The Intervallistic Concept is a masterclass from a true original. Investing in the legitimate edition is an investment in your own creative growth and a tribute to a musician who spent his life expanding the boundaries of what a saxophone could do. Skip the shady PDF forums; get the book, put it on the stand, and enter the shed. Your playing will never be the same.
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Jazz is heavily based on syncopation and rhythmic displacement. By breaking away from step-wise scale motion and adopting Harris's Intervallistic Concept, your lines will naturally become more angular, surprising, and melodic. It is the exact concept used by modern jazz giants like Mark Turner, Chris Potter, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, even if they don't explicitly call it by Harris's name. eddie harris intervallistic concept pdf
“There are no wrong compositions, only wrong inflection.”
: Traditional methods teach scales; Harris teaches the individual building blocks—the intervals themselves. By mastering leaps and unusual skips, the player's fingers learn to find any note in relation to the last, breaking free from stepwise, scalar thinking. The Intervallistic Concept is a masterclass from a
Given that the original PDF is rare, here are legitimate pathways for the serious student:
If you can find the PDF, treasure it. It contains handwritten diagrams, specific "Harris Licks" mapped out by interval number, and a unique humor (Harris claimed the concept came to him in a dream about a clock). Your playing will never be the same
If you are waiting to get the PDF, here is the core philosophy of what Harris was teaching.
At first it was harmless—students downloading, a few comments in online forums debating a lesson. Then musicians from distant cities began quoting Eddie in interviews, using his interval-dialogue to structure entire sets. A producer remixed a track with an Intervallistic bassline and turned Eddie's diagrams into synth arpeggios. The PDF circulated like a rumor, copied and recopied until pixels blurred and the odd margin note acquired a footnote no one had ever written.
The official text of this concept was published by .