Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 6: Line devices

Don’t Learn Target Notes; Barry’s Beautiful Chromatic Scale

Episode 80 · 15:24 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris argues that target-note rules box a player in, while Barry’s way of hearing Cm7 to F7 as simply F7 leaves every note available. He then works through Barry’s chromatic scale on F7 from each degree, mixes in the important minor and the tritone, and recalls Barry starting a good phrase on any note the class named.

Step by step

  1. 0:47Treat Cm7 to F7 going to B flat the way Barry does: just F7, up and down.
  2. 1:28Notice how target-note rules, like never starting on the fourth, limit your phrases.
  3. 2:52Instead, play a chord up from any degree of F7: the seventh, tonic, second or third.
  4. 3:24Start on F over the C minor, add a half step and pivot, as Bird often did.
  5. 5:32Learn Barry’s chromatic scale on F7: add the half step where there is room for one between scale notes, and jump to the next scale tone where there isn’t.
  6. 6:07Go up a third or a fourth from the tonic with the chromatic scale, then come down a chord; repeat from each degree.
  7. 7:23Start on the fourth, come down a third chromatically, then down a chord; move it through every degree.
  8. 10:04Come down the important minor on the fifth (C minor), one of the dominant’s three important arpeggios.
  9. 10:44To play out, run F7 into its tritone B7 over the C minor, even starting on a note that belongs to B7.
  10. 13:19Aim for Barry’s freedom: he could start a natural phrase on any of the 12 notes a student named.

Barry’s own words on this

6.10 Barry’s chromatic scale (chromatic runs with chord tones on the beat)8.1 Put the ii chord away8.5 The tritone6.1 Arpeggios on every degree; the three important arpeggios of a dominant scale

In the course

Think the dominant: put the ii awayBarry’s chromatic scaleThe three important arpeggios of a dominantPivotsEvery note is a target noteThe tritoneFreedom and your own voice

