Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 13: Tunes as the curriculum

Do You Know Rhythm Changes?

Episode 101 · 15:47 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris works on the first four bars of rhythm changes starting from Barry’s scale outline, B flat major up and F7 up. He shows several ways to hear the opening bars (all B flat major, all F7, or with the tritone B7), then Barry’s view of bars 3 and 4 as minor and major arpeggios falling by half steps, and finally the third and tritone of G7.

Step by step

  1. 0:35Learn Barry’s scale outline: B flat major up, F7 up, B flat major up, F7 up.
  2. 1:24Hear tritone options too, such as B flat major to B7.
  3. 1:57Know B flat major and F7 every way: scale, thirds, triads, chords, half step below, Barry’s chromatic scale.
  4. 2:34Play only B flat major: surround each arpeggio note with the scale tone above and the half step below.
  5. 3:55Or play only F7: start on its third with three half steps and pivot at the flat 7th.
  6. 5:09Run B flat major up from tonic to sixth, then come down with F7’s rule of one half step.
  7. 5:42Try B flat major into B7 coming down the B major arpeggio, or B7 over the whole part.
  8. 7:28Hear D minor 7 as Barry does, as D minor and F major arpeggios, moving down by half steps to C sharp minor/E and C minor/E flat.
  9. 8:10Practise those arpeggios in succession, inverted, and mixing up and down.
  10. 13:09Run B flat major down to the third of G7 (B natural), and try G7’s tritone, D flat 7.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line2:34
𝄞♭♭♭♯
C4ACDEFGB♭D♭E♭
  1. C
  2. B♭
  3. A
  4. B♭
  5. E♭
  6. D
  7. C#
  8. D
  9. G
  10. F
  11. E
  12. F
Line2:34
𝄞♭♭
C4C5DFB♭B♭
  1. B♭
  2. D
  3. F
  4. B♭

Barry’s own words on this

13.2 Rhythm changes (‘seven songs in one’)4.4 Scale outlines8.5 The tritone6.5 Surrounding notes (approach from above and below)

In the course

The scale every way: up and down, thirds, triads, chordsThink the dominant: put the ii awayScale outlinesA half-diminished means the dominant whose third it isThe descending half-step rules for the dominantBarry’s arpeggio and its inversionsThe three important arpeggios of a dominantPivotsSurroundsThe tritoneThree, flat three, twoRhythm changesThree phases of learningFreedom and your own voice

