Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 10: Movement

What is short?

Episode 141 · 17:25 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris explains Barry’s ‘short’ movement as he worked it out for guitar: from a three-note broken drop 2 of the C minor 6 diminished scale, the two outer notes borrow from the next chord of the scale while the middle note stays. He uses it over A half-diminished (C minor 6) in All the Things You Are and over B7 as the tritone’s minor, arguing that seeing scales rather than naming notes against the chord is the point.

Step by step

  1. 0:35Short normally ends on a closed voicing, a piano sound, so on guitar Chris leaves one note out.
  2. 1:47Prerequisite: broken drop 2 (shell voicing): play each drop 2 of the C minor 6 diminished scale without its bass note.
  3. 2:20Also know the scale in sixths: mostly major sixths, with one minor sixth and one seventh.
  4. 3:45The short move: take C, E flat and A, keep the middle note and move the outer sixth to the diminished above.
  5. 4:21Continue up the scale, borrowing the sixth above each time; each move lands on a broken drop 2.
  6. 5:41Pianists start from four notes and keep the third and sixth; on guitar there are only three notes and just the third stays.
  7. 7:06Any A minor 7 flat 5 can be treated as C minor 6, so use short going to G minor.
  8. 8:15Try it on the bridge of All the Things You Are: short on A half-diminished, then E flat minor 6 for D7.
  9. 11:17You don’t need to name each note against the chord; think of it as C minor 6 borrowing two notes.
  10. 13:05C minor 6 also works over B7 as the tritone’s minor, so the same short fits there.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line3:45
𝄞♭
CAC6E♭
  1. C
  2. E♭
  3. A

Barry’s own words on this

10.4 Borrowing9.5 The minor 6th diminished scale and its diminished partner9.6 Half-diminished = minor with the sixth in the bass; major -> relative minor -> minor/69.7 The important minor and the tritone’s minor (minor 6 dim over a dominant)

