In plain words
In his 1998 workshop Barry kept repeating that the rules are more important than the scales, and that they have to become second nature. The rules he meant are chiefly the half-step rules: where to add a note as you run a scale. His example: A♭ major run straight down from A♭ does not sound like anything, but with a half step put in between F and E♭ (the sixth and fifth) it sounds right.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit0:000:34The 1998 workshop, part 335:2335:55The 1998 workshop, part 114:41
A rule is not tied to one starting note. Barry said anything you can do, you can do from any degree to any degree: pick a scale, apply the rule from each degree in turn, and you are really learning. The aim is many ways to play a passage, not one. You cannot practise every way, so you carry the rules in your head and let them govern your playing.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit3:3118:0219:4333:38
Rules work against prepared material. Barry said they upset all pre-laid plans, and that whenever he broke a habit he was doing something right. Even the phrases he sang in class were not the point: he said he was not especially after those phrases, but was showing how to put things together and making players aware of rhythm, so that one day they would make up phrases of their own.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit24:1625:3326:33Feeling the ‘and’33:08Music is like math3:34
Barry claimed all his material was logical, so no teacher could face him down. He scorned describing scales as patterns of half and whole steps: you have to know where a thing comes from, what it is made of and what it gives you. His account of the diminished chords coming from the two whole-tone scales was, he said, logic. He pushed this to provocative claims, such as that the major scale we inherited has eight degrees but should have nine.
Jazz schools and the basics3:233:565:03The last train to Monk: an interview30:48Student performances and coaching30:2530:58
How he said to practise it
Pick one rule and one scale and play the rule from every degree of the scale, in time after a count-off. In the 1998 workshop he took one added half step through each degree of F harmonic minor, and had the class fill every gap between C and G in C major.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit2:543:3119:4320:31
Write the rules down so you know what to practise, and drill them until they are second nature.
Half-step rules on the dominant scale, part 12:52The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit0:34
Practise the rules for rhythm. Barry said the half steps are put in so you can practise rhythm and choose where they go; the rules he gave are for starting on the beat, and starting on the ‘and’ calls for the opposite rule.
Half-step rules on the dominant scale, part 25:22The 1998 workshop, part 114:4128:33
Do not skip the basics you hate: triads, arpeggios, the plain major scale. Barry said you need them in order to create.
Believe: a talk to musicians14:2214:57Jazz schools and the basics2:12
In Barry’s words
Each one plays from the moment he says it. Every other moment he teaches it is listed below.
The rules are more important than scales. The rules are more important. It’s more important for you to have rules that are like second [nature].
The fellow who’s going to be the best is the one who knows the most ways to play... you can’t practice all the ways, it’s impossible.
I just use logic. I say all my stuff is logical so that no teacher... could come up to me and face off with me.
If you just say that, then it means nothing. You’ve got to know where it comes from. What is it composed of? What does it give us?
Where this comes from
Everything above is drawn from these. Open any one to check it.
Every moment he teaches it12 moments in 7 recordings
Each time opens the transcript there; the video plays when you are online.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit
- 0:00
Opens this part of the workshop: the rules are more important than scales and must be second nature.
- 3:31
Has the class play one half-step rule from each degree of F harmonic minor.
- 18:02
Anything you can do, you can do from any degree to any degree.
- 19:43
Pick a scale, do the rule from each degree; fills every half step from C to G.
- 33:38
The best player knows the most ways; carry rules in your head and let them govern you.
- 24:16
Breaking a habit means he is doing something right; rules upset prepared plans.
The 1998 workshop, part 3
- 35:23
Recaps the rule-over-scale principle; A♭ major down sounds empty without the 6–5 half step.
Feeling the ‘and’
- 33:08
Says he does not want his phrases copied as such; he is showing how to put things together.
Music is like math
- 3:34
He keeps showing things until one day you play yourself, with phrases that are your own.
Jazz schools and the basics
- 3:56
All his material is logical; dismisses half-step, whole-step descriptions of scales.
