Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 11: The piano

Comping for A Night in Tunisia

Episode 19 · 12:53 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris comps the A sections of A Night in Tunisia with just three sets of drop-2 chords: the D minor 6 diminished scale of chords, the inversions of E flat 7, and the B flat minor 6 diminished scale of chords. He shows how to connect each one to the nearest D minor 6, adds Barry’s move of two diminished chords a half step apart, and then puts it all in rhythm.

Step by step

  1. 0:55Learn the D minor 6 diminished scale of chords in drop 2, alternating minor 6 and diminished, on each set of four strings.
  2. 2:13Learn every inversion of E flat 7 in drop 2, starting on strings 6 to 3.
  3. 3:33Add the B flat minor 6 diminished scale of chords in the same way.
  4. 4:43From each E flat 7 voicing, find the closest D minor 6 and move back and forth between them.
  5. 6:03Hear the top notes of the common E flat 7 shape as a B flat minor 6, and connect every B flat minor 6 to the nearest D minor 6.
  6. 6:47Only then put the moves in rhythm: E flat 7 into D minor 6, then B flat minor 6 into D minor 6.
  7. 7:39Try Barry’s sound: the diminished chord of A7 and the diminished a half step away, resolving into D minor 6.
  8. 10:23Also try the E flat 7 diminished scale of chords over the first chord.
  9. 11:20Expand with drop 3 and drop 2-and-4 voicings, and change chords less often when the tune is called fast.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Dm60:55
××Dm6
C2AC3DFB
Eb72:58
5fr××Eb7
C2C3GC4B♭E♭D♭

Barry’s own words on this

11.6 Comping9.5 The minor 6th diminished scale and its diminished partner9.8 The 7th diminished and 7th flat 5 diminished scales10.5 Drop voicings

In the course

The important minorBarry’s four scales of chordsThe minor 6 diminished scaleMinor ii-V-i as three minor 6 chordsDrop 2, drop 3 and drop 2 and 4Playing the scale of chordsLeast movement: find the closest voicingComping with movementA Night in Tunisia