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 101 of Things I’ve Learned from Bear Harris. And today I thought we would discuss the first four bars of rhythm changes or the chord changes that are based on the George Gershwin song I Got Rhythm. So there’s been a million bebop heads written on it. Charlie Parker wrote a bunch. Bud Powell wrote a bunch. Monk wrote a bunch. But the idea is the first four bars is pretty interesting. Well, the whole song is interesting, but the first four bars are pretty interesting.
  2. 0:35When Barry does his scale outline, which I love, basically the scale outline is B-flat major up, F7 up, then B-flat major up, then F7 up. Now, the chords that are going on behind it are usually Bbmgmgmf7 and then sometimes Dmg7mf7. So the first part would be like Bbgcfdgcf and then Bb7, or Bb major, Bb7.
  3. 1:24But we’re not even going to go that far. Let’s just do the first part. Now, there’s a lot of different things it could be. If we looked at the tritone thing that we were talking about, we had Bb major, then we have F7. Or we could do Bb major, B7, back to Bb major, then maybe F7. That’s a nice one to look at. or maybe we’ll do B flat major up, F7, B flat up, B7. Those are nice sounds to hear. And when I’m saying the scale outline,
  4. 1:57that just gives you the overall feeling of, okay, these are some of the notes that you can choose, and this is the length of time that they go for. So if I say, okay, you have to know B flat major up to F7 up, even though they’re the same notes, different parts of the scale, What you have to know on B-flat major is very similar to what you have to know on F7. So you have to know your scale up and down, you have to know your scale in thirds, scale in triads, scale in chords, half step below those things. Here’s Barry’s chromatic scale.
  5. 2:34And then what you have to do is take your favorite things that you like to do, and then kind of put them in and run them into F7. Or sometimes you don’t even have to do that. sometimes you can just play B-flat major over the whole first part. I’ll show you what I mean. One of the things that you hear Barry and Bud Powell and Bird do is they’ll surround each one of the B-flat major arpeggio notes, which would be the arpeggio is the triad with the bottom note repeated on top. So it would be B-flat, D, F, B-flat. And what sometimes they do is they will surround each one of those notes with a scale tone above the actual note,
  6. 3:14half step below, then back to the scale tone. So now you have B flat would be surrounded with C, B flat, A, B flat. The D is going to get surrounded with E flat, D, C sharp, D, and then the F is going to get surrounded with G, F is the note, and E, and back to F. So we got And sometimes you’ll play that on the first part. Watch.
  7. 3:55See, right away, that whole first part, I did watch. Over the whole first part. Sometimes, so you could think just B-flat major for the whole first two bars. say. Sometimes people will think just F7 for the first two bars and by that I mean, let’s say we take Barry’s half-step rules and let’s say I started on the third of the F and I said one of the rules for descending F7 scale would be three half-steps from the third. So we’ll
  8. 4:33say. And then when we get to the flat seventh of the F, we’ll pivot. And come down the scale to the third. So let’s say one, two, three, ah. That was over this whole part. Ah. B, ba, dee dee dee, B over the whole first part of that was all F7, which is a really pretty way to approach it. Another way you could approach it is if we said, let’s say if we just did some Bb major,
  9. 5:09and then instead of F7, well let’s do Bb major to F7, so let’s run up. That’s nice, so we’ll start on the second beat, we’ll run up from the tonic of the Bb to the sixth. And then we’ll descend and then we’ll put one half step because now we’re thinking that that’s F7. So we’ll put one half step between tonic and flat 7. So let’s see. One, two, three. That works nice. So what I did after I came down to the flat 7,
  10. 5:42I did that same pivot that I do all the time that I really have to stop doing, but it sounds so good. Maybe I’ll try something different. That’s nice, I just came up F7. But, so that’s B-flat major to F7. Then you also should be able to do B-flat major to F7’s tritone, which is B7. So let’s try that. Let’s do something with that. So one, two. That was pretty.
  11. 6:19I just came down the B major arpeggio. That’s pretty. That’s a pretty phrase. That was just B-flat major to B7. Now, what if I just did totally B7 over this first part? That’s pretty, too.
  12. 6:51Just B7. That’s really pretty. Really, really pretty. Just B7. Okay, so that’s the first little part. But then the second part does this a lot of times, which is D minor to G7 to C minor to F7. It would be for the third and fourth part. And this is where you can start to do your walking downwards, like you hear guitar players or piano players play. Which I think we’ve discussed in other videos,
  13. 7:28but this D minor, D minor 7, which a lot of people play, Barry likes to think of this as two different things, which is a D minor triad and also an F major. So he thinks of this as D minor. That’s the D minor arpeggio, and its inversions, and he also thinks of it as F major. So you see, if you take those two things, and that means that if that’s D minor arpeggio and F major arpeggio, then this is D flat or C sharp minor arpeggio and E major arpeggio,
  14. 8:10and this is C minor arpeggio and E flat major arpeggio. So you see that? So then you can do things like go up to D minor, go up to C sharp minor, which is pretty. So if we say, and then, uh, that time I went up to D minor and then I went down to E flat. So you practice them like this. Going up in succession. So here’s D, C sharp, C, and then you can invert them. Invert again, invert again, oh sorry, same thing,
  15. 9:01and you’re going to do the same thing for the F major. F major from the third. From the fifth. That’s just if you do the me. Now, what if you did one of them up and one of them down? Or one of them down, one of them up. How about one down, two up? How about one up, two down? So you see how you can start to do these things to build lines.
  16. 9:40So let’s try the first part. And then. Or you could have done F major. Which you’ll hear all the time. So it’s really interesting. So now you have D minor and F major arpeggios, and then you’re going down in half steps, which are really pretty.
  17. 10:15You come up with a million phrases for that. What I like about those are you’ll hear now, if you know about this half step thing, you hear that descension in half steps you’re going to hear birds take on that like he has his own things that he’s worked out on that sonny rollins has his own things bud powell has his own things barry has his own things so our idea is we have to come up with our own things without just completely imitating bird or bud powell or barry or sonny rollins you know so we have to come up with our own kind of clever things maybe. So that time I came up the D minor, I went down a half step
  18. 10:57and I came up from the point that I was at the C sharp. Oh wait, I could have done that. So let’s see. Let’s try that one. One, two, three. It came out okay. A little hard to play, but pretty though. Pretty stuff. Or how about if we do then, if we go down. That’s a nice one.
  19. 11:34You hear that a lot, but let’s see. 1, 2, 3, 4. Let’s see. That’s a nice one. I’ll try that. Let’s see. 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s a nice one. That time I came down the two notes of F major. I came down in half step, and now I’m going to come down four notes of the E major arpeggio. Then we’re going to come down another half step, and maybe I’ll just come down the C minor.
  20. 12:22So we say, but maybe a nice triplet. Now, that’s a perfect example. I’ve never played that. But see, I have to get that in my fingers so that when it comes time to play I Got Rhythm, I can just throw that in. That’s the idea. And it’s completely influenced by Barry and completely influenced by Bud Powell and Sonny Rollins and all the great ones. But it’s not theirs. It’s not their phrase. Nice one. So that’s another, yet another example of how you can think about the first
  21. 13:09couple of bars. So if you just take those simple two concepts, and we didn’t even do the tritone of the G7, because that means you could run B-flat major, because the second part says D minor, which we’ll think of as B flat major, to G7. And that’s where you get that B flat major down to the third of G, which is then going to give you the B natural. So most of the time, Bird will do something like, he’ll play B flat major, F7, but now he throws in that.
  22. 13:44The second two bars is where you really hear that third of the G7. Not usually the first two bars, the second two bars you hear that. Really nice. That’s where you can really do it. So here’s a Bb major triad. And then maybe do a, just raise the Bb to B. Let’s try that one. Bop, A, B, B. Really pretty phrase.
  23. 14:22And of course, if you’re doing G7, then that also means G7’s tritone, which is D-flat. So then you could say. That time I came down a chord from the second of D-flat. So let’s try that. to do do do, pretty phrase. So it just shows you we could spend, we could spend days and weeks and months and years working on the first four bars of I Got Rhythm and never get bored of it.
  24. 15:00Because all you have to do is say, okay, I want to maybe imply this chord over it, or I want to imply this chord, and then work on resolutions for those. But, I mean, I’m having so much fun with this, just thinking about it, and thinking about how, even though I’ve known about I Got Rhythm since, like, 1993, I feel like I’m just discovering it, because I can see all these little things within one or two fingerings, especially on the guitar. Anyway, I hope that was helpful in maybe having you look over the first four bars of I Got Rhythm and enjoy. Enjoy, as my student says, Pierre says, enjoy playing in Barry’s Playground.
  25. 15:44Until next time. Thanks.