Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 13: Tunes as the curriculum

Ways to play the first four bars of the blues

Episode 160 · 11:59 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris takes Barry’s scale outline for the first four bars of a B flat blues and shows several other sets of changes you can imply over it: Barry’s tritone, the Blues for Alice opening, sixth-chord and diminished bass moves, and a chain of dominants two beats each. The point is that you don’t need to warn the band; you imply the changes in your line and vary them from chorus to chorus.

Step by step

  1. 1:06Start from Barry’s blues outline in B flat: B flat 7 up (tonic to 7th), E flat 7 up, B flat 7 up and down
  2. 2:13Because B flat 7 goes home a fourth higher to E flat, swap in its tritone, E7, wherever B flat 7 appears
  3. 2:46Rewrite the outline with E7: e.g. B flat 7 up, E flat 7 up, B flat 7 up, E7 up, or end on E7 up and down
  4. 3:55Connect each pair of scales (B flat 7 to E7, E7 to E flat 7) by finding the notes in common and the notes that surround, degree by degree
  5. 4:28Try the Blues for Alice opening: B flat major up, F7 down to the third of D, G minor 6 up, B flat 7 up
  6. 6:08Imply the bass move B flat 7 up, then E flat 6 (1-2-3-5-6) to E diminished
  7. 7:13Imply the descending bass B flat, A flat, G, G flat, F with E flat major 6 going to E flat minor 6
  8. 8:21Play Barry’s chain after a bar of B flat 7: 1-2-3-5 of E flat 7, A flat 7, D flat 7, G flat 7, B7 and E7, two beats each
  9. 11:11On a long solo, imply a different set of changes in each chorus so the first four bars keep changing

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line7:13
𝄞♭♭♭
C4FGC5G♭A♭B♭
  1. B♭
  2. A♭
  3. G
  4. G♭
  5. F

Barry’s own words on this

13.1 The blues the Barry way4.4 Scale outlines8.5 The tritone

In the course

Think the dominant: put the ii awayThe tritoneNotes in common and notes that surroundThe blues the Barry way

