The Barry Book
An instructional resource preserving the authentic Barry Harris tradition of jazz pedagogy.
An instructional resource preserving the authentic Barry Harris tradition of jazz pedagogy.
Learn the authentic concepts and harmonic principles as taught by Barry Harris himself—not the diluted institutional approach.
This material represents the true bebop tradition, passed down through Barry Harris's decades of teaching and performance.
Continuously refined and updated to maintain the highest standards of accuracy and pedagogical clarity.
The Barry Harris tradition represents a distinct and profound approach to understanding jazz harmony and improvisation. While modern jazz institutions often teach fragmented concepts and theoretical abstractions, this resource preserves the complete, integrated system that Barry Harris developed over seven decades of playing and teaching. This is the authentic bebop language—the same harmonic concepts, movement rules, and musical thinking that defined the golden age of jazz and continues to produce musicians who truly understand the music from the inside out.
Open source means this resource is freely available, transparent, and collaborative. The complete source code—every note, every chord symbol, every layout decision—is publicly accessible on GitHub. Anyone can view it, learn from it, suggest improvements, or adapt it for their own needs. This stands in stark contrast to proprietary educational materials locked behind paywalls and copyright restrictions.
By combining LilyPond (professional music engraving software) with LaTeX (sophisticated document typesetting), we achieve publication-quality results using entirely free, open-source tools. LilyPond produces beautiful, traditionally-engraved notation that rivals or exceeds commercial alternatives, while LaTeX handles complex layouts and text formatting with precision. Together, they create a reproducible, version-controlled workflow where every change is tracked and documented.
GitHub serves as both archive and workshop—preserving the Barry Harris tradition while enabling continuous refinement. Musicians worldwide can contribute corrections, suggest additions, or fork the project to create their own variations. This collaborative approach ensures the material remains accurate, accessible, and alive, rather than frozen in a commercial publication that becomes outdated the moment it's printed.
Authentic jazz education should be freely shared, not commodified. Open source makes that possible.