Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 10: Movement

Think small, not big: F6, F7, B flat 6, B diminished

Episode 135 · 14:15 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris studies one small movement found in Honeysuckle Rose, the blues and I Got Rhythm: in F, F6 to F7 to B flat 6 to B diminished. He learns it in every inversion, builds lines on it, transposes it as I, I7, IV, sharp IV diminished, and plays it with small shell voicings, following Barry’s advice to think in small chords and small movements.

Step by step

  1. 0:35The movement appears in Honeysuckle Rose, the start of a blues and I Got Rhythm; in F it is F6, F7, B flat 6, B diminished.
  2. 1:14F6 is F, A, C, D; change the D to E flat to get F7.
  3. 1:51B flat 6 is B flat, D, F, G; move B flat up to B and G up to G sharp (A flat), keeping D and F, to get B diminished.
  4. 2:32Learn both moves in every inversion: in F6 the D always becomes E flat, and in B flat 6 the B flat and the G each move up a half step.
  5. 4:28Use it in lines: in the first bars of a blues Barry’s outline is F7 up, B flat 7 up, but this movement fits there too.
  6. 5:02A slick way Barry used: start F6 from F, then start B flat 6 from the same F, its fifth.
  7. 6:08Start from other notes, such as from A, the third of F, then B flat 6 from the nearest note, G; or from the fifth, then the root.
  8. 9:25Think of it as I, I dominant, IV, sharp IV diminished and transpose it: B flat 6, B flat 7, E flat 6, E diminished; C6, C7, F6, F sharp diminished.
  9. 10:33When chording, use shell voicings (broken drop 2s) instead of big chords and move only the note that changes.
  10. 12:19Like Coleman Hawkins’s ‘movement’, learn everything about a small move rather than inserting one stock line.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

F61:14
𝄞
C3FACD
  1. F
  2. A
  3. C
  4. D
Bb61:51
𝄞♭
C3C4DFGB♭
  1. B♭
  2. D
  3. F
  4. G

Barry’s own words on this

10.1 Be a movement player10.2 First progressions to know13.2 Rhythm changes (‘seven songs in one’)

In the course

Be a movement playerIV6, raised IV diminished, IBroken drop 2Least movement: find the closest voicingThe blues the Barry waySmall things