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 160 of things I learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would talk about the first four bars of the blues, which is what my channel started on, which was the 12-bar blues and Barry scale outline. I thought we could talk about just the first four bars and how many different ways there are to play the first four bars, how many different changes you can throw at it, and substitutes, and all these different things. Now, these aren’t the only ways you could do, of course there’s infinite amount of ways you can do it, but I’m just going to show you the ones that I kind of learned
  2. 0:33from Barry. But before we get started, I just want to remind everybody my school 7-day free trial ends on June 1st. So, if you want a chance to come in and check out what’s going on in school, we’re really having a blast. We have mini lessons, we have Zoom get-togethers, we have a once-a-month get-together with Thomas Eakles. We’re having a ball. We have a beautiful community of people that post themselves practicing and just super positive, and uh I think people are really enjoying it. So, just come and check it out, but make
  3. 1:06sure you get there before uh June 1st, cuz the 7-day trial ends uh before June 1st, or ends on June 1st. So, uh I’ll leave the link in the description. Now, talking about the blues, our normal scale outline for the blues is we have B flat 7, and of course Barry’s genius scale outlines are so perfect. You got B flat 7 up, let’s say a blues in B flat. B flat 7 up, tonic to 7, E flat 7 up, B flat 7 up and down. So, that right away is forcing you to
  4. 1:39say, I have to know how to run B flat 7 into E flat 7 and then back to B flat 7. So, whatever your phrase is, >> [music] >> that was just implying those changes. I didn’t do anything else, I didn’t do any other substitutes. Not the greatest line in the world, but it was all right. It got me through the first four bars. Okay, now that’s just one way you could look at it. Sometimes Barry would use what he liked to call uh the tritone
  5. 2:13or what he referred to as his tritone sub, which is the following. Whenever you have a dominant chord that is going home a fourth higher. So, for instance, this B flat 7 is going home a fourth higher to E flat. Now, it could be any kind of E flat. It could be E flat major, E flat minor, E flat 7. It could be any other kind of E flat. But, as long as it’s going home to E flat something you can use B flat’s tritone like E7. And you know, as guitar players, we always play things [music] like this anyway. [singing] That’s exactly what we’re doing. B B
  6. 2:46flat 7 E7 B flat 7. So, now let’s take our scale outline. There’s a lot of ways we could think about it. If our original scale outline is B flat 7 up E flat 7 up B flat 7 up and down, right? Now, let’s say any place where we have the B flat 7, we could throw in the E7. So, let’s say we say B flat 7 up E flat 7 up B flat 7 up E7 up. See, that’s a nice way to think about it. Or we could say B flat 7 up E flat 7 up and then a total
  7. 3:19[singing] E7 up and down. Covers the whole thing. We don’t even go back to B flat 7. Or we could start off with E7 E flat 7 B flat 7 up E flat 7 up. So, so watch. If I did that one, watch. If I said >> [music] [music] >> That’s exactly that. That was playing B flat 7 running it into I’m sorry, that was playing E7 running it into E flat 7 back to B 7, back to E7 to get back to
  8. 3:55E-flat 7. Now, that’s a lot of movement, but it gives you so many options. So, you grab one of these little things and you say, “I’m going to practice those.” Or I say, “Okay, I’m going to practice this going to this going to this. I’m going to see how many different ways they connect.” And again, I like using berries. Again, berries brilliant way of saying you either have notes in common or notes that surround. So, anytime a scale moves to another scale, like in this case B-flat 7, let’s say to E-flat 7, you have notes in common and notes that surround. That’s an easy one. But B-flat
  9. 4:287 to E7, that’s a little bit harder. That’s got some surrounding That’s got more surrounding notes. And certainly E7 to E-flat 7 has even more surrounding notes. But that’s okay cuz you just go through each degree and find where all those notes are. Now, another uh blues that sometimes you’ll hear people play is Blues for Alice blues. So, in a normal blues, you got the one chord going to the four chord, back to [music] the one chord for two measures. In a Blues for Alice blues, you have the one chord, but it’s major.
  10. 5:01So, it would be [music] B-flat major up. And then the next part is going to be a 2-5 going to the relative minor. So, A half In the key of B-flat, it’s A half diminished to D7, which gives you F7 down to the third of D. And then you have G minor, which we’ll say G minor 6 up from tonic to the sixth. And then you have B-flat 7. So, I’ll give you that scale outline. That would be B-flat major up, F7 down to the third of D, G minor 6 up, B-flat 7 up.
  11. 5:35And that’s nice. So, you have to say, >> [music] >> See, that was running that that thing, putting those things together, the B flat major, like the blues for Alice blues, which is a really nice one. So, that’s another one. That’s another thing you can think about when you think about the first four bars of the blues. And you don’t have to prepare it beforehand where you talk to the bass player or the pianist and say, “Oh, on the second chorus, I’m going to do this move.” You just do it.
  12. 6:08You just do it. They’ll move with you. They’ll move with you. So, then you have, let’s see. Now, here’s another move that we should know. There’s B flat 7 up and then instead of E flat 7 sometimes people you’ll hear this move, this [music] move from a bass player. Which implies this particular change, which is B flat 7 up and then E flat 6 1 2 3 5 6 of E flat 6 and then E diminished. See this move?
  13. 6:42Or >> [music] >> or or All those moves, see that implies that move. So, if I said So, that was the E flat 6 to the E diminished. That’s a nice one. Let me make a clearer one. >> [music] >> Let’s say Let’s say >> [music]
  14. 7:13>> That’s a nice one. So, that’s using that one, E flat 6 to E diminished. That’s a nice one. Another variation of that is Barry used to have us do, well, he could hear the bass player say Now, that’s moving in one direction, but then there’s also this bass line. >> [music] >> And what that is implying, that’s B flat, >> [music and singing] >> A flat, G, G flat, back to F. And that is implying B flat seven. Now, E flat six,
  15. 7:47E flat minor [music] six. So, that’s a nice one. So, watch. So, if we say if we say That’s E major to minor. That’s nice, too. >> [music] [music] >> That’s E flat major to E flat minor, which is really pretty. So, that’s another one. You got E flat major to E flat E diminished, and you got E flat major to
  16. 8:21E flat minor. So, that’s another perfectly good one. Then, there’s this other one that Barry does, which is like um uh uh and then he moves >> [music] >> uh That’s So, it’s like a B flat seven, B flat [music] seven, and now each one of these is going to get two beats a piece. You’re going to say E flat seven [music] to A flat seven, then the same thing. D flat seven to G
  17. 8:55flat [singing and music] seven, then you’re going to B seven to E seven, [singing] then to back [music] to E flat. So, sometimes you’ll hear him play that. He even has like when he trades fours and stuff with the drummer, he he’ll throw that in. He actually has a blues that does that, too, where he plays on that. So, that would be like one two three That would be like tonic up B flat seven up. And then do one two three five of all those. So, you could say one two three five of E flat, one two three five
  18. 9:27[music] of A flat, one two three five of D flat, one two three five of G flat, one two three five of [music] B, one two three five of E. So, listen to how that fits. 1 2 3 4. It fits perfectly. You see? But, it lets you off on the tritone of the B flat 7 to get you into the E flat 7. And that covers the first four bars. So, sometimes you’ll hear it like it diddy do diddy do.
  19. 10:04Still play something like that over that part, which is just messing around with those scales just two beats a piece of everything. So, that’s another nice way to tackle the first four bars. So, this is another example of why not only Barry, but all the older musicians used to say, “If you learn a blues and you learn I Got Rhythm and a ballad, you’re really covering a lot of your foundation for our music to be able to improvise cuz there’s so many little spots in here.” Now, I just talked about
  20. 10:38the first four bars what they could be. The next four bars is a is another thing also. The next four bars you can substitute a couple of things, too. The four bars after that, you could substitute a whole bunch of things, too. It could be a lot of things. So, maybe we’ll stay with this for the next several weeks. But, anyway, that’s just a quick look at a bunch of different ways to play the first four bars of the blues. And if you hadn’t checked them out, check them out. Spend some time with it. Like this one I love I mean, I love all of them, but this one I love. The E flat 6 to the E diminished,
  21. 11:11that’s a really good one to really get in your hands. You know, to just say, “Okay, so that when I’m starting to play a blues, obviously, if I’m playing um you know, people play so many courses of a solo, but if you want to keep things interesting, you don’t have to play just the same changes every time in your own head. You can imply different changes.” And it makes the the solo really nice. It It It gives it a little variety, so. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this lesson in how to look at the first four bars of
  22. 11:43the blues. And if you hadn’t If you haven’t already, make sure you sign up for the 7-day trial before it ends, June 1st. I’ll leave a link in the description and in the comment section. Anyway, enjoy your first four bars of the blues.