In the course

The tritone’s minorEvery chord belongs to a scale of chordsBroken drop 2Short

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 141 of Things I Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would talk about something that I haven’t talked about because I didn’t really understand it until recently. I know it’s been talked about before, which is what Barry calls short and long. I think Isaac Raz did a really nice video about it. and I know it’s in some of the Barry Harris books, the books that have been written about it, but I didn’t really understand it
  2. 0:35and I didn’t really know it. And this, I kind of got it together now and I talked to Thomas about it and this was kind of the way I saw it and he had an interesting take on it too. I hope he makes a video about it because it’ll be interesting to see his perspective. But here’s basically what it is. Short, let’s talk about short today. So short for guitar player, I could never get it because it always involved, the end result was always a closed voice chord, which I always considered a piano voicing, even though we can play some of them like, like we can play this,
  3. 1:08but more than likely we’re not going to play that too often. So generally we break things down into smaller things, but our way around it is to leave one of the notes out for short. I’ll show you what I mean in a second. You’re going to have to know a couple of things. The first thing you’re going to have to know is you’re going to have to know what Thomas refers to as shell voice, but what I always call broken drop two, and what actually Tim brought up in class that Thomas sometimes refers to it as broken octave, but I’ll show you what I mean. So if we take, let’s take C minor six diminished.
  4. 1:47So C minor 6 diminished starting with the G as the drop 2. Now we have three notes above that and that’s the three that I’m that you have to know. So of every one of these drop 2s if you just take the highest three notes, leave out the bass note every time. So that would be that if there’s normally our diminished but we’ll leave out the A flat. There’s normally our A minus 7 flat 5 which is the same as C but we’ll just do the highest three notes. Same thing for the diminished, and then the C minor 6 here,
  5. 2:20but we’ll leave out the low note. And so on. So you have to know those. You also have to know that the C minor 6 diminished, you have to know it in just 6th. So in other words, if you start at the C, so a 6 would be the A. So it’s going to be a 6th note and a 6th note. The next two notes are going to be diminished and diminished. But what’s interesting is it gives you, There’s a major 6, major 6, major 6, another major 6. So four major 6s in a row. Then a minor 6, which is pretty.
  6. 2:55Then, sorry, another major 6. So that’s five major 6s. Then a 7th, which is pretty. Then another major 6, another major 6. So look what we have. major 6, major 6, major 6, major 6, minor 6, major 6, 7th, major 6, back to the beginning, major 6. So you have to know those, and you have to be able to move around these. This is what really you’re going to have to know. And so on. Oh. That’s what you’re going to I’ll show you what I mean. So this would be short. If we take the first three notes, the C, the E flat,
  7. 3:45and the A. And the only thing I’m going to move is the sixth. And I’m going to start off with the six that are higher than these six. So you’ve got C, A. I’m going to say these two sixes. Instead, I’m going to start with the two diminished. But I’m going to leave the middle note. So now I’m to say this. That is what Barry calls short. It’s a pretty little move too. So now if you decided to go up the scale like that, there’s some really pretty sounds. So you got this.
  8. 4:21Now the next one would be a diminished, but now I have to borrow the sixth. As Thomas would say, I’m borrowing the sixth above that. So there it is. There’s the second one. So we got the first one second one third one same thing it would be this but now we’re going to borrow the sixth above these so we’re still again going to keep the middle note so there’s our move so now we got first one second one which is from the diminished third one the fourth one which is going to be this so we’re going to borrow from the diminished again we’re on the diminished we’re
  9. 5:01going to borrow from the 6th. That’s a pretty one. So now we’ve got four of them. Now the fifth one we’ll do. So it starts with a 6th, which means we’re going to borrow two notes from the diminished. That’s going to be our 6th above it. That’s also very pretty. Next one, let’s change strings. We’re going to borrow two notes from the 6th to end up with the diminished. Next one, we’re going to borrow two notes from the diminished. End up on the six. See all these? You always end up on a closed, I’m sorry, you always end up on a
  10. 5:41broken drop two, or as Thomas would call it, shell voice. Always. Again, I’m borrowing the ones above, which is really pretty. And then back to the first one. So now, there’s a couple of things. When the piano players do it, really what they have is they have four notes. So they have the root, third, fifth, and then the sixth. That’s the chord that they’re starting off with. And then what happens is they borrow above the root and then above the fifth. So they still have the third and the sixth in there. But that’s really pretty. But what we do is we just
  11. 6:22we just leave it out. We leave it out. So we just do three notes instead. So we just keep the third instead. That’s it. That’s what we do, which is really pretty, actually. I mean, that’s really pretty. So, okay, how am I going to use this? So, like anything else with Barry’s scales of chords, you always have to start off with the premise that Barry, you could use Barry’s scales of chords
  12. 7:06to see every single chord that you’re going to see on a piece of sheet music where you say, okay, instead of seeing this one stagnant chord, I’m going to see that chord as belonging to this particular Bear Harris 8-note scale. And in this instance, let’s say C-minor 6 is pretty, but C-minor 6 is also A-minor 7-flat 5. So let’s say any time now I see this A-minor 7-flat 5, I can think of doing all the things C minor 6 that I know how to do, whether it’s go up 6, whether it’s go up octaves,
  13. 7:40whether it’s go up drop 2s, drop 3s, any of these. It’s all the stuff I know how to do, you see? So if I say, let’s say G minor. Now I’m on C minor 6, maybe I’ll do two of them. Oh, let’s see. That’s a perfect example of just using two of them, which is really nice. I’ll do this one.
