11Borrowing and moving inside the scales of chords

Idea 1 of 16

Not a trick, and not just two chords

Chris warns against treating Barry’s scales of chords as a trick of putting a diminished after every chord, or as just two chords taking turns. Moving parallel does give the two alternating chords, but borrowing, oblique and contrary motion bring out many other chords hidden in the same eight notes. The scales are a way of hearing all of harmony, not something to drop into one spot in one song.

Idea 2 of 16

Parallel, oblique and contrary motion

The three ways of moving inside a scale of chords: parallel (every voice moves the same way, as in drop 2s up the scale), oblique (one note holds while the others move) and contrary (voices move in opposite directions, for example two voices starting on one note and spreading into thirds, sixths, octaves and tenths). Barry showed all three in the piano class, and they give sounds you would never find thinking of one fixed chord. Chris combines contrary motion with the elevator floors, so a single note opens into a third, a triad, a shell and an octave chord and runs into the next drop 2.

Practise it: On one scale of chords, play a passage in parallel drop 2s, then hold one note while the others move, then move the outer voices apart, first in single notes, then in thirds and triads.

Idea 3 of 16

Keeping one note constant

Hold one note of a 6-chord voicing still while the other notes move through the diminished and the next inversion. It gives a pedal-like line inside the comping, sometimes doubling the held note, and can run up or down the scale. Any note can be the constant one.

Practise it: Pick a note of the voicing (for example C in F minor 7) and move the other three through the 6-diminished scale, keeping the shapes playable.

Idea 4 of 16

Borrowing

Within a scale of chords you can swap one, two or three notes of a chord for neighbouring notes and then resolve, in Barry’s three ways: the scale tone above (from the diminished above), the scale tone below (from the diminished below), or the half step below. Barry would just say ‘one borrowed note’ or ‘two borrowed notes’, but the results are often familiar chords you would never pick from the chart: C6 with B borrowed is C major 7, and in C minor 6 one or two borrowed notes give A flat major 7, B7 sharp 5 or A flat 6. Borrowing makes tension and movement inside one chord without leaving the scale, which is why odd chord names, 9ths and 13ths are, for Barry, just a sixth chord with borrowed notes.

Practise it: Take one drop 2 inversion and borrow one note, then two, then three, name what you get and resolve it; then do it in every inversion, keep borrowing the same note as you climb the scale, and use it in a ii-V.

Idea 5 of 16

Borrowing a half step below

The third kind of borrowing: replace a chord tone with the note a half step below it, whether or not that note belongs to the neighbouring diminished, then resolve. Barry had mentioned the half step below for years, but Chris only recently saw how far it goes on every scale of chords, in drop 2s, drop 3s, tenths and minor 6 chords (on a C6 drop 3, G flat for G as well as A flat for G). He finds the half step above less pretty and hasn’t heard Barry talk about it.

Practise it: Lower one or two notes of each drop 2 or drop 3 of a sixth diminished scale by a half step and resolve them; then try it in tenths.

Idea 6 of 16

Short

Barry’s ‘short’ is a move that borrows from a close voicing. On guitar Chris takes the three notes of a broken drop 2, keeps the middle note and moves the outer sixth to the diminished notes above, always landing on another broken drop 2. Piano players keep four notes (root, 3, 5, 6) and borrow above the root and fifth. Chris drops one note to make it playable.

Practise it: First know the broken drop 2s and the scale in sixths (in C minor 6 diminished: major 6, major 6, major 6, major 6, minor 6, major 6, 7th, major 6). Then go up the scale borrowing the sixth above each time.

Idea 7 of 16

Long

Barry’s ‘long’ borrows from a drop 2: replace its lowest and highest notes (which make a tenth) with the neighbouring notes of the next chord in the scale, and keep the two middle notes. In C minor 6 diminished, C G A E-flat becomes D G A F. Short and long move the same two notes but in opposite registers, so they combine well.

Practise it: Go down and up the scale of chords doing long on every drop 2 (some are stretches), then alternate short and long. Chris also applies it to major 6 diminished.

Idea 8 of 16

Moving the inner or outer notes of a drop 2

In a drop 2 voicing the lowest and highest notes are a tenth apart, and the two middle notes are usually a third (sometimes a second). So you can move just the inner third to the diminished above, ornament it with a half step below, or play only the outer tenth. Chris shows this gives many personal versions of a single ii-V.

Practise it: For each drop 2 inversion, find the middle two notes and move only them (diminished above, half step below and back); also try the outer tenth alone, and the sixth between the D and B strings.

