Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 9: Sixth chords and the scales of chords

Using Barry’s Scales of Chords on a 2-5

Episode 79 · 12:02 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris harmonises a II-V-I in C entirely with Barry’s scales of chords: Dm7 is F6, and the G7 can be played from the G7, Db7, 7 flat 5 or minor 6 diminished scales. Because each chord belongs to a scale, he can borrow notes, play thirds and tenths, and he shows that all these choices come from the same diminished family.

Step by step

  1. 1:15See Dm7 the way Barry does: as F6, from the F6 diminished scale.
  2. 2:05For G7, use the G7 diminished scale, or its tritone’s, the Db7 diminished scale.
  3. 2:52Try Dm7 to G7 flat 5 diminished (the same as Db7 flat 5).
  4. 3:25Use minor 6 sounds: D minor 6, or the tritone’s minor, A flat minor 6, before resolving to C.
  5. 4:09Start from a drop-2 Dm7 at the 5th fret and move to the closest drop-2 of each chord you call out.
  6. 4:47Practise every one of these II-Vs in every inversion.
  7. 5:29Translate each chord into its scale of chords so you can borrow notes, play thirds or use contrary motion.
  8. 6:59See the ‘G7 flat 9 sharp 5’ shape as A flat minor 6, then borrow two or three notes from its scale.
  9. 7:44Play thirds of F6 into thirds of A flat minor 6, and try tenths.
  10. 9:46Lower one note of the diminished to get the four family dominants; raise one to get the four minor 6ths.

Barry’s own words on this

9.8 The 7th diminished and 7th flat 5 diminished scales9.1 Sixth chords rule10.4 Borrowing9.9 Chords from the diminished

In the course

The family of dominantsMinor 6 chords from the diminishedThe tritone’s minorSixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6Barry’s four scales of chordsThe major 6 diminished scaleThe dominant 7 diminished scaleEvery chord belongs to a scale of chordsScales of chords for a dominantBorrowingFreedom and your own voice