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 19 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. Today I thought we would stay with the theme we started in episode 18 and we’ll talk about Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s Night in Tunisia and we’ll talk about comping. So, let’s just discuss a few of the chords that I think we’ll be using today. The one scale of chords that I want people to know is D minor 6 diminished. Okay, that’s D minor, 6, and the diminished, and I’m going to take you through each one now.
  2. 0:55So again, we’ll start, and these are all dropped too. We’ll start on the 6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd strings. I’ll call out the frets. 5th fret, 5th fret, 3rd fret, 4th fret. That’s the minor 6 from the 5th. Then the diminished is 6th fret, 7th fret, 5th fret, 6th fret. Then we’ll change strings. We’ll go to the 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd string, and we’ll have 2nd fret, 3rd fret, 2nd fret, second fret third fret now we have a diminished fourth fret fifth fret third fret fifth fret now minor six from the root fifth fret seventh fret fourth fret
  3. 1:33sixth fret diminished seventh fret eighth fret sixth fret eighth fret another minor six eighth fret ninth fret seventh fret tenth fret we’ll change strings now on fourth third second at first and we’ll say fifth fret sixth fret fifth fret sixth fret now another minor sixth fifth fret fifth fret fourth fret fifth fret diminished eighth fret oh no i’m sorry this is seventh fret seventh fret sixth fret seventh fret then we have
  4. 2:13eighth fret ninth fret eighth fret ninth fret then we have 9th fret, 10th fret, 10th fret, 10th fret. Then we have 11th, 12th, 11th, 12th, and then we’ll back to the 12th, 14th, 12th, 14th. And that’s all D minor, 6th diminished. Sorry about the mistake there before. Okay, that’s one scale of chords I want you to know. The next thing is the first chord is basically E flat 7. So you should know all of your E flat 7s just in their inversions. So let’s start with this one, starting on the 6th, 5th, and 4th string.
  5. 2:58So we have, and 3rd string. So we have 6th fret, 6th fret, 5th fret, 6th fret. Then we’ll have, from the flat 7th, which will be 4th fret, 5th fret, 3rd fret, 4th fret. Then we’ll have, from the root, which is 6th fret, 8th fret, 6th fret, 8th fret. Then we’ll have from the third, which is fifth fret, sixth fret, fourth fret, sixth fret. Then we’ll have from the fifth, again, octave of this one, which will be eighth fret, eighth fret, eighth fret, ninth fret. And then we’ll have the last one up here.
  6. 3:33We’ll do eleventh fret, twelfth fret, eleventh fret, eleventh fret. So now, just armed with those two sets of chords. Oh, you know what? Let’s also do B flat minor six. because maybe we’ll do some of those. So let’s do Bb-minor 6-drop too. So now we’ll do Bb-minor 6-diminished. So we got 6th fret, 8th fret, 5th fret, 6th fret. 8th fret, 9th fret, 7th fret, 8th fret.
  7. 4:104th fret, 5th fret, 3rd fret, 6th fret. Diminished again, which is 6th fret, 7th fret, 5th fret, 7th fret. Minus 6 again. 8th fret, 8th fret, 6th fret, 8th fret. Diminished again. 9th fret, 10th fret, 8th fret, 10th fret. 5th fret, 6th fret, 6th fret, 6th fret. Diminished. 7th fret, 8th fret, 7th fret, 8th fret. And we’ll do this last one.
  8. 4:43which is eighth fret, tenth fret, eighth fret, ninth fret. So those are basically the chords that I’ll be using just to comp for the first eight bars, or the first two sets of eight bars, and then even the last eight bars. We won’t talk about the bridge right now, but just using those inversions of E flat seven and a D minor six diminished scale and a B flat minor six diminished scale there’s a lot of different options you can have the first thing I would do is I would say okay every place that you have an E flat 7 let’s say let’s take it from that’s the first E flat 7 from
  9. 5:23the fifth you have to find the closest D minor six because that’s obviously what the what the chord changes are. So here’s E flat 7, here’s D minus 6, here’s E flat 7, here’s D Here’s E flat 7, here’s D minus 6, here’s E flat 7, D minus 6, E flat 7, D minus 6, E flat 7, D minus 6. So now that’s one way you can look at it.
  10. 6:03Another way you can look at it is a lot of times people play this chord. We’ve seen this chord a million times. Every guitar player has played this chord. but if you look at what the top notes are besides the E flat that’s a B flat minor six so what you need to know how to do is play every B flat minor six into D minor six so if we take a look at that we would say let’s try this B flat minor six into D minor six B flat minus six D minor six B flat minus six D B-minus 6, B-flip-minus 6, D-minus 6, B-flip-minus 6, D-minus 6, maybe one last B-flip-minus 6,
  11. 6:47to D-minus 6. You’re going to need to know how to get from one of those chords to the next chords before you can even attempt to put them in rhythm. So that’s the first, that’s your starting point. So let’s try to do that. Let’s try to put a few of them in rhythm. Let’s take just from the root position E-flat 7. Let’s see. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3. Anyway, those are just a few ideas for E flat 7 into D minor 6. Now let’s try some ideas for B flat minor 6 into D minor 6.
  12. 7:391, 2, 3. Okay, so there’s a few Bbm6 into Dm6. Something that Barry plays, I think we talked about it in the last episode, is he likes to play the diminished that goes with A7. and then diminished that goes with the E7 or Bb7,
  13. 8:17they’re a half step away from each other. So if we played this, it would be... We started doing those yesterday in the last episode. But you can actually play that diminished into the next diminished, and I’ll show you what I mean. So if we say 1, 2, 3, 4, oh wait there it was or you could say so let’s try it again
  14. 9:09There it is. Just little ideas, and just using only those three-scaler chords. Well, actually, it’s two-scaler chords, and then the E-flat-7. Now, the one-scaler chord I don’t really use is that, but I probably could. I’ve never tried that. Let’s see what that sounds like. One, two, three. Yeah. Sounds good.
  15. 9:48I haven’t done that before, but... A few different people have asked in the comment section about certain things, certain theory ideas, and they’re really great. So I really love all your comments underneath because it makes me think about different things that I haven’t thought of. and yeah that’s that’s how it’s that’s how it’s supposed to be this is a theory that’s based on talking about it and then working things out afterwards and the key is I think with all this stuff is to how to rhythmically sound
  16. 10:23good and also melodically sound good and if it sounds good it works I mean that’s that’s basically the idea behind it so so far we’ve played E flat 7 into D minor 6. We played Bb minor 6 into D minor 6. Now we did those two diminishes into D minor 6, which is really nice also. And now we just used the E-flats, the scale of chords with the E-flat 7 diminished, which is really pretty and I’ve never tried that. So let’s try it. One, two, three. It’s beautiful.
  17. 11:20So I’d love to hear your ideas about it. Maybe you could show me something about it, which of course I’m totally willing to listen to. But just from those basic scale of chords, I think you see that the ideas can be limitless. And we’re only doing drop two. We haven’t done anything with just playing sixes or playing tenths or maybe even playing drop threes, which are pretty too. And the same thing here with E flat 7 to D minus 6 in drop 3, which is really pretty. We haven’t even done anything in drop 2, drop 4, which would be gorgeous, right?
  18. 12:06and then maybe and those are drop two drop four so as you see it’s really limitless but trying to keep it in a nice rhythm also and practicing things with rhythm and being able to get your fingers to play those particular shapes fast enough that you’re able to do it you know sometimes people call that tune really fast so you have to maybe just lay off changing them so often. But it’s good to know. These are good things to practice. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode and have fun
  19. 12:42comping with Night in Tunisia. Thanks again. Till next time.