RE: [Harp-L] David Barrett's Harmonica Scales Books

["Bill Hines" <billhines4@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sam,

Good observation - I only thumbed through the books and it seemed that
they use the scales and progressions as practice exercises - to work on
pitch, dexterity, and just basic scale familiarity (which could then be
adapted to use by the harp player for the things you note). I think a
lot of folks just use scales to work on those things, pitch, tone, bends
cleanly as part of a progression, etc. But I also would like to put them
to more 'musical' use as you say, so that would probably be a good third
book in this series. When you're playing in the IV chord, you're playing
notes from that scale, right? So it would be good to know. Did you look
at the first book to see if he talked about this at all? Seems like it
would be more in the second book, but who knows. Maybe he covered that
aspect in one of his other books (soloing concepts?).

Bill 

-----Original Message-----
From: harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:harp-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of samblancato
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 7:22 AM
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Harp-L] David Barrett's Harmonica Scales Books

Hi Folks,

Bill Hines had mentioned the two scales books by David Barrette and I
wanted to make some comment on this.  I have the second book and it has
just about every scale there is in it but it's pretty useless except as
a reference.  I think the world of Barrett's material but he makes the
same mistake everybody else seems to make when they approach this thing.
Everyone presents all the scales relevant to their discussion but nobody
seems to understand that know a scale in and of its self is worthless
unless it's within a context of a song or chord progression.  You might
be able to recognize a scale and distinguish it from another but without
a context it's meaningless.  How does a Dorian scale work melodically
over a major progression?  How does it compare, given the same
progression, with a mixalydian scale?  Barrette only touches on this at
the very end, and I mean the very end of the book.  In this instance he
plays a really neat figure over a progression and gives you the
teenyweenist taste of what can be done once you understand a scale in
context.  It is really frustrating.  Barrette is taking on an issue and
then he doesn't really take it on.  Presenting this kind of stuff for
harmonica players (who learn their chops by instinct
mostly) is like trying to explain something to a blind person by drawing
them a picture.

 

Sam Blancato, Pittsburgh

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