Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 10: Movement

Drop 2s are more than you think

Episode 111 · 10:45 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Building on an idea from guitarist Thomas Eccles, Chris shows how much is packed inside a drop 2 voicing of Barry’s C minor 6 diminished scale. He picks out the sixths, fifths and thirds hidden in each shape, then turns the middle-string thirds into a short exercise that moves between the minor 6 and diminished chords, and uses it in minor progressions.

Step by step

  1. 0:00The starting point: Thomas Eccles’s exercise of carrying one borrowed note through the sixth diminished scale, with contrary motion.
  2. 1:13Build the C minor 6 diminished scale: C, E flat, G, A from C minor 6 and D, F, A flat, B from D diminished, alternating minor 6 and diminished chords.
  3. 1:45Play it up in drop 2 on the middle four strings, then learn it on every string set with the root on the sixth, fifth and fourth strings.
  4. 2:23Hear the sixths inside each drop 2, such as C and A or G and E flat, and practise the scale in sixths.
  5. 3:00Hear the fifths too, such as C and G or A and E flat.
  6. 3:38The two middle notes, on the D and G strings, are always a third of the scale, even where they look like a second (G to A, skipping A flat); play the scale in those thirds.
  7. 5:06The exercise: play the drop 2, strike the D-string note again, then drop to the third below, so each minor 6 moves to two notes of the diminished and back.
  8. 6:29Notice that almost every third in this scale is minor; the only major third is the one starting from the third of the chord.
  9. 7:40Use it in a tune, for example going from D half-diminished to C minor.
  10. 9:02Since C minor 6 is the same as A minor 7 flat 5, use the idea in a I-VI-II-V in G minor.

Barry’s own words on this

10.5 Drop voicings9.5 The minor 6th diminished scale and its diminished partner9.4 Playing the scale of chords (block chords up and down the 6th dim scale)

In the course

Sixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6The minor 6 diminished scaleDrop 2, drop 3 and drop 2 and 4The intervals inside a drop 2Borrowing