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 135 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And I thought today we would talk about this really pretty movement that we’ve been talking about over at Open Studio over at the classes there, which if you haven’t checked it out, I would highly recommend it because it’s just a great place to learn and to get better from the privacy of your own home. It’s really fantastic. This movement happens in a lot of tunes. Well, the tune we were working on was Honeysuckle Rose.
  2. 0:35It happens in the first couple of bars of the blues. It happens in I Got Rhythm, fifth and sixth bar, I think, of I Got Rhythm. But let’s talk about it in F. Basically what the move is, is it’s F6 to F7 to Bb6 to B diminished. So a lot of times you’ll hear, here’s F6, here’s F7, Bb6, B diminished, back to F6. Or sometimes you’ll hear something like F6 and then F with the third in the bass, like the A in the bass, and then Bb6.
  3. 1:14So that’s a very important move. So it’s this. Or to be more precise, it’s this. That’s basically what the move is. If you’re a bass player playing that, that’s what the bass player is implying. So let’s just talk about that move for a second. So the way that I look at that, and the way that Barry used to talk about it, is the first thing is F6. So let’s take our four notes of F6. F, A, C, D. We’ll change the D to E flat to make it F7. So now we got F6, F7.
  4. 1:51Now B flat 6 is just going to be B flat D F G. Now the difference between B flat 6 and B diminished is going to be two notes. The B flat is going to move to B. We’re still going to keep the D. We’re still going to keep the F. But now the G moves up to G sharp or A flat. So there’s our diminished. So now here’s our full move. the B flat 6 and now here’s the B diminished. Now what’s pretty about learning this tune, I mean learning this particular movement, is you should learn every inversion of this, every single one. So for instance if we take here’s F6, F7. Now we should know every inversion of that
  5. 2:326 to that F7. So here’s F6 here, from the third, now from the third again, but that same note changes the same D every time you’re going to get to the D you change it to E flat instead so here’s from the third again now here’s from the fifth and then here’s from the six those are all pretty you got to know all those same thing is true of the B flat six so let’s say we take the B flat six from here we
  6. 3:09You can do it in any octave, but let’s take it from the lower octave. So here’s 1, 3, 5, 6, which again is B-flat, D, F, G. Changing the B-flat is going to change to B. The D and the F are going to stay the same, and then the G is going to move up to G-sharp or A-flat. So now let’s do the next inversion ad, starting from the third. So now we’re starting with the D, F, G, B-flat. So now the last two notes are going to change. That’s pretty. Then we’ll start on the fifth, and we’ll say F, G, B flat, D. So again, we’re going to change the F. Actually, the F is going
  7. 3:57to stay. We’re going to change the G to G flat, and then we’re still going to play the D on top. So here’s this one. Really pretty move. Now start from the sixth, starting from the G. And then again, we got to change the G, go up a half step to the G sharp. And the same thing, the B flat is going to move up a half step to B. So now you have this. That’s a really pretty one. So now what’s nice is you should be able to throw those into lines. That’s the idea.
  8. 4:28or at least use those as a starting point for pretty ideas for that little spot. So again, like I said, if we were talking about the first bar of the blues, the first two bars of the blues, it’s usually, well, at least the Barry Harris outline would be F7 up, Bb7 up. But we could also do this movement because it’s in there. That’s the move. So we’re going to try to do that. So you come up with all sorts of things. Here’s Bb6.
  9. 5:02Maybe Bb7 down. And then you do Bb6 up. So you come up with all little pretty ways to work on this. So let’s say if I start, let’s start from the beginning. Here’s our F6. Here’s our F7 from the F. Now let’s do a slick way that Barry used to do it is. since we started on F, we’re going to start Bb6 from the F. So here it is from the fifth of the Bb6. So here’s what it would sound like.
  10. 5:35Start from the F. It’s pretty, it’s pretty stuff if you just did that. That’s really pretty stuff. That’s just playing F6 to F7 to Bb6 to B diminished. Now let’s start from the third. Same thing, only the one note changes.
  11. 6:08The D moves to Eb. Now, since we started on the third of F, which is the A, the closest place that we want, or if we want, we can either go down to D. Let’s go down to the D. So then we’ll start the Bb from the sixth. So here’s our F from the A. Now I’ll start the B-flat-six from the G. Sorry, not from the D. That’s pretty, so let’s see. Love that sound.
  12. 6:45So wait. One, two, three, four. And then. Really pretty stuff. F6 to F7. Now let’s start from the 5th. Let’s say... Start from the 5th of F6. So then we’ll start from, I guess the next closest note from this would be the root. So we’ll say... Really pretty stuff.
  13. 7:25But can you imagine starting your blues off like that? Since the bass player has started the... Why can’t we play that? That is pretty stuff. So sometimes just working on these little tiny little small movements is going to help you to develop so many different phrases. So if you think my phrasing, I want to kind of like, I want to think about that default movement and see how many pretty ways I can do that.
  14. 8:06Now we happen to be just going up. You know, these are all going up. But you could also do them down. So you could say, you could do one up, one down, and the same thing here, one up. It’s really pretty. You could do all sorts of variations, all sorts of combinations. You could do one note of one, don’t play the whole thing. You could say, that was just playing. one note of the F6, then I did come down to F7, and then I didn’t really play much of the Bb6.
  15. 8:51I just kind of started thinking about the B diminished, which is really pretty. And remember, when you think of B diminished, obviously you’re thinking all the notes of B diminished, including the diminished scale you could think of also for that little spot. But think about that. If you have as your guideline F6 to F7 to B-flat 6 to be diminished, think about how many millions of phrases you can come up with and think about how many spots you can put them in. Like I said, it’s in Honeysuckle Rose.
  16. 9:25It’s in I Got Rhythm. It’s in the blues. This movement. And if you take this movement and you say, okay, this is in the key of F. It’s F6 to F7 to B-flat 6 to be diminished. Then you have to think about, Okay, that’s the one chord to the one dominant to the four chord to the sharp four diminished. So if you think about it numerically, then you should be able to transcribe it to, I mean, transpose it to any other key. So for instance, I got rhythm, it’s in B-flat. So then you have to think, okay, well, the one chord is B-flat six, goes to B-flat seven, and it goes to E-flat six to E-diminished.
  17. 9:58That’s the move. That would be the move in B-flat. What if I said the move in C? Well, then it’s going to be C-six to C-seven to F-six to F-sharp diminished. So that’s a good way to do it. And once on guitar, obviously, if you do it in a couple of positions, like we did it with F as the root, then we did it again as B-flat as the root, and you really see the 6 to the 7, and then the 6 to that diminished, there’s a lot of stuff you can find. A lot of stuff you can... Also true if you’re playing chords. I was just talking to Thomas about this. We were saying, let’s take F6 to F7.
  18. 10:33Now, most people will play these big chords. So they’ll play, you know, here’s a big F6, maybe we’ll do a tritone or something. But what’s nice is to do what I call broke and dropped to, what Thomas calls shell voicing. If I just took shell with the F on top and just moved the one note that moves. So if we started off a blues and said one, two, one, two, three. That’s a pretty move.
  19. 11:09And you should know it from every degree. That was from the third. So here’s the shell from the, or the broken drop two from the third. One, two, three, four. That’s a cool move to be able to just play those little things. And you know, when you see those on your instrument, you also can play, see, let’s see. Look at that. I started off with this little broken drop to the shell of F6. 1, 2, 3, 4, ah.
  20. 11:48That’s pretty. What if I started with this one? 1, 2, 3, 4, ah. That’s a pretty one too. How about the next one? Let’s see. Let’s see. That’s pretty stuff. Just thinking about this. So, movement is the thing that we really need to learn. And Barry was always very focused on movement. He used to say we have to learn,
  21. 12:19because obviously Colman Hawkins told him, he used to call it movement instead of chords. He would say movement. So this movement, the one chord to the one dominant to the four chord to the sharp four diminished, happens in so many spots. we should learn every little thing about it as opposed to just having one line that covers it. Like, okay, here’s the one thing that I play every time that that happens. Or here are the two things I play. We should have infinite amount of things we can play because we should learn how to play movement as opposed to just, you know, or as opposed to like just taking a Sonny Rollins or Charlie
  22. 12:58Parker or Bob Powell phrase and then just saying, all right, well, when this happens, I’m going to insert this line. We don’t want to do that. Or at least I don’t want to do that. You can do that, but I don’t want to do that. I would rather learn how to play the movement myself. But it’s an interesting thing. And if you think about everything about music is just about that. It’s about this chord going to this chord or this going to this, which means it’s about movement. Everything about music is about movement. So there’s only a certain amount of places we’re going to go. There are only a certain amount of movements.
  23. 13:32So if you spend time focused on the smaller things and keep working at them, I feel like everybody can be better or can become much better players if we focus on these little smaller things. And Barry was a huge advocate of working on the small stuff. And he meant that not only like in terms of piano playing big chords, playing smaller chords, but also thinking small, thinking small movement. So anyway, I hope this was helpful. I’m sorry it’s been a little while since we’ve gotten together, but hopefully I’ll be making more frequently. So until next time, enjoy practicing your movements.