  14. 8:15I happen to like this one. Once again, I’m using it every time I get to the AF diminished. So let’s say we’re playing the, because we’ve been talking about this song at Open Studio, but let’s say we’re playing the bridge of all the things you are. That little spot. So again, Barry plays A half diminished, which means you could do... See that? And maybe we could do it even here.
  15. 8:58See, it works there. But you see how it works in both spots? Because I know every chord I can change into any one of the various scales of chords. So what’s nice is, I might do it in C minor. Let’s say if I do it in C minor. Then for D7, sometimes I like to play E flat minor 6, diminished scale. So I’ll do it for E flat. Let me see if I can make it sound nice. Let’s see.
  16. 9:31Now we’ll say. Maybe I’ll say. That’s pretty, too. That’s really pretty. So I said. And it’s just using C-6 short to a short. E flat minor 6, which is really pretty. Or if I wanted to do a down, then I’ll do a short E flat minor 6. That’s pretty.
  17. 10:08How about if I do, let me do a different short. Here’s C minor. Here’s a short E flat minor. Oh, I might want to do that one. Let’s see if I do this. So we’ll say. All that stuff is so pretty. So short. Short is really a pretty thing to actually do. And a lot of times, like in the videos, Barry does the short on just diatonic scale,
  18. 10:40just the seven-note scale. But Isaac actually made a video about doing it on the six diminished or minor six diminished, major six diminished, which is, I find, since I can see those kind of better, I like to use those. But short is a beautiful thing for us to practice. Also, we can think of connecting it to all the stuff that Thomas has shown us, which is on his elevator, where you’re thinking about shell voicings, or you’re thinking about just sixths. You know, all this stuff. It’s all super helpful. Every one of these ideas is just a way for you to see this pathway around your instrument of all these scales.
  19. 11:17And once you start to think to yourself, you know, if I see A minor 7 flat 5, I’m thinking C minor 6 diminished scale. That’s it. And I’m not thinking if I do this, and if I choose to borrow notes, whatever. Suppose I decide to play that chord. Now, it is absolutely of no importance for me to know what this chord is now. It doesn’t matter. See? it has no significance at all. All I see this as is, and Barry would describe this as C minor six
  20. 11:54with borrowing two notes. That’s it. That’s all you would think of it as. Same thing if I did this, which is the short. This is C minor six borrowing two notes. So now I’m coming up with all these pretty things from just this. See, this one is pretty. But if you ask me, okay, I’m playing A half diminished. Well, what are you playing here? What chord is this? All these notes compared to the A half diminished. Totally insignificant. It doesn’t matter. It has no significance at all. Because I’m playing movement within a scale that that A half diminished belongs
  21. 12:34to. That is the power of seeing scales instead of chords. And that’s the whole thing to it. That’s the whole thing to it. All the rest of the stuff where you’re naming every note compared to, I couldn’t possibly do that. I’m not smart enough to know how to do that. And it doesn’t, it’s not that important. This, this stuff is what’s important. Borrowing notes. This. That’s what’s important.
  22. 13:05The other stuff is not important. So we use this C minor 6, if we were thinking about it, going to A half diminished to D7, right? Going to G minor, because A half diminishes C minor 6. But we could have also thought of this C minor 6 as being a half step above the B7, which we sometimes play. So interestingly enough, if we did it in all the things you are, it starts off with that A half diminished, which is C minor 6. Now, the second one,
  23. 13:42now you have to think, that is A minor 6 going to C minor 6, so I can do it here too. See how pretty that is? So I used it in two spots. I used it as the 2 chord, and then I used it as half step above the dominant the tritones minor. So if we use it again, here it is. And now we’ll use it as the tritones minor. I’ll do it here
  24. 14:23and then you see how pretty it is now don’t ask me what I’m doing to the B7 here as the C minor, it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter to me because I’m still thinking this B7 I’m just thinking of it as C minor 6 diminished scale whatever I do to it, I do to it If I really wanted to look at what these notes are compared to B, okay? What are these notes compared to B? So I could say, okay, well, now we got the sharp 9.
  25. 14:58We got the root. And we got the third. Okay, great. And then this is going to lower a whole step and this lowers a whole step. That’s great. So now this is going to lower to the flat nine. This lowers to the flat seventh and this stays the same. But it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care about any of that. It’s not even important. It’s absolutely not significant at all. It doesn’t change how pretty that is whether or not I know what those notes are compared to the B7. because the rule is if I see a dominant and I want to play the minor six diminished scale on its tritone which would be tritones minor which in B7 would be F7 that’s all I need to know it doesn’t
  26. 15:40matter all the rest of the stuff doesn’t matter and as far as I’m concerned it’s wasted um wasted time thinking about all those different notes it’s not important look I might even do on B7. I might just do some contrary motion. It doesn’t matter. What am I even doing here? All that works over B7. See what I mean? Thirds. All that works.
  27. 16:12Oh, look at it. All that works. I don’t have to know what all those notes are compared to B7 because all those notes are going to work because I know that’s that I can say that that chord can belong to that scale also. See, I’m telling you, it’s... The key I feel like, and the thing that I’ve learned over the years, is that the key to Barry’s stuff is, as much as I say it, I have to really believe it, and it’s that every single chord can belong to one or more Barry scales of chords. And that means any place I want to move with it,
  28. 16:50it’s not just one particular chord, It’s not just this one. It’s not just the five chord. It’s not just this. It’s every chord you play. Every chord you play can belong to one of Barry’s four scales of chords. One or more, I should say. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the short, and I think I’m going to make a follow-up video soon about long, which is also beautiful, and it’s a little bit harder to do some of the stretches, but they’re really beautiful. So anyway, until next time, enjoy practicing short.