Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 8: Thinking dominant

Playing with the family: dominant triads and minor sixes

Episode 128 · 12:58 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris starts from Barry’s creation theory (chromatic scale, whole-tone scales, diminished chords, dominants) and finds E7’s family by lowering each note of F diminished. He then plays the family’s major triads, in every inversion and disguised so they don’t sound like a minor-third pattern, over a ii-V in A minor. Raising a diminished note instead gives a minor 6 on the fifth of each dominant.

Step by step

  1. 0:00Recall Barry’s creation theory: the chromatic scale splits into two whole-tone scales, which give three diminished chords, each holding four dominants
  2. 0:33Lower each note of F diminished in turn to find E7’s family: E7, B flat 7, D flat 7 and G7
  3. 1:42Add the four roots to the diminished to get Barry’s diminished scale; then take just the major triads: E, G, B flat, D flat
  4. 2:58Learn every inversion of each of the four triads on the neck
  5. 3:58Over a ii-V in A minor (B minor 7 flat 5, i.e. D minor 6, to E7), replace E7 with family triads, e.g. D flat to B flat, or E to D flat
  6. 4:31Run them with the third in the bass, then the root, then the fifth
  7. 5:37Disguise the minor-third pattern: use only a couple of triads, or move across string sets
  8. 6:15Raise the root of a triad a half step to turn it into the diminished it comes from
  9. 9:09Raise a note of the diminished a half step to get a minor 6 on the fifth of each dominant (B, D, F, A flat minor 6), and move that shape in minor thirds

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

F dim0:33
𝄞♭
C3FBC4DA♭
  1. F
  2. A♭
  3. B
  4. D

Barry’s own words on this

8.3 Four dominants from every diminished chord8.4 Playing with the family10.6 Colour from the family9.9 Chords from the diminished

In the course

Barry’s creation theoryThe family of dominantsMinor 6 chords from the diminishedFamily triadsThe diminished scale: a diminished plus four tonicsSixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6

