How To Practice: First, find 4 or 5 phrases that you really like the sound of. Specifically he varies the start of his phrases constantly. He can take classic bebop licks that everybody plays and start them in unusual places. It makes his phrasing and playing sound so fresh. Learn How To Start Your Phrases On Many Different Beatsīarry is truly a master at starting his jazz lines on different beats. If you need some good chords to play while you’re soloing check out this lesson on piano chords. You can even copy a Barry Harris lick and use it yourself. How To Practice: Loop a I-VI-II-V-I (1-6-2-5-1) chord progression over and over practice playing simple riff ideas using the major scale. As you can see through the first 3 and a half measures Barry just uses simple major scale ideas from the Bb major scale. Major Scale Can Be Your Friend If You Know How To Use ItĮven though the chords to this tune are going by quick (every two beats) you don’t have to specifically hit every chord. We will also talk about how to apply all these tools to your own music. You can turn almost everything in this solo into an exercise or study. There are literally hundreds of cool things in this solo but we’ll just pick a few. Let’s now discuss some of the awesome things we can learn from this solo.

Feel free to share this page/lesson as well! The only thing I ask is that you link back to the site in return.) 3 Things We Can Learn From This Barry Harris Transcription pdf file of this solo to study it more closely. Be sure to check out all the additional tips, jazz transcriptions pdf goodies, and analysis below! Here is the notation of the rhythm changes solo.

Jazz piano transcriptions