Eddie Harris Intervallistic Concept Pdf Jun 2026

By shifting your focus from "what note comes next in the scale" to "what interval creates the most compelling leap," you open up a universe of geometric harmony. Eddie Harris proved that jazz doesn't just have to flow like a river—it can leap, bound, and electrify.

It forces you to master the "break" of the instrument (the transition between the octave key registers) and improves finger synchronization.

Shifting the brain from thinking "Dorian scale" to thinking "stacks of fourths and minor sevenths." eddie harris intervallistic concept pdf

Harris was obsessed with perfect fourths. Unlike thirds, which explicitly state the quality of a chord, fourths sound open and modern.

The method is not just physical; it is aural. To play an interval like a Major 7th accurately, the player must hear it internally before executing it. By practicing these intervals in all keys, the player internalizes the sound of "vertical" harmony while playing "horizontal" lines. By shifting your focus from "what note comes

: It is a thorough 3-volume edition covering advanced topics like intervals, altissimo playing, chord substitution, and superimposed triads.

When you incorporate wide intervals into your playing, your musicality undergoes an immediate shift. 1. Breaking the "Scalar Chain" Shifting the brain from thinking "Dorian scale" to

When a player runs a scale up and down, the listener can easily anticipate where the line is going. When you introduce an intervallistic leap—say, jumping up an augmented fourth, dropping a major seventh, and rising a perfect fifth—the line becomes angular, unpredictable, and highly modern. It mimics the wide-interval vocabulary of classical giants like Igor Stravinsky or Arnold Schoenberg, but recontextualized within a jazz rhythm. 2. Symmetrical and "Outside" Playing

Artists like Steve Lehman, Kamasi Washington, and even avant-garde guitarists like Mary Halvorson utilize techniques directly traceable to Harris’s 1970s booklet.