Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 6: Line devices

Three very important arpeggios

Episode 137 · 12:19 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris explains Barry’s three important arpeggios on a dominant, found on the root, the fifth and the flat seventh (for D7: D major, A minor and C major), where an arpeggio means a triad with its bottom note repeated on top. He drills them in inversions, builds lines from them over A minor to D7, and finds the same three on the tritone, A flat 7.

Step by step

  1. 0:39For Barry an arpeggio is a triad with the bottom note repeated on top; on D7 the first is D, F sharp, A, D, on the root.
  2. 1:16Invert it: start on F sharp, then on A, always with the same note at the bottom and top, then come down and go back up.
  3. 1:52The second important arpeggio is on the fifth: A minor (A, C, E, A), inverted from C and from E.
  4. 2:25The third is on the flat seventh: C major, only one note different from A minor.
  5. 3:23Over A minor to D7, think D7 the whole way; run up from D to the third, put a half step between the third and second, stop on E and come down the A minor or C major arpeggio.
  6. 4:47Come down the D major arpeggio from F sharp and add one half step.
  7. 5:23Come up the D major or C major arpeggio, or surround the D first and then come up the arpeggio.
  8. 6:33Every note of the D7 scale lies in one of the three arpeggios except the sixth, B.
  9. 7:48From the flat seventh, C, pivot, or come down the C major or A minor arpeggio.
  10. 9:41On the tritone A flat 7, the three are A flat major, E flat minor and G flat major.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

D major0:39
𝄞♯
C4DAC5DG♭
  1. D
  2. F#
  3. A
  4. D
D71:52
𝄞
C4ACEA
  1. A
  2. C
  3. E
  4. A
D72:25
𝄞
CEGC
  1. C
  2. E
  3. G
  4. C

Barry’s own words on this

6.1 Arpeggios on every degree; the three important arpeggios of a dominant scale8.5 The tritone6.7 Pivoting

In the course

Chord up: Barry’s ‘chord’Think the dominant: put the ii awayBarry’s arpeggio and its inversionsThe three important arpeggios of a dominantPivotsPivot then surround

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 137 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would discuss the idea of, on a dominant chord, what Barry calls the three important arpeggios. So this is on a dominant, three important arpeggios. Now what Barry considers an arpeggio is different than what most people do. So for instance, a lot of people call these arpeggios. Then you can say, let’s say B7, we have pressures, which is play a note, skip a note, play a note,
  2. 0:39and then we have triads, which is play a note, skip a note, play a note, so those are triads, and then he calls these chords, that’s play a note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note, where he calls those chords. Now what he refers to as arpeggios is a triad with the bottom note repeated on top again. So for instance, for D7, one of the important arpeggios is found on the root, which gives you this D major arpeggio. D, F sharp, A, and then we’ll put D on top again. Now the next thing he had us do all the time was he said invert.
  3. 1:16So now we’ll start on the F sharp, so the third of the D major, but we’re still only going to do D major notes. D, F sharp, A, D. That’s it. Now we’ll start on F sharp though. F sharp, A, D, F sharp. So there’s our inversion. Now we’ll start on the A. So every time the bottom note and the top note are the same. And then back to the first one again. And then he would say come down and go back up again. Okay, then we had the input. That was a major arpeggio, obviously.
  4. 1:52Then he said there was an important arpeggio found on the fifth. And that one, it would be like in D7, the fifth would be A. So that’s going to give you an A minor. A, C, E. So there’s our important triad, but there’s the arpeggio where the A is repeated on top again. So now here’s from A. Now we’ll do it from C. That means C has to be on the bottom and C has to be on the top. Now we’ll do it from E, E’s on the bottom, E’s on the top. Back to A.
  5. 2:25Down and up. Down from E. Down from C. Down from A. Okay, that’s the one from the fifth. Then we have the important arpeggio from the flat seventh, which is going to be C. And it’s going to give us C major, which is close to the A minor, yes, but one note difference. So now we have C, E, G. So there we go. So now we’ve got C on the bottom and C on top.
  6. 2:58Just a regular C major arpeggio. Invert. And invert. Start from the top. So that’s our third important arpeggio, which is on the flat 7. Now, how do we deal with this information? So we have a D7 or an A minor to a D7, a 2-5, because as very people know, if we’re just playing a regular 2-5, we can just think 5 the whole way.
  7. 3:35So let’s say we started on the tonic, a D, we ran up to the 3rd, and then we put a half stop between the third and the second and we stopped at E. Now, when we stop at E, that’s an interesting thing because E is the third of the C major arpeggio or it’s the fifth of the A minor. So what if we said that was coming down the A minor arpeggio from the E. So, let’s see. That’s a pretty phrase.
  8. 4:101, 2, 3, 4, wait, that’s a pretty phrase. What if we made that a C major arpeggio instead of the A minor? So we’ll say, that’s a pretty phrase. That’s a pretty phrase. So that’s the important arpeggio from either the 7th or that was from the 5th. But what if we did this? That time when I got to the F sharp, I said F sharp is the third of the D major arpeggio.
  9. 4:47So we got this. That’s a nice one. I’ve never played that, I don’t think. I love that sound. So that was just coming down the D major arpeggio from the F sharp. And then I just put one half step, which is pretty. So that’s a nice one. That’s a really nice one. How about if I came up the D major one? That was nice.
  10. 5:23That time I came up D major. Then I came down a note, and I ended on the C. So now I’ll come up the, let’s say the C major arpeggio. That’s a nice one. That’s a nice phrase. Very nice phrase. What if I surrounded the D? That’s a nice one.
  11. 5:54So we’re going to surround the D and then come up the important arpeggio. One, two, three, four. Oh, I like that one. That time I surrounded the D, came up the D major, then I put a half step. when I got down to the C, I came up C major. Or something like that. Or something close to that. But you see all the different ways you can use this arpeggio going up, this arpeggio going down. These are really great. Now, