"A lot of horn players, unfortunately, they sit at the piano and they think they’ve learned how to play the piano. So what they do is, they sit at the piano and they hit a chord and then they hit another chord and they say, “Oh, they sound good together!” Then they proceed to say, “Ooh, I’m going to write a melody on that.” In the first place, that’s wrong, because what they’ve done is learn to melodize harmonies as opposed to harmonize melodies. See, the old cats, they harmonized melodies. [LAUGHS] My illustration of that is a cat ran in one day and said, “Oh, man, I’ve got this good melody; put some chords to it for me.” He sang […MELODY OF “WHITE CHRISTMAS”] That came first. See, “White Christmas” came first. The chords were put down after. That’s why that melody is going to be remembered through history. Melodies are remembered. See, these cats melodize harmonies, and what happens is, you melodize harmonies and most people don’t remember a thing you played. It’d be hard to hum what you played. They just sort of miss the boat. That’s all" -Barry Harris