Chris Parks · Stage 10: Movement
Chords hidden in the minor 6 diminished scale
After announcing his move from Patreon to a Skool community, Chris shows that the C minor 6 diminished scale holds far more than its two chords. Borrowing one, two or three notes from a C minor 6 drop 2 gives B7 with a raised 5, A flat major 7, A flat 6, F minor 6 and F7, which make fresh movements over A half-diminished to D7 in G minor.
Step by step
- 0:00Chris announces his new Skool community for Barry Harris study.
- 3:13C minor 6 diminished is C minor 6 (C, E flat, G, A) plus D diminished (D, F, A flat, B), but it holds many other chords.
- 3:56Barry’s three ways to borrow: a scale tone above, a scale tone below, or a half step below.
- 5:08On the drop 2 C, G, A, E flat, borrow B for C: B, G, A, E flat is B7 with a raised 5.
- 5:45Use it in a minor ii-V in G: A half-diminished (C minor 6) to D7 to G minor; find the B in each inversion.
- 7:36Lower A to A flat instead: C, G, A flat, E flat is A flat major 7 in first inversion.
- 9:15Borrow two notes, F for G and A flat for A: C, F, A flat, E flat is A flat 6.
- 11:01Borrow three notes, F, A flat and D, for F minor 6 moving to C minor 6.
- 12:12F7 is in the scale too: borrow F for G.
- 12:45These aren’t tricks; Barry heard every chord as coming from one or more scales.
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
Sixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6The minor 6 diminished scaleNot a trick, and not just two chordsBorrowing
Transcript
- 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 155 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And I know it’s been a minute since I’ve been on here, but I’m really excited about telling everybody about this new venture that I’m getting into for myself. as mostly you know I was a Patreon member where people could sign up and put a little donation towards my channel but I never really did a lot with Patreon and now I’m moving over to a different platform called School
- 0:33S-K-O-O-L and I am super excited about this. School allows us to do a lot of other things that maybe I wasn’t able to do on Patreon but what I’ve decided to do is turn it into a full out Barry Harris place to learn talking about only Barry Harris stuff whether it’s his harmonic concepts or it’s single note concepts and it’s going to include if you sign up and become a member it’s going to include a couple of things first thing it’s going to include is I’m going to be making uh weekly videos for that so I’ll post them the same time every week
- 1:12kind of like what I do on YouTube but it’s going to kind of move over to school now that’s the first thing the second thing you’re going to be able to get is I’m going to start group classes on school and every group class you know I work for open studio which is a wonderful place and we have a ball there so we’re going to do some of that stuff on school also where we have we’re going to have two group lessons a month plus as a bonus Thomas and I do this group lesson at least once a month so you’ll be getting that also so it’s actually three group lessons a month so it’ll be
- 1:49three group lessons a month plus the four videos plus you have a chance to ask questions and talk about any of the other episodes that I’ve made previously of the 100 now it’s 155 that I see this questions all the time that I just can’t possibly get to all of them but this is a place for you to be able to do that we’re starting off with 59.99 a month that’s going to be the price to get in now but it’s probably going to go up I have scheduled in June the price is going to go up but if you if you get in before then you get the 59.99 price for the year so I think it’s worth it. You’re going to be getting four videos. You’re going to be getting three group classes,
- 2:32two of them with just me and one of them with also Thomas Eccles, which is fantastic. So I’m really excited. I’ll leave the link in the description. Please go check it out. See if it’s something that you’re interested in. I’d love to have more and more people there. And I’m sure we can pack it and make it something really fun because the group lessons are a blast. So we really have a good time there anyway that’s my newest venture which is school now talking about uh uh something i was looking at with open studio people is uh this concept of barry’s minor six diminished um and we took c minor six diminished and for those of you that know barry stuff you know
- 3:13c minor six diminished consists of two things it consists of the four notes of a c minor six c e flat G A and the four notes of a D diminished D F A flat B and that gives you this beautiful scale whereby you have every other chord is a minor six every other chord is a diminished but don’t think that that means that that’s the only chords that you have within that scale because it is not there’s a bunch of other chords in that and I’ll show you how how you can get to one nice way to get to it now when you play a minor six diminished scale barry says you can borrow a note
- 3:56he has three ways of borrowing he says you could borrow a note a scale tone higher meaning from the diminished above and i’m just using drop twos as an example or a diminished below the scale tone below so that’s scale tone above scale tone below or he likes sometimes half step below now sometimes the half step below is going to be a scale tone sometimes it’s not but that half step below is a really pretty thing like he used to practice things like uh where you take the top note of something now sometimes the half step below is going to be a scale tone sometimes it’s not but those are
- 4:35beautiful that’s a really nice thing to practice but anyway back to the idea of borrowing so again the three ways of borrowing scale tone above scale tone below or half step below now look at this if I take this C minor six I should be able and let’s just borrow the scale tone below let’s just take a look at that and you’re going to start to see some shapes so in other words if I take this this C minor 6. Now for those of you piano players, I’m looking at it in a drop 2 where C is the drop 2. So starting from the lowest voice
- 5:08I have C, G, A, E flat. Now if I borrow the scale tone below the C that’s going to be a B. Now if I just borrow that and I play this chord, now Barry would call that C minor 6 with one borrowed note. Yes, that’s true. But sometimes it’s not bad if we know the name of it and he knew the names of them too. I don’t want to make it seem like he didn’t know. Of course he did. But he would just say one borrowed note or two borrowed notes or this is three borrowed notes. But if we take a look at just one borrowed note, that first chord is something that we’ve probably
- 5:45come across. Now I have instead of C G A E flat, I have B G A E flat. This gives me a B7 with a raised five. Isn’t that interesting? So like if I’m playing a 2-5, a minor 2-5, because as we all know as Barry people, a C minor six is the same as A minor 7-flat-5, and they come from the same scale. So if I’m playing a minor 2-5, let’s say in G, A minor 7-flat-5 to D7, going to G minor. here’s my C minor
- 6:21now I can do the same thing I did going up the scale parallel that’s what I can do for a 2-5 or I can borrow so here’s my A half diminished I might say you see how pretty that move is listen to that when in life would you ever play a B7 raise 5 over when the sheet music says A minor 7 plus 5 never you would never play that but listen how beautiful that is it’s perfect so now now if i say let me take that and see where that b is on each one of these so here here’s my next inversion
- 7:02of the c minor six so i find the c which is on the g string and i’m going to borrow the b now that’s where it is now listen how pretty this is isn’t that beautiful what a beautiful two five so if So I said... And I said... You know how pretty that is? Listen to that. I might never play that. Now, I see that as one borrowed note.