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 111 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought I would kind of steal an idea from Thomas over at Labyrinth of Limitations YouTube channel. He did a beautiful video about taking the six diminished with one borrowed note. Like Barry has this exercise sometimes where you use C6 and you borrow the one note, but you continue borrowing that same note the whole way through. And then you get these beautiful chords.
  2. 0:35And then Thomas added to it by saying he’s going to take the borrowed note and then do some like contrary motion things with it. which is really fantastic. I’ll leave a link in the description for that. But it got me thinking, and Thomas and I talk about this a lot, which is within the drop two, which is what the majority of our chords are as guitar players, which they shouldn’t be, but they are,
  3. 1:13there’s a lot of information in this drop two, and we’re going to use C minor 6 diminished, for example. And the C minor 6 diminished scale is a beautiful, another very beautiful 8 note scale, which has 4 notes of C minor 6, which is C, E flat, G, A. And then it has the 4 notes of D diminished, D, F, A flat, B. And you put those 4 notes with the D diminished 4 notes, bam, you have this beautiful C minor 6 diminished, where every other chord is either going to be a minor 6th, or every other chord is going to be a diminished.
  4. 1:45So the first one will be Cm6, I’ll just play it up what it looks like for drop 2. This is diminished, another minor 6, another diminished, minor 6, diminished, minor 6, diminished, minor 6. And we can just stay on this 4 middle string sets, but you kind of have to, you definitely have to know them on any set of strings. You have to know them on all 4s, including here. So really that’s the proper way to practice them is you should know them for every string set, starting with the 6th string root, starting with the 5th string root, and starting with the 4th string root.
  5. 2:23But I just wanted to take a look, and I think I’ve talked about this before, but within this drop 2, there’s so much stuff in there. And what I mean by that is, in this drop 2, we have a lot of intervals that this chord is telling us we need to know. So for instance, this has, if you just take a look at the C and the A, that’s a 6th. The G and the E flat, that’s a 6th. So we have to know these. We have to know. We have to know our C minor 6th in 6th.
  6. 3:00There’s other intervals like this is a 5th. So we have to know our 5ths. So listen just to the fifths, so like C and G, but also A and E flat are also fifths. So now if we did them opposite we could say, no sorry, how beautiful that is. Then that’s telling you you need to know those, and believe me you’ll use them. So I thought if we combine a couple of things, it’s similar to Thomas’s idea, but it might
  7. 3:38be a little bit easier to see, which is just thirds. So if we take a look at thirds, for instance, in this drop 2, the middle two notes, the notes on the D and the G string, even though it’s a second, it’s actually a third in this scale because you have the G, you’re skipping the G sharp or the A flat, you go to the A. So that’s a third. So if we did thirds on this string on these strings at the D energy there it is so I’ll do it again really pretty super pretty stuff so what I thought would be nice is if you combine
  8. 4:21a drop to then hit the drop to and then we’ll do some thirds so here’s the concept. The second one, sorry, from the diminished. And I just did this with a friend of mine, Richard. We were having fun with it, but it was just, we did major, but we’ll do minor. Isn’t that a pretty way to see it?
  9. 5:06And it’s very musical. So all I did was I played the drop 2, I hit the note on the D string again, and then I did instead of the 3rd that’s already there in the drop 2 on the D and D string, I went down to the 3rd that’s below it. So, for instance, if I start on a minor 6, I’m going to go down to one of the notes that’s part of the two notes that are part of the diminished. So that’ll be diminished to six, which means if I play a diminished, I’m going to say a note of the two notes of the six, and then two notes of the diminished. So the first one’s going to be minor six, diminished
  10. 5:46to 6, diminished, 6 to diminished, minor 6, diminished, to 6, diminished, 6 to diminished. And if you’re saying, well wait, how do you see these? Well, if you know your drop 2s, the middle 2 notes are your 3rds always. So here’s our first 3rd. There’s our second third for the D and the G string. There’s our third again.
  11. 6:29And what’s beautiful about all these scales, this one specifically, is every third is going to be a minor third. Well, at least all four of the diminishes are always going to be minor thirds, of course. But even the six ones, the first one here, starting from the fifth, is a second, or as Barry calls it, sometimes a diminished third. And then the one from here, another six is going to be a minor third. Here, a minor third. And here, a major third. So you only have one major third in the entire minor six diminished scale.
  12. 7:05So if I was playing it, there it is. Starting from the third, the third and the fifth. That’s the minor third. All the rest are in the minor. It’s really great. Beautiful. So this is just a nice way to play. Let’s see, Barry would take something like this and have the piano players all practice it. I’m sorry. but I’ll tell you what, it’s so pretty for guitar. We’ve got to stop letting these piano players
  13. 7:40get so far ahead of us with this stuff. So we’ll say, okay, well, where would we use it in a tune? So let’s say we were doing something going to C minor, and we had D half to me. Pretty, just something like that, just something real easy. or so watch pretty or you don’t even have to just do to look watch I can do three that’s how I went to finish the six to six this is going to be six to
  14. 8:25Diminished, 6, diminished. So let me not talk through it. Oh God. And then the first one. it’s beautiful stuff now let’s suppose because we know that C minor six or is
  15. 9:02also a minor seven five five so a minor seven five five and C minor six are the same so let’s say we were going to G minor so let’s do a one six two five and G minor Yeah, I just did that one. Now I’ll do another one. Oh, sorry. Let’s try again. So maybe we’ll say
  16. 9:39That’s a nice one. Or maybe we’ll do a real dominant. It’s just another little wonderful thing that if you practice them and you start to really see them in these smaller little places, they’re going to become way more accessible for you to use. That’s what I say we should do.
  17. 10:11And it’s a call out to all my guitar player brethren who are tired of all their piano player friends playing all these pretty, you know, these really pretty things and us not being able to keep up with them. Forget that. We’re keeping up with them from now on. So just a small video today, and I’ll leave a link in the description for that Thomas video, that Labyrinth of Limitations. Until next time, enjoy practicing your drop 2s and everything that’s included in them.