Chris Parks · Stage 6: Line devices
Something old is new again: fresh ways to pivot
Chris reviews Barry’s pivot on a D7 scale, then freshens a device he says he overuses by adding a half step below one, two or all three notes of the triad that follows the drop. It is Barry’s habit of turning a basic idea on its side until it sounds new again.
Step by step
- 0:00On a D7 scale, know the scale, thirds, triads and four-note chords first
- 0:35Pivot the chord from D: hit D, then play F sharp, A and C an octave lower; do it from every degree
- 1:42Start the pivots on an ‘and’ instead of the downbeat; they sound good there too
- 2:51Think of a pivot another way: hit a note, drop a sixth, then come up a triad
- 3:25Practise triads with a half step below the first note (C sharp, D, F sharp, A), or as D, C sharp, D, then up the triad
- 4:32Add that turn to the pivot from C: C, drop to E, dip to the half step below and back to E, then up G and B
- 5:40Move the half step below to the second note (G) or the last note (B) of the triad instead
- 6:17Combine them: a half step below the first and last notes, or below all three, and run each version up the scale
- 7:23When something you play feels overused, change it slightly to make it fresh, as Barry did
Chords and notes in this video
Tap a time to jump to it in the video.
Barry’s own words on this
In the course
Transcript
- 0:00hello and welcome to episode 132 of things I learned from bear Harris and today I thought we would talk about um interesting little ways to look at the pivot or what bear refers to as a pivot so for those of you that don’t know let’s just talk about what a pivot is so let’s take D7 D7 let’s say and we’ll take a D7 scale and you have to know how to do a bunch of things on the scale you have to know scale up and down scale in thirds scale on Triads
- 0:35scale and four no chords so let’s take that one this is what a pivot is when Barry says let’s pivot Accord what he would take is let’s say a chord up from the D would be d f sharp a c there’s our chord and what a pivot is instead of continually going up d f sharp a c we’re going to hit the D where it is but then we’re going to do the F sharp AC down an octave so we’ll do this so now you have to know every pivot so you could say
- 1:07here’s the pivot let’s do it from C pivot from the B [Music] and the a from the uh G from the F sharp and then from the um from let’s see from the e [Music] and then back from the vehicle so those are all of them now that’s a
- 1:42nice way to do a pivot I also made a video where you’re talking about because um those pivots all happen to be starting on a downbeat so that’s one two three four [Music] one two three four so those are really pretty but then I had made a video talking about how um when I started on an end I thought those were wrong but I was wrong really those starting on an end are beautiful so and you’ll even recognize certain Melodies with this but if we started on
- 2:15the end it would be one two three four one one two three four ah one two three four ah one two three four ah but those are all pretty that’s a beautiful little phrase but using a pivot starting on an end then I said well what else can we do with a pivot to make it because I I generally for myself the pivot from the seventh I do so often
- 2:51it’s just something that I naturally do all the time so much to the point where I get sick of it so I started thinking about well what if instead of you know because a pivot is also another way you could think of a pivot is obviously instead of going up cegb you’re getting to see where it is and then doing egb down um an octave but it’s also if you want to think of it you hit a note you go down a sixth and you come up a Triad that’s another way to measure it so it’s note down a sixth up a Triad
- 3:25so what I was thinking was because when we practice our scales we also sometimes with the Triads or with the thirds so uh when we start off with Triads let’s say on every degree of the scale another nice thing to practice before the Triads is a half step below each Triad but the first note of each Triad so instead of d f sharp a it’s C sharp d f sharp a same thing for ETB it’s going to be D sharp E G B and keep going those are nice but sometimes people play
- 3:59instead of d f sharp a they’ll play D go down a half step to C sharp back up to D and then up the rest of the Triad so they’ll say next one next one same thing down [Music] love those sounds those are really pretty okay so let’s get back to the pivot
- 4:32again here’s our pivot from C which I said I do over and over again probably too much so what if we did when we did the C came down the sixth now that’s coming up a Triad so why don’t we do that thing that we just worked on so maybe I’ll say so now we’ll do instead of a phrase like this or maybe we’ll say [Music] I brought this up in one of the Open studio classes that I’ve been teaching which I’m there uh I teach about five
- 5:05classes a week there which are really wonderful and if you haven’t checked it out you should definitely go to openstudiojazz.com and check them out they’re really super fun all the teachers there are really great but we started talking in class and I brought this up and then one of the people that attends the class Jeffrey very good guitar player he also said you know you don’t have to just do it for that one you maybe could do it for the second note too so I said what do you mean and then he did something along the lines like this so he did the Hat hit the note and then
- 5:40went a half step below the note on the second note of the Triad so instead of this he did this which I liked very much too and then he said but you could also do it on the last note of the Triad so instead of the E doing it on the E or doing it on the G he did it on the B so he said so that’s another beautiful thing so look now we just thought of three different ways to play a um a pivot three new ways so here is the regular way which I love very much
- 6:17obviously because I use it so much the second way was now let’s put a half step below the E after we get to it now let’s put a half step below the G when we get to it now let’s put a half step below the B once we get to it [Music] ways and then if you think about it what if I wanted to do the one below the E skip the one for the G and the one below the B so let’s see what that sounds like okay that’s so pretty so you have to go up the scale like that
- 6:50next one from the third now what if we did all of them let’s see I love that sound yeah those are so pretty all of those are pretty so now what is that four or five little different ways that I can practice the pivot so this is why like this is the one thing that I’ve that I was struck by
- 7:23um in all the years I was lucky enough to study with Barry is you would think you really knew how to do something and then he would bring something else to it he’d go maybe even a little deeper in it or turn it on its side and you realize there’s so much more to learn from even something so basic as a pivot and it can really change your playing dramatically if you if you really start thinking about things like well what are things that I like to play and then if I overplay them or I overuse them or I’m
- 7:57sick of myself from using them how can I slightly change them to make them fresh or to make them new or to make to give me that same feeling of like oh I can’t believe that that’s such a beautiful thing that’s what I feel like Barry was the master at pointing it out so that if you were around him long enough you started slowly if you could get it I mean I nobody could really think like him because he was such a genius but you could it starts to rub off on you and you start to realize things like man I have I have to maybe look at it that way but I thought this
- 8:30was really interesting to take a look at pivots so let’s just do that one so let’s say from that from the uh from the D or from the C D E F sharp G A those are so pretty super pretty so it’s just something for us to be aware of sometimes you could take something that’s old like a pivot an old meaning an idea that you’ve had make it New
- 9:06Again by just changing it slightly so anyway I hope you enjoyed this short lesson about just possibly doing something new with pivots until next time thanks