The last train to Monk: an interview
- 30:48
Knowing where the diminished scale comes from matters, not reciting its step pattern.
Student performances and coaching
- 30:25
Derives the three diminished chords from the two whole-tone scales: all this is logic.
From the lessons3 lessons, 11 points
Notes taken from Barry’s classes, each tied to the moment it comes from.
Rules matter more than scales: play each rule from every degree
- Idea
Barry told his classes that the rules are more important than the scales, and that they must become second nature. His method: state a rule (for example, one added half step between two particular notes), pick a scale, and play the rule from each degree of that scale. Doing that, he said, is how you really learn.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit0:0019:43The 1998 workshop, part 335:23
- Exercise
In F harmonic minor, add one half step between the tonic and the seventh and play the descending scale in time after a count-off. Then start from the second (the extra note now falls between the second and the tonic), then from the third, and so on through every degree. Listen to how each starting point gives a different chord sound: from the tonic it is F minor; from the second it is G half-diminished going to C7.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit2:142:543:315:24
- Exercise
When you run a scale down, the added half step can go after any note that falls on the beat. In C major from the top, C, A, F and D land on the beat; in F harmonic minor, F, D-flat, B-flat and G do. So you could choose, say, to put the half step between the fourth and third of F minor. Barry said rules like this make a scale sound more inviting, turning F harmonic minor into more than just a scale.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit9:4310:1610:5711:31
- Exercise
The rules work going up too. Barry started to switch to a diminished scale on B but stopped himself, saying he was changing too quickly. The class then played up from tonic to tonic with one half step added between the tonic and second, then between the second and third, then the third and fourth, and so on, until one was needed between the seventh and the top (E and F, which fits the F minor scale they had been using). Later he reminded the class that a diminished scale has eight notes.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit12:0512:5126:33
- Exercise
Rules can add more than one note. In F minor, go from the tonic up to the minor third with two half steps added, then do the same from the next degree, where Barry said one has to go between G and A-flat. A bigger version: in C major go from C up to G filling every gap: D-flat between C and D, E-flat between D and E, G between E and F (already a half step apart), F-sharp between F and G. Then play it in time.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit14:2815:1019:4320:31
- Exercise
Anything you can do, Barry said, you can do from any degree to any degree. One example: in C major, go up two half steps from the fifth and then come down the chord. Another: go chromatically from the fifth up to the major seventh, then come down the chord. Pick the rule, then apply it on each degree of the scale.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit18:0229:5130:24
Practising like an improviser
- Exercise
In the rests between phrases, imagine you are making up the phrase about to come. Practise seeing a phrase before you play it: you may not see the whole thing, but seeing its beginning gets you started and you carry it through. Even when playing set class phrases, try to look a little ahead as if you were inventing them.
- Idea
Barry explained that he doesn’t especially want students to play his class phrases. He is showing how to put musical things together and making them conscious of rhythm, and he hopes they learn to put things together like that when they solo. He praised the nice legato touch of two of the players, telling one he was doing it well and with power.
Feeling the ‘and’33:08
- Idea
Rules give you many ways to play something, and the player who knows the most ways will be the best. You cannot practise every way; that’s impossible. Instead you carry rules in your head and let them govern your playing.
The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit33:38
How Barry calls a scale
- Exercise
When Barry calls a scale, never play it from the tonic to the tonic an octave up. A major scale runs from the tonic up to the major seventh; a dominant seventh scale runs from the tonic up to its (flat) seventh. ‘Up’ means ascend only. ‘Down’ means start on the seventh and descend. ‘Up and down’ means go from the tonic up to the seventh and back down. Try his drill: B-flat major scale, up and down.
Practising the blues with the horns, part 10:00
- Idea
Barry said everything he taught was based on logic, which is why he felt no music teacher could face him down. He dismissed the common habit of describing scales as half-step/whole-step patterns, and provocatively claimed that the major scale handed down to us is wrong: it has eight degrees, he said, and should have nine.
In writing5 notes
What his interviews, his students’ class notes and other teachers’ articles add.