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 80 of Things I Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would talk about a topic about limiting yourself, limiting yourself with certain ways of thinking about music. So for me, as I pointed out in a bunch of my videos, I’ve never really studied any other type of theory in terms of jazz besides Barry’s. So I never, ever feel limited as to what I can do or where I can go or how I can use the scales to solo or anything like that. and there aren’t a lot of things in Barry’s teaching that says well you absolutely can’t do this or you
  2. 0:47absolutely can’t do that with the exception of swinging eighth notes or something like that but what I’ve noticed is especially on the YouTube videos especially with talking about jazz that there’s a lot of people use the same language like one of the things in particular that I was thinking about, and I was talking to a few of my students about this, is let’s say if we were playing a C minor 7 for a measure, an F7 for a measure, going to B flat major. Okay? So if we were just thinking scale-wise, Barry would just say that’s totally F7 up and down, that you just leave the C minor 7 alone, because the C minor 7 is part of the F7.
  3. 1:28Now, one of the things I noticed that people do teach is they’ll say, well, you have to play for a C minor 7 you’d have to do something like this which is basically just playing the chord found on on the fifth of the F7 and then the chord found on the root to play what they call target notes and then there’s all sorts of rules that go along with it and one of them that I seem to pick up is that you can’t start on the fourth or there’s a lot of there’s a lot of rules to it but to me, all that stuff, it stops you from really progressing. And why I feel so blessed is that I started studying with Barry right away, right out of rock music. And then I found Ronnie Ben-Hur,
  4. 2:12who then introduced me to Barry, and then boom, I was on my way. So for instance, in this case, C minor 7, F7, if you just think F7, and you think all the things that are included in F7, you’ll be able to come up with phrases that a person who tries to try to do these target notes will never ever come up with. And I’m sure that that’s not the only thing that you do eventually, you start to build from there. But it’s totally not necessarily, not necessary to do that. Like you can do something like this, but just so long as you know, this chord from, from C minor, this,
  5. 2:52this chord is from the fifth of F, but you could have done anything. You could have done the chord up from the seventh. You could have done a chord up from the tonic, the chord up from the second, third. So right away, there’s a whole bunch of different things. Now, one of the things I think that I’ve heard is that on the C, C minor seven, you never want to start on the fourth, which is the F. But I mean, there’s a million bird phrases that right on C minor, it starts on F because you’re thinking already.
  6. 3:24Because if you’re thinking F7, you’re already thinking F. So I can come up with a million phrases. There, I start on F. I can start on F and do one half step and then pivot. So. now that’s all of that is still C minor to F7 so I guess the point I’m trying to get at is I think if you think of it in Barry’s way which is to think about C minor 7 to F7 as just F7
  7. 4:05then you can come up with really a lot of beautiful things and not worried about being put into this box of I have to play these four notes of A minor 7, I have to play these four notes of, I mean, of C minor 7, I have to play these four notes of F7. It makes you feel more free and you’re more able to create many more beautiful lines, I think, in this way. For me, at least, this is the way I see it. The other thing I wanted to talk about is, and I made a video about it a while ago, but Barry’s chromatic scale is so important and so beautiful. And again, this is something that he came up with. I was corrected about it. I think he came up with it in 96 or 97,
  8. 4:46something like that, around that time. So you’re talking about this genius who, you know, had been playing piano since he’s five, had come up with all these half-step rules, which he basically, after he transcribed Bird and Bud Powell and all of them, saw that there was just some spots where they seemed to put half-steps in. So then he created these rules out of that, which worked beautifully. Then flash forward, 1996 or 97, I guess it is, which would make him, how old would he be? He’d be about 66 or 67. And he comes up with this chromatic scale. And what the chromatic scale is, if you don’t know, we’ll do F7, is every place that you have a half step in between two
  9. 5:32notes, you use it. In a place where you don’t have a half step, you jump up to the next scale tone. So for instance, if we’re playing F7, in between F and G you have a half step. In between G and A you have a half step. In between A and Bb you don’t have a half step, so you have to jump up to C. So, so far this is what we have. Now, in between Bb and C you have a half step. In between C and D you have a half step. In between D and Eb you don’t have a half step, so you jump up to F.
  10. 6:07And then in between E flat and F you have a half step naturally. So this is what your scale would be. But also it’s down. Now if you think in terms of these things, look at all the beautiful things you could do. I could say I’m going to start on the F. I’m going to go up a third using Barry’s chromatic. So I’ll try that one. One, two, three. That time I went, I did one more half step.
  11. 6:42So I did. And then between the third and fourth, I have to jump up to the fifth because there is no half step. So I’ll say. And then I came down a chord. Now that’s a pretty phrase. So I went up, let’s see. So I did, let’s see, more than a third. I did a fourth up. So let’s see what would the next one be. Yeah, that’s the next one. So let’s try that. Now the next one will be going up from the flat seventh, going up a fourth. And then coming down a chord. Let’s try the next one.
  12. 7:23Nice. Next one. Pretty. Next one. Next one. But do you see how pretty these are? What if we did start it on a note, let’s say we’ll start on the 4, and we’ll do down a third, which would be this. That’s a nice one. So we’re going to come down a third, and when we get down to the third, we’re going to come down with barricolet chord. So we say...
  13. 7:57I’ll do it again. That’s a nice one. How about if we do, we’ll do that on the next degree which is come down to third and then we’ll come down to chord. That’s nice too. How about second to the seventh. Nice.
  14. 8:32Let’s try tonic to six. Let’s see. Pretty. Let’s try this. So the flat seven to the five. And then come down a chord. That’s pretty. Next one. Wait. Also pretty. Next one. I mean you see how pretty these are how about if we did let’s see yeah let’s go up a fifth so let’s look up a triad we’ll go to try it so we’ll start on F
  15. 9:14next one Next one Next one Max one Max one Max one Wait, those are pretty. Now we’ll do them down. Next one. I mean, so many pretty things.
  16. 10:04Suppose I said... So that one I did, I came down the important minor from the fifth, but from its fifth. So the three important arpeggios for every dominant, Barry says, is on the root, on the fifth, and on the seventh. So the one on the fifth is a minor arpeggio. So this one I did, which happens to give you C minor, so I did the C minor down from the fifth. So I’ll say... really beautiful phrases so there’s another little thing that you can throw
  17. 10:44in with this chromatic scale that is so beautiful and so unique and I’ve never heard anybody do it it’s so incredible it’s yet another beautiful Barry Harris invention one of the million another thing is the things that the target notes always leave out if you refer to things as target notes is since Barry thinks of C minor 7 to F7 as just F7, you can also think of F7 if you want to play out. You can think of F7 and you could say, okay, I want to play outside. So I want to play F7’s tritone, which is B7. So now you got F7
  18. 11:28and then B7, back to B-flat major. So now sometimes, for C minor, what Barry will do is he’ll say, he will run F7 into B7 over this. So C minor, he’s not thinking, he’s not thinking that at all. He’s already thinking F7. Now, sometimes what Barry will also think is he’ll say, okay, so C minor, he might say, so, like for instance, there’s notes that people call target notes for the F that you
  19. 12:09can hit. Well, you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that. Well, I play the fourth of F all the time. I play anything. But how about if I chose, let’s say, what would people call this? They would say, you’re starting on the sharp nine. So I’m going to start my phrase on the sharp nine of F7. Or I guess if you were thinking C minor, you’d think of it as the flat 6. So that would probably be a no-no. I don’t know. Maybe it would be. But to me, I just see this note as already part of the B7 scale. So I already see that as the 6th of B7.
  20. 12:47So I might say... I might do something like that. Try it again. But do you see? This is why. There’s no such thing as... I think I told this story before, but Barry used to do this thing where you call out a note,
  21. 13:19any note of the scale, any note at all, not even on the scale, any note, any of the 12 notes, and he will start a phrase on that note. And I think the point of that lesson was to show you that you’re supposed to be so free and feel so free within the music that you can start on any note. Now it’s not just like you start on any note and it sounds like complete anarchy and it doesn’t sound good. He obviously, since he’s on the master level, he starts on a note, any note that you give him, and it sounds totally perfect and totally natural. And that’s the goal.
  22. 13:57So I guess the point of this video is anything that you learn, that’s a hindrance to doing that. You should just stop thinking that way. Because I think the ultimate goal in anything we’re going over, whatever kind of music you’re playing, is you want total freedom. You want to feel free within music. You want to feel free. So anything that’s going to limit you to that or set rules to that, you know, the basic driver of music and soloing is the sense of taste. Like, how did that sound? Did that sound good? Sometimes you’ll do something and you’ll even stay within rules and say, even,
  23. 14:35oh, these are Barry’s rules. And look, and I put the half step in the right spot and everything, and you’ll listen back to it, but it still doesn’t sound good. So what good is rules? Rules doesn’t mean anything as long as if it doesn’t sound good. So, but you certainly don’t want to limit yourself. And I think the idea of the target notes is too limiting, at least it’s too limiting for me. And I’m, I’m very happy I didn’t learn that way. Because I think it would have stopped my progress almost instantaneously. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this lesson episode 80 on not limiting yourself and practicing Barry’s chromatic scale because man, it is really something special.
  24. 15:20So, okay, until next time. Thanks.