Chris Parks · Stage 0: How Barry taught

Triad, chord or arpeggio?

Episode 129 · 9:58 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris explains how Barry heard a minor 7 chord as two arpeggios: in F, A minor 7 is an A minor and a C major arpeggio. He drills both through their inversions, then applies them to a common movement, III to the same chord a half step down to II (A minor, A flat minor, G minor), using added notes, half steps and triplets the way Bird and other masters did.

Step by step

0:00In F, Barry treats A minor 7 as two things: an A minor triad (A, C, E) and a C major triad (C, E, G).
0:48Barry’s arpeggio is the triad with its root on top again, A, C, E, A; invert it from C and from E, up and back down.
2:00Do the same with the C major arpeggio, C, E, G, C, through all its inversions.
2:49The movement: instead of III to VI to II, go from III to the same chord a half step down, then to II: A minor, A flat minor, G minor, then V.
3:26For A flat (G sharp) minor you need its minor arpeggio and the B major arpeggio too.
5:12Play the phrase from any degree, and with the C major and B major arpeggios as well.
5:51A Bird variation: start on the third of the B major arpeggio, skip the fifth, and go straight to the root.
6:28Add one scale note before any arpeggio note, such as B flat before A or D before C, perhaps with a half step or a triplet.
7:33Go up one arpeggio and come down the next, and invert them.
8:51This movement turns up in many tunes; listen for how Bird, Bud, Rollins, Barry and Hawkins play it.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Am70:00

A minor0:48

C major2:00

Barry’s own words on this

0.2 Barry’s vocabulary 6.1 Arpeggios on every degree; the three important arpeggios of a dominant scale 6.4 Arpeggio inversions and permutations 10.1 Be a movement player

In the course

Eighth- and sixteenth-note triplets in lines Barry’s arpeggio and its inversions Three, flat three, two

Transcript

0:00Hello, and welcome to episode 129 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would talk about the importance of understanding this, let’s say, if we’re in the key of F, the A minor 7. So we’re just going to talk about single notes for a second. Barry used to talk about A minor 7 as having four notes, obviously, A, C, E, G. But he used to distinguish it this way. He used to say A minor 7 consists of two things. An A minor triad, A, C, E, but also a C major triad, C, E, G. Now in Barry’s language, he also used to talk about then you need to know an A minor arpeggio.
0:48And all an arpeggio is is let’s take this A minor triad, A-C-E, and then we’re going to add the A on top of it again. So we’re going to say A-C-E-A. So there’s an arpeggio, what Barry calls an arpeggio. Nobody else calls it that, except I think in classical terms sometimes they call it that. But everybody else calls this an arpeggio, but Barry refers to this as an arpeggio. He would say this is a chord-up. Anyway, so we got A-C-E-A. Then we have to be able to invert that. And by invert, it just means starting on the C, but we’re still only using those three notes, A, C, E.
1:25So now we’re going to say C, E, A, C. And then we’ll start on the fifth, which is the E, and we’ll be able to invert it again. We’ll say E, A, C, E. And then you’re back to the first one again. So here’s all of them, we’ll say. And then you say invert. Invert. Backwards. Invert.
2:00Invert again. So that’s the A minor. And then he did the same thing with the C major. major so he would say C major which would be C E G but then he’d add the C on top so there’s your C major arpeggio and then he would invert that starting from the third you’ve heard from the fifth and then again from the root now everything down, from the fifth, from the third, and move it again. So that is what A minor 7 consists of.
2:49You have to know those two things. And you hear phrasing, like Barry plays a bunch of phrases on this, but Charlie Parker plays a bunch of phrases on it too. I’ll show you what I mean. A lot of times, let’s say we’re playing something in F major, a lot of times we’ll say 3 chord to the 6 chord going to the 2 chord. But sometimes instead of doing 3 chord to the 6 chord, what we’ll play is we’ll play the 3 chord and then we’ll play the same chord a half step down, so the flat 3. So you’re going to hear this a lot.
3:26A minor to A flat minor or G sharp minor to G minor, which is the two chord in F. And then to the five chord a lot of times. So that is a movement that you’re going to hear a lot. So since we did this, and then we said for the A minor, we have to know it’s A minor and C major. For the A flat minor, we have to know that it’s A flat minor arpeggio. same thing we just did for A minor but it’s also a B major arpeggio I guess we should call this G sharp minor
4:04but same thing A flat minor or G sharp minor and then B major so the same thing that we just did for the A minor we should be able to do for A minor so that’s why you’ll hear a lot of phrases where sometimes Bird will play something like... That’s a nice little coming down, let’s say, from the fifth. And then he repeats it. From the G sharp minor.
4:38So instead, he’ll say one, two, three... But that means you could do any of them. You could do A minor from any degree. We could say... And what’s nice is if you keep going, you don’t have to just keep doing the same thing. You could say... Which is nice. Or you could say... That’s pretty too.
5:12So that’s from every different possible degree. So I did it from the third. I did it from the, I’m sorry, from the fifth. I did it from the root. I did it from the third. So you can be able to use these with not only A minor, but also C major. So let’s try the C major. And then B major. So we’ll say one, two, three. Really pretty phrasing.
5:51Really pretty. And then you learn all different ways to play it. I think one time Bird did something like... So he didn’t even play the whole thing going back up. He went down one. And then just did two notes of one. He just started on the third of the B major, skipped the fifth, and went right to the root. So he said, wait, which is really pretty. I think that’s in one of his melodies too, something like that, or a bunch of his melodies probably. But it just shows
6:28you how many different ways we can attack this movement, which is kind of in replace of a three to a six to a two, but it’s its own movement too. Three to flat three to two happens all the time. So then you start doing things like, well, what happens if I add a note, one scale note, before any one of those notes? So for instance, if I wanted to take, let’s start on the A minor. So I’m going to add a scale tone before that. That’s nice. So I’ll add the B flat.
7:02So one, two, three, four. Which is really pretty. How about if I add the note before the C? So the note before the C, which is now the third of the A, would be D. So 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s a nice one. 1, 2, 3, 4. Well, maybe we’ll put a half step in between that note and the C, D and the C. So we’ll start on the fourth beat.
7:331, 2, 3. and then I added a triple to the other one. That’s a really nice one. So that’s nice too. So you also learn how to come down one and go up the next one. So we might say if I go up the one starting from A, instead of going up the one from A flat, and then the one from G, maybe I’ll go up the one from A and then down the one from A flat or G sharp. which is pretty. I’ll invert that. Start on the fifth.
8:13And back to the root. Maybe I’ll start on, you can also do that with the C major. Or. or back to the first one. Those are all really pretty. You can do all of them down. So I’ll do the A minor down, maybe from the third. That’s a nice one. Or maybe I’ll do a triplet on the first one. And then just mess around with the second one.
8:51Don’t do exactly the same. Something like, let’s see. Let’s see. That’s a nice one. Any of these little variations, they’re going to come in so handy because this movement happens all the time in so many different tunes. Once you become aware of this movement, you start to hear Charlie Parker has a bunch of things he plays like this. Bud Powell has a bunch of things he plays on this movement. Sonny Rollins has a million things he plays on this movement
9:27Barry Harris has a bunch of things Coleman Hawkins has a bunch of things you start to hear what the master’s take on that little movement is and it really is centered around just those two arpeggios the A minor arpeggio and the C major arpeggio so anyway I thought I’d just make this little clip to talk about I think I’ve talked about this in previous videos but it’s really important enough to bring up again so until next time Enjoy practicing your arpeggios.