Barry told Ted Panken his teaching differed from the orthodox in using few scales, above all the dominant 7th scale, which he applied to nearly everything. He added that his thinking had changed: students also need basic harmony about how to get from one place to another, combined with the scales.
Asked whether music is mathematics, Barry said it is exact, not put together haphazardly, and partly a science, but that something stands above the logic. He set a freedom that comes from knowledge against the freedom of anarchy. Knowing that the music is scalar rather than chordal, he said, changes everything.
Barry told Mark Stryker that you learn the rules so you can bend and extend them and find new answers, since even Bird and Bud did not do it all. Stryker reports that Barry built those rules by studying the masters’ improvisations closely.
Mark Stryker (Detroit Free Press), Professor of Bebop at 70: Native Detroiter Barry Harris Shares the Secrets of the Jazz Tradition with Students in New York ¶19Mark Stryker (Detroit Free Press), Professor of Bebop at 70: Native Detroiter Barry Harris Shares the Secrets of the Jazz Tradition with Students in New York ¶22
Alan Kingstone reads ‘the rules are more important than the scales’ as rhythm mattering more than notes: the rule says how many extra notes to add from a given starting degree so the line falls right in time. He notes Barry stressed this in his later years.
jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris, interesting, but... (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶51jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris, interesting, but... (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶52jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris, interesting, but... (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶53jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), How do you use Barry Harris’s Dom. 7th dim and Dom 7th b5 scales? ¶177
Brian de Lima quotes Barry saying that students should come out sounding like themselves, not like him, because he teaches in a way that leaves room for that.
How other teachers explain it3 videos, 1 series episode
Barry’s students, and their students, teaching it their way. A second opinion, not Barry.
- What Makes Barry’s Method Unique?
Short video on what makes Barry’s method unique.
3 min, transcript On YouTube
- Inside Barry’s World: Introduction
Introduction to his Inside Barry’s World series on Barry’s logic and teaching.
2 min, transcript On YouTube
- My Chat With Chris Parks From Things I Learned From Barry Harris
Chris Parks: learn a few scales, then all you can do on each one; that is where you go deepest.
62 min, transcript On YouTube
In the teaching series
Episodes on this idea in the long series by other teachers. Each name opens that whole series in order.
Where the accounts differ2 points
Barry’s emphasis changed over the years. He told Panken his thinking had changed since he began teaching; Alan Kingstone dates the ‘rules over scales’ slogan to his later years; and a Reddit post relays Chris Parks saying minor-scale half-step rules arrived only late, the system always evolving.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶467jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris, interesting, but... (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶5123 Reddit users (handles kept per comment), Reddit: first-hand recollections of Barry Harris’s classes ¶138
Some players find the approach rigid: a jazzguitar.be member felt the rule-based method takes away the fun of making your own rules, and a Reddit commenter who attended says Barry’s concepts do not always line up with common jazz theory and that he was prone to exaggeration. Barry presented rules as something to bend and extend, and his phrases as examples, not material to copy.
Feeling the ‘and’33:08jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris & Wes Montgomery (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶42323 Reddit users (handles kept per comment), Reddit: first-hand recollections of Barry Harris’s classes ¶65Mark Stryker (Detroit Free Press), Professor of Bebop at 70: Native Detroiter Barry Harris Shares the Secrets of the Jazz Tradition with Students in New York ¶19
Read further2 links
These open on the web.
Books and paid courses
- Inside Barry’s World, Howard Rees YouTube series (from Jan 2026): four scales for chording, voicings, movement, harmonisation, solo development
student (Howard Rees) — Howard Rees’s free Inside Barry’s World videos present the method as Barry’s logic, concept by concept.
- The Barry Harris Workshop Video Part Two, Howard Rees: ~4h15, 156-page workbook; chapters Improvisation (49 sections), Rhythm Section (17), Harmony (41)
Barry himself (produced and transcribed by Howard Rees) — Barry’s expanded ‘extra note rules’ and their applications on video, with a transcribed workbook (paid).