- 7:36But it is interesting if I knew my B7 raise 5. Look at that. I could see it right there. Let’s find another one. So that was lowering the C. suppose I lowered suppose I lowered the A down a half step to A flat listen to that chord now Barry again would just call that a C minor 6 with one borrowed note but also he knew this is first inversion of A flat major 7 right that’s first inversion with third in the bass so for those of you that don’t
- 8:09aren’t following I have starting on the bottom C G A E flat That’s my C minor 6. Now instead of the A, I have A flat. So now I have C, G, A flat, E flat. That is a first inversion of an A flat major. You see how pretty that is? So if I know all my inversions of A flat major, watch how pretty this is. If I said... And I said... You see how pretty that is?
- 8:42Listen to that. Who would ever play that over? A minor 7 flat 5 and I’m playing A flat major 7. That’s fantastic. That is fantastic. So I’m only pointing this out because as Barry people, we generally like to just say, oh, it’s one borrowed note. And it really isn’t our concern what it’s called. Because some of them, if you start to try to name them, it’s silly. But some of them are familiar. So that A flat major 7, that’s familiar.
- 9:15Watch. Now that’s if I borrow one note below, right? Now sometimes I can borrow two notes below. So for instance, here’s my C minor 6. C, G, A, E flat. Now suppose I decided to borrow the scale tone below the G, which is the F, and the scale tone below the A flat, which is, I’m sorry, below the A, which is A flat. Now my chord becomes C, F, A-flat, E-flat. That, as Barry people, we should see that right away. That’s an A-flat-six.
- 9:50So now we know, wait a second, A-flat-six can become C-minor-six. Look at that move. Listen to that. So again, I’m going to put it in the same thing. Watch this. If I said... You see how pretty? You see how great that is? Who would ever play A flat 6 there? But if I borrow a note and give it back, I just created this beautiful movement that does not exist on the sheet music.
- 10:24The sheet music is just saying A minus 7 flat 5. It doesn’t say anything about all this stuff. Listen to all of them. How great that is. so be very careful when you think to yourself well barry’s method of six diminished or minor or major six diminished or dominant seven diminished it’s just those two chords over and over again yes if we move them parallel of course it is right but if we start borrowing look at how many other things it gave us a flat six it gave us a flat major seven
- 11:01it gave us b7 with a raised five same scale same scale and there’s a million others it gives us f six it gives us f minor six look watch if i chose if if i kept the c and instead i borrowed a scale tone below g which is f a scale tone below a which is a flat a scale tone below e flat which is d that gives me F minor 6. So now I have F minor 6 goes to C minor 6. You see how pretty that is? So suppose again, 1, 6, 2, 5, and G minor. And if I said...
- 11:38You know how beautiful that movement is? Who would ever play F minor 6 to C minor 6 like that when the sheet music says A minor 7, 5, 5? You would never do that if you weren’t thinking about chords as belonging to a scale, as opposed to just thinking about them as stagnant chords. You know? So, be really careful about thinking about various scales of chords as just being this chord to that chord. Yes, it’s true. If you’re thinking about it just moving parallel.
- 12:12But what’s in that eight note scale is so much stuff. F major six is in that. is also in that. Same thing. F7 is in that scale. Look at that. F7 is in that. If I borrow the F for the G, you see how great that is? F7 is in that. So this is what I mean. There’s so much to it. There’s so many good little moves in that that we should take advantage of.
- 12:45and part of learning these scales of chords the four scales of chords major six diminished minor six diminished dominant seven diminished dominant seven five five diminished is knowing everything about it and also remember this too uh when you start becoming more and more acquainted with these you realize oh this isn’t just this trick that i can use on a certain chord in a certain song or something. I see that all the time. Everybody’s like, let me use this Barry Harris trick. It’s not a trick.
- 13:18It’s a way that he perceived harmony. He perceived it as coming from one or more of those scales. It’s such a beautiful way to look at harmony and completely unique to him. And it should be studied, as far as I’m concerned, it should be studied in every school. But I don’t want you to think of it as just those two chords. I like that the way that he composed the scale is of those two chords, the minor six and the diminished. That’s true. But don’t be fooled into thinking that that’s the only two chords that you get out of it. Don’t be fooled into thinking that.
- 13:54Anyway, sorry it’s been so long. And I really hope to see a bunch of you over at school in the near future. So until next time, enjoy practicing your minor six diminished scale.