Transcript

  1. 0:00hello and welcome to episode 128 of things I’ve learned from Barry Harris and today I thought we would take a look at Barry’s concept of playing with family uh for those of you that don’t know Barry has these beautiful um what he calls a creation Theory where he talks about his hierarchy of chords and where they come from and the first thing that starts off is the chromatic scale all 12 notes which breaks apart into two whole tone scales which then two notes from one whole tone scale and two notes from another
  2. 0:33create a diminished and you can do that three times and then from those three diminishes come all four dominance each one of those diminishes has four dominants connected to it and the way that you find it is for instance since we’re going to take E7 as an example we’ll start off with f diminished and the way you find it’s family members is you just lower each note one at a time so if you find F diminished you lower the F to e of an E7 if you take the F diminished again and you lower the B you have B7 uh B flat seven so we went from F to E7
  3. 1:08B to B flat seven go back to the F diminished again we’re going to lower the D to d flat now you have d flat seven and we’re going to lower one more which would be the a flat to G and now you have G7 so the four families that are the family that’s connected to the E7 is E G B flat and uh d flat and what’s interesting is if you add those nodes those four notes to the four notes of the F diminished and then the four notes of the family here’s where we get that beautiful
  4. 1:42um diminished scale which people refer to as half step whole step of Barry hates that expression he likes to say it’s the diminished and then the four tonics of the dominance because then it really explains where it comes from but anyway what I thought we would look at today is these the four family members the E7 G7 B flat d flat and if instead of looking at the full E flat seven chord g sub chord if we just looked at the Triads so now we have an e Triad we have a g Triad we have a B flat Triad and then we have
  5. 2:16a d flat Triad and right away you can hear the sound that happens all the time like you’ll hear people do these Triads all the time and move them in minor thirds the same way that we move diminishes in minor thirds you know as guitar players we know we play these all the time movement minor thirds and it’s easy for us because it’s the same fingering each time but but Powell one time did a pretty thing he did something like it’s something along this line foreign which is really a beautiful thing it’s
  6. 2:51taking uh just like a major arpeggio and then lowering the note on the bottom and raising the note on top but I thought instead of doing four notes we could just do three notes so what three notes is is just take the three notes of any of those Triads so you got the three notes of each Triad you should be able to invert those or the three notes of let’s say the g Triad oh sorry [Music] um or the three notes of the a flat Triad
  7. 3:25or I’m sorry B flat Triad these are all the Triad shapes and then the the last one is the d flat Triad which is really pretty too um all these are gorgeous so for instance what I’m trying to get at is let’s say we’re playing a 2 5 in the key of A minor so the first chord B B minor seven flat five or for those of us Berry people know it’s D Minor six now here’s our E7
  8. 3:58so instead of the E7 though let’s do some of these Triads so maybe let’s play the d flat try it to the uh a flat Triad which is a B flat Triad sorry so d flat Triad to the B flat Triad it’s really pretty uh let’s do the E Triad to the um d flat Triad goes through the E tried to the G Triad which is also really pretty but any of these Triads will work so we could do
  9. 4:31this whole thing oh let’s see [Music] that’s all starting with the third in the bass now let’s do all with the root and the bass so here we go root in the bass rooting the bass [Music] all those are beautiful to end up on a minor but what starts to happen oh let’s do the one with the fifth and the bass sorry about that let’s do the fifth in the bass so here’s
  10. 5:03the fifth [Music] and then um [Music] now that’s with the root and the base with the third and the base and with the fifth and bass and these are nice and I like playing these uh these like that’s a pretty run [Music] E7 that’s a very pretty run but
  11. 5:37sometimes that sounds a little patterny for my taste so what I like is just try to disguise it a little so instead of just doing one series the next one you know maybe just do a couple of them or maybe do like uh moving string Series so for instance here’s the one from G and then we’ll move to the one um to d flat which is pretty yeah let’s see how that one sounds
  12. 6:15it’s a pretty sound I love that so how about if you try this one [Music] uh I love that one that one’s really pretty now sometimes you can also change the Triad and move the root of the Triad to make it into the diminished which is really pretty so here’s e and then you have to change the E to F because there’s your diminished so every one of these Triads if you move the root you’re going to get
  13. 6:48diminished right if you move up I’m sorry if you move uh the the root up a half step then you get the diminished that it comes from so this is pretty I love that sound so if we set it again two five [Music] what a beautiful sound that is but that’s what I mean by like um decorating a little bit and kind of disguising it from sounding like moving through a minor third series not that
  14. 7:22there is anything wrong with that I love that sound but that sound generally has a tendency to sound patterning and um you know not that that’s bad but you don’t always want to do that sometimes you want to just be try to be musical with it without sounding patterning like going down a series of minor thirds so you might want to change things up that’s really pretty I love that sound now let’s take with the third in the bass let’s say so still we have to find where the root is Now The Roots on top so we’re going to say
  15. 7:56love that sound let’s try the two five again [Music] I love that sound [Music] that is so pretty [Music] love that sound that is so pretty now let’s do with the fifth in the bass which means the root is in the middle so we’ll say so again here’s our two five
  16. 8:35and we’ll say that was really pretty stuff see I’m still working all these out I know Thomas made a video about this a while ago but these are really fascinating to me these little um Triads but then inverting them and seeing where they fall on the guitar and making these little movements happen I just love the sound of it now it’s interesting that I haven’t seen too many people talk about and maybe this is something to explore further which I haven’t really is we
  17. 9:09know if we go back to our original idea the creation Theory where we have are um diminished and then we lower one node at a time then we’re gonna get the four dominance but when we raise a note a half step from a diminished now we’re going to get four minor sixes and those minor sicknesses happen to be on the fifth of all those dominants so for instance if we have E7 G7 B flat seven and d flat seven we have to have the minor six on the fifth of E7 which is B minor six we’re
  18. 9:42going to have the minor six on the fifth of G7 which is D Minor six we’re going to have the minor six on the fifth of B flat seven which is going to be F minor six and then we’re going to have the minor six on the fifth of the d flat seven which is going to be a flat minor six so so if we take these same three notes let’s let’s just take this e e try that we did before and then we raise it a half step there’s our diminished but that means if we raise it another half step now we’re going to get the minor six on the fifth of that which would be
  19. 10:14B minor six so here’s an e natural I love this sound but now we have to move this shape in minor thirds I love that sound that’s a beautiful sound wait let me do it up here let’s say oh man I love that sound so now that’s if we did e e Triad like this with the
  20. 10:47uh the E and the bass Let’s do let’s do a Triad where we have the the root on top so like this one would be like the easiest one to look at would be like a B flat this B flat tried and we know if we raise that note up a half step there’s our diminished but now let’s raise it up another half step so now we have the minor six that’s on the fifth of the B flat which would be F minor six so we’re going to say I love this sound let’s see now we have to move that in minor thirds
  21. 11:22oh man let me just say foreign so the concept is you try to make something musical out of it so if we have these Concepts and we say okay if you lower a note you get the dominance if you raise a note you get the minor sixes that’s all fine and good the question is what are we going to do with that information to try to make it something musical or pretty sounding so now I’ve never done this before
  22. 11:55[Music] I love that sound so if I could figure out a way to work that in if we said [Music] these are really beautiful so it’s just something to keep in mind the hierarchy is what’s important so remember even though dominance dominate they do not dominate over diminished because they come from a diminished and
  23. 12:29they not only come from a diminished but so does its minor six on the fifth so these are really beautiful things to look at so um check it out check out all the different ways to do it because I love these sounds of dominance of just their major Triads and then also the minor sixes they’re all beautiful anyway until next time enjoy practicing your family