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 79 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought would be a nice thing to talk about playing a 2-5-1. In this case we’ll do C major, D minor 7, a G7. And all of Barry’s scales of chords are things that you can use to play over that. But before we get started, I just want to mention two quick things. The first thing is I was interviewed by this really nice person, good musician named Josh Walsh, who has a YouTube channel called Jazz Library. I’ll leave a link in the description. He’s got some other musicians that he’d interviewed also.
  2. 0:40And it’s a really nice thing that he’s doing. He’s trying to document a lot of different things. And this particular thing is obviously about Barry. So it was nice that he interviewed me. So I’ll leave a link in the description about that. And also Thomas Eccles, who I often mention in this channel, Labyrinth of Limitations is his channel. And he’s come out with an app that is extremely helpful and a really fantastic tool to work on all this stuff, all this various scales of chords. And it’s completely centered basically around that.
  3. 1:15so it’s a wonderful tool and I think it’s incredible so you should go check that out also I’ll leave a link in the description for that also so now talking about in the key of C let’s say and we’re saying D minor 7 to G7 going to C major now we have a lot of different ways of looking at this. But the first thing we should discuss is D minor 7. Obviously, as Barry people, we don’t see this as D minor 7. We see this as F6, which is beautiful just in and of itself. But also, what can we do for the G7? There’s many scales of chords we can play for the G7.
  4. 2:05So the first scale, obviously the D minor 7 is F6 diminished. Then let’s say we just went to G7. The G7 diminished scale works beautifully also. So if we said... Really pretty. instead of G7 let’s do let’s do G7 tritone which would be D flat 7 so let’s do that also beautiful so now we already have two we have G7 diminished and D flat 7 diminished
  5. 2:52Now we could also do Dm7 to G7b5 diminished, which is also Db7b5 diminished. Which works well. Let me do that one again. Also beautiful. we can do let’s do minor 6
  6. 3:25so let’s say D-7 to D-6 or we’ll do the same thing again that’s D-6 diminished to C let’s do D flat 7s, the tritones minor, which is A flat minor 6. Let’s see what that sounds like. Also very beautiful. So I’m just doing drop twos, starting with the D minor 7 here,
  7. 4:09fifth fret and then I’m trying to go to the closest drop to of any of the ones that I’m calling out so I’m going closest G7 closest D flat 7 closest D flat 7 flat 5 or G flat 7 flat 5 closest D minor 6 closest A flat minor 6 so all these are wonderful so now what there’s a few others oh you could just play playing diminished But what’s nice is seeing them in every inversion.
  8. 4:47So there’s your F6. So the first one we did was G7. How about G7 flat 5? How about D flat 7? How about D minor 6? All these are 2-5s. How about F6 to, let’s see, A flat minor 6.
  9. 5:29So now what’s really cool about all these is and what I think is fascinating about Barry’s system is that when you see a chord it’s not just the one specific stagnant chord that specific chord belongs to a scale so it belongs to a scale of chords which means if I see d minor 7 on a piece of sheet music and this is what Barry does incredibly fast and totally naturally he immediately translates it into his scales of chords. So he sees D minor 7 as F6. So he knows all the things that he’s practiced F6 he could use. Borrowing notes, thirds, contrary motion, and then the same thing when you choose one of the G7
  10. 6:19things you do. So in this case, I chose A flat minor 6, but that means I can do A flat minor 6 going crazy with all this A flat minor 6 stuff, or it means I can do contrary motion, or it means I can do thirds. Anything for A flat minor 6 that I’m used to practicing, I can put in there. And then what’s nice about it is the resolution. So think about that. So D minor 7 to G7, instead of thinking to yourself all these alterations and sharp 9 and flat 13 and all that stuff, all you have to think about is what different scales of chords can I use.
  11. 6:59Now what’s really nice is, for instance, D minor 7. Now you’ve heard people play this before. And all this is, is somebody would probably say this was a flat 9 and raise 5. G7, flat 9 and raise 5. But it’s not. Barry says it’s A flat minor 6. Same notes. It’s not that it’s not. But look what Barry can do. because it comes from this or barry can borrow some notes so you can say so barry could do see now you can’t do that if you’re just thinking of this as a one stagnant chord but if you’re thinking of this as this comes from this scale that means
  12. 7:44oh man, I can do all my borrowing from the scale. So here’s this, here’s this. I’m going to borrow these two notes. Or I might even borrow three. Which is beautiful. Or any of this stuff. So that is what knowing the scales of chords, as opposed to just knowing a stagnant chord with some numbers attached to it, does. That’s the benefit of it. It gives you freedom to do anything you want. Look, if I did thirds. That was thirds for F6, then thirds for A flat minor 6.
  13. 8:30And I just made this little thing that, you know, it’s not the greatest thing in the world, but it sure sounded pretty. And I’m telling you, I’ve never done that before. But it’s just I started thinking about things. You could think of it in tenths. Tense. I mean, there are so many beautiful ways to look at it. So if you start looking at harmony, and you decide for yourself,
  14. 9:03which is something I decided for myself, I am only going to think of it through various scales of chords. That’s it. I’m just gonna think of it through barry scales of chords because I don’t need anything else. So I’m not even gonna worry about numbers, alterations, whatever. I’m gonna choose what I want to use for them whenever I want. And that’s, those are primarily just on the five chord or dominant chord. You see all the different ways we came up with things to do. And interestingly enough, all the variations that we came up with G7, Db7, Db7b5, all those things, all these things, all these minor sixes
  15. 9:46and all, they all, well, at least all the dominants and all the minor sixes you see are all family. So for instance, if I took that D diminished and I lowered one note, you’re going to see all the four dominant family members. You’re going to see G7, Db7, Bb7, and you’re going to see E7. From this, there’s one, there’s G7, there’s Bb7, there’s E7, and so on. So you see, this is what I mean.
  16. 10:25These are all connected. And then if you raise one note from the diminished, then you get this Abm6, here’s the diminished again, now you get Dm6, if I go back to the diminished again, now you get Fm6, if I go back to the diminished again, now you get Bm6. It’s all related, it’s all family. There’s no part of this that doesn’t make sense, the whole thing make sense. So I hope you just from this small lesson will see all of the variations that you can use using barry scales of chords and their importance. And
  17. 11:05we didn’t even get into really that much borrowing or all the other little things that you can do with the scale. But just think about that now. So if I said if you see a piece of sheet music that says oh the song says D minor 7 and G7. Think of all the variations that you can play on that. It’s endless. And that you and I, or whoever is watching this, would know the same scales, same scales of chords, but yet we’re all going to sound different. Every one of us will sound different on it. There’ll be no more everybody sounding the same. Especially guitar players, because that’s a particular thing about guitar
  18. 11:41players. We all generally sound the same. So this will help us out of that. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. Enjoy practicing your 2-5-1 using various scales of chords. And until next time, thanks again.