Most music education teaches scales first (C major, G Dorian, etc.). You learn the "color" of the scale, then you learn to jump around inside it. Harris flipped the pyramid.
Sometime in the early 2000s, a fan scanned a rare, original copy of The Intervallistic Concept —a thin, spiral-bound book published by Hip-Bone Music (Eddie’s own label). This PDF began circulating on Soulseek, Scribd, and private jazz trackers.
The Intervallistic Concept is the name of the three-volume method book he authored, which serves as a comprehensive workout for any musician looking to develop their technique and expand their harmonic and rhythmic resources. The nearly 200 pages are packed with hundreds of studies that cover everything from fundamental skills to the most modern and complex harmonic devices. At its core, it is a method for "for all single line wind instruments" designed to develop improvisational and compositional skills in a logical, straightforward way. eddie harris intervallistic concept pdf patched
In the end, Eddie’s Intervallistic Concept became less about a document and more about a practice: a daring to value the interval, to patch tools and attention to honor what isn’t played. The PDF remained, patched and repatched, a traveling fragment annotated by hands and circuits and cigarette burns. Musicians would open it, find a margin that guided a new habit, and leave it slightly different than they found it—another small gap widened into something that sounded like belonging.
: Introduces basic interval understanding, patterns, scales, and harmonic progressions to build an intuitive creative approach. Volume II: Advanced Techniques Most music education teaches scales first (C major,
💡 If you can't find a reliable PDF, look for Ligon's "Comprehensive Technique for Jazz Musicians" or Nicolas Slonimsky's "Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns" . They share the same DNA as Harris's system. If you'd like, I can help you: Find similar method books that are currently in print.
The exercises are notoriously difficult. Players note that the wide intervallic leaps force the embouchure to remain in a neutral, flexible position. If you try to "cheat" the intervals by biting or adjusting your mouth, you will fail. It forces a pure, unfettered use of air and voicing. Sometime in the early 2000s, a fan scanned
Instead of playing ascending or descending scales, the concept focuses on playing intervals—thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths, and octaves—in succession.
The term "patched" usually refers to digital versions where missing pages have been restored or formatting has been corrected for tablets. Eddie Harris Intervallistic Concept Pdf - Facebook