Idea 9 of 16

Barry’s Chopin phrase

A phrase Barry took from Chopin: start on a note, go up a scale step, drop a third, then from the note you ended on go down another scale step and repeat. On a plain C7 scale it is a melody; on C7 diminished it changes; and Barry played it in chords, the C7 with the diminished above and below, often as just the outer tenth of the diminished. It also works with shells, triads and fifths.

Practise it: Play it in single notes on C7 and C7 diminished, then in drop 2 chords, then try it on other elevator floors.

Idea 10 of 16

Six chord to six chord

Moving from G6 to C6 means moving only two notes, each down a whole step (D to C and B to A), while G and E stay. Moving those same two notes only a half step gives the diminished chord in between. Because every major sixth is also a minor seventh, the move works as six on the fifth to the one chord (key of C), as vi to ii (key of G), and as Fm7 to Bb7 in All the Things You Are.

Practise it: Learn the move in every drop 2 inversion on all three string sets, noticing which pair of strings moves each time. Then add the passing diminished.

Idea 11 of 16

Six must-know ii-Vs

Starting from the ii chord read as a sixth chord (A minor 7 = C6 in G), keep the C and move one, two or three other voices by a half or whole step to get six different V chords: A minor 6, a diminished, plain D7, the tritone Ab7, D7 flat 5 (Ab7 flat 5), and Eb minor 6 (the tritone’s minor). Each new chord leads into its own scale of chords, so a ii-V branches into a great many choices with almost no movement.

Practise it: Learn each of the six moves from every inversion of C6; skip the ones that don’t sit well in the hand at that spot. Then chain several in a row.

Idea 12 of 16

Minor ii-V: keep the root of the minor 6, lower the rest

A minor ii-V in D (E minor 7 flat 5 to A7) seen as G minor 6 moving to the dominant. Find the G in whatever inversion you are in, keep it, and lower the other three notes a half step: the result is A7 flat 5 with the flat 5 in the bass (or Eb7 flat 5). Chris then decorates it with borrowing and inner-voice moves so that no two players’ ii-Vs sound alike.

Practise it: Do the move from every drop 2 inversion of G minor 6 on all string sets, then add the diminished above and below, inner-voice half steps and top-note borrowing.

Idea 13 of 16

A beautiful movement we never play

From a major chord the bass walks down through the diminished with the 7 in the bass, the relative minor, the minor with its flat 7 in the bass and the minor with its 6 in the bass (a half-diminished chord). In Eb the bass is Eb, D, C, Bb, A. It is hidden in many songs, and Chris adds it where it is not written, such as Autumn Leaves between Eb and A half diminished, and in Giant Steps.

Practise it: Comp and solo through the walk-down in Eb, then build lines with the diminished and C minor 6 diminished, and find it in your tunes.

Idea 14 of 16

Modulating through the shared diminished

Major 6 chords a minor third apart (Bb6, Db6, E6, G6) share one diminished, and that diminished is shared by the dominants on the same roots. So from Bb6 you can pass through the diminished into Db, E or G major, or into Db7, E7, G7 or Bb7 and on to Gb, A, C or Eb. The minor 6 chords on the fifth (and the tritone’s minors) open the last four keys. Chris got this from the way Barry introduced Bud Powell’s ‘I’ll Keep Loving You’, moving from Bb to Gb for the bridge so smoothly that it sounded as if he hadn’t moved.

Practise it: Start on Bb6 diminished, alternate Bb6 and its diminished, then go out through each related major 6, dominant and minor 6 to reach all 12 keys.

Idea 15 of 16

Comping with movement

Instead of holding one chord for two bars, or settling for quarter-note ‘comping fours’ with the same grips every guitarist uses, Chris wants guitarists to comp like pianists with small moving chords from the scales of chords: sixth-chord inversions with the diminished between, two sixth chords, borrowed notes, contrary motion, and two-note moves at fast tempos. Behind a soloist this only makes them sound better, as long as you resolve, and it needs least-movement voice leading in your hands. Barry’s own comping, for example behind Coleman Hawkins, is full of these moves.

Practise it: Take the first four bars of a tune and comp only with one scale of chords and its diminished, trying different rhythms; then add borrowing, contrary motion and the other movements.

Idea 16 of 16

Chord melody with the scales of chords

Harmonise each melody note from its chord’s scale of chords instead of the few grips everybody plays: put it on top of a drop 2, then vary the thickness with the elevator floors (single notes, thirds, triads, shells, octave chords), add borrowed notes, held notes and parallel, oblique or contrary motion. Because it comes from a system, you can improvise a new arrangement every time, and Chris treats his chording as a place to be as creative as his lines.

Practise it: Pick a melody note and find every way to harmonise it from its scale of chords, then fit them into the length the tune allows; play the same tune several different ways. Not everything has to be a drop 2.