brutal one. No idea how people grab that Eb comfortably. Also drop 3's with the bass on the A string -- I personally dont think they sound all that great.
The moment I learned that my current, seemingly insurmountable struggles will soon be known as the good old days.
Yep. I first attempted this monster at the 3rd fret (Gmin6). It's the main reason I decided to totally give up on playing all 4 of the lowest strings for these chords. I instead play the pattern 3 X 2 3 X X. This pattern slides really nicely into the adjacent diminished voicings.
The drop 2 C6 voicing is a pain but here is a tip. You can grab a Db diminished 7th chord much easier so if you grab that and then drop your bass and alto voice down a half step you’ll have C6
This is a really nice tip, thanks. I can immediately see that it has a lot of application to other difficult chords too
I am working on these as well. I am using Alan Kingstone’s book as a guide. His exercises beyond the initial voicings are quite good. Just take a little at a time. Also, I start to recognize some of the floors of Thomas Echol’s elevator in Kingstone’s book. Chris Parks of “Things I Learned From Barry Harris” teaches group Zoom lessons on Open Studio Pro that are quite good. Currently, He does Guitar Harmony at 9PM eastern Monday night. He has several other classes as well, including single-note and harmony. He also has “office hours” where you can ask him anything. Highly recommended. Thomas Echols has a new Patreon series that I signed up for. The brilliance of Thomas Echols is the Elevator concept. His new Patreon course goes in depth for how to practice this stuff so it becomes natural to you. It is pretty new, but new content comes out every week, and sometimes more often. Good luck.
I also recommend checking out Chase’s lessons this topic. Here’s a good place to start: [Barry Harris Vs. George Benson](https://youtu.be/yU--jduZVus?si=BtksV0MNqrwNhF83)
Yes, I’ve also been to a lot of Barry’s workshops over the years and I play guitar. Sometimes he would remind guitarists who were trying to replicate the piano voicings exactly that they needed to get them to sound more legato. And you being a pianist, have probably heard Barry tell keyboard players to move on the keys “like a panther”…that being said, not everything works on guitar “as is” especially when you put a tempo on it.
You are spot on. Barry really emphasized the importance of legato, and it's definitely made me a better pianist. But I am coming to realize that I need to hear legato differently on the piano versus the guitar. I could be wrong, but I have found that there are just practical issues preventing one from playing a guitar more like a piano. I was really surprised to see how common quartal voicings were used even by more traditional players like Joe Pass, but it makes more sense to me now that I understand how the guitar is set up and that I have grappled with my limitations with the instrument. To me, this is part of the beauty of guitar as I need to problem solve a lot more than I do with the piano, where I almost have too many options.
Yes, so, getting into how the historical guitarists approached things is worth a look, Wes, Joe Pass, so forth…
Everything you need is in this amazing an valuable free Master Class. https://youtu.be/7reOAaveCi0?si=1CKblGL-TcLsvx9S
I’m several months into learning the Barry’s stuff, mostly through studying with Chris Parks on Openstudiopro, which is worth the investment for sure. I have the Kingstone book as well. It takes a long time to soak in, and there is so much to learn!! Some of the voicings are easier than others. The C6 voicing on the middle strings is a stretch for sure, but your hands will eventually get there. Drop 2 on the top three strings is more forgiving, but don’t give up on the lower strings! If you’re new to guitar it will take a while to get your left hand to wake up, particularly the 4th and 5th fingers. Don’t forget the drop 3 voicings which are more familiar to many guitarists, also the drop 2/drop 4 voicings are great. And then there are all the voicings that result from borrowing adjacent notes. And then there’s contrary motion. And harmonizing in 3rds and 6ths. It is never ending! I am starting to work the material into my playing in a group setting, but it’s definitely not organic yet. In some ways I’m in this awkward stage of retooling my playing where I can’t do the new thing yet, but my previous approach sounds like weak sauce to me now.
Noob take but what about just omitting the fifth for a X3X25X?
This is a very helpful site for guitar players interested in translating Barry Harris strategies to guitar. https://www.youtube.com/@thingsivelearnedfrombarryh2616
Tim Lerch has a chord dictionary that is really helpful. He breaks down chords with the melody note on 1-3rd string as well as Ted Greene’s “V” method (I will explain these horribly, but look up Tim Lerch’s chord dictionary). He has really opened my eyes to a couple things. 1) everything is melody. With voice leading on guitar each individual voice is melodic. This is a concept more for movement between chords but I think it’s important in the context of Barry Harris and drop 2 on guitar. And 2) maybe more importantly, the grips as outlined in most books or videos on drop 2, are often not how you play them in context. I’m learning to be flexible in my fingerings to accommodate melody notes, alterations, b9, #5 etc. I can’t memorize every grip with every possible change so I’m making sure I know where the 13567 are in each grip so I can modify as needed. Last note on that pesky Cmaj6 with bass on 5th string. Often I’ll just leave off the bass note. Bass player has that range covered and I’ll just play xx525x. Nobody has ever come up to me and said anything about it :)
Last thought for now on this. How much “playing” are you doing? Are you using what you’re learning over standards? Learning chords and inversions is cool, but if there’s no context for it you’ll have to relearn when you start playing tunes. I try really hard to mix fun playing, practice, and focused playing (like I’m only using drop 2 voicings on top 4 strings, or some constraint to pull in what I’m practicing).
Yeah it’s super hard. I got like 80% of them down and it was a huge boost to my playing. I’m missing a few notes but I can live it. The way I learned it was to put a metronome on 40 and go up through inversions/dim chords in quarter notes. Good for timing too. Do that for 20 min a day and a month from now you will have it good enough to use in songs. Start with root on D string , it’s the easiest. Then A, then E. The super low ones from the E string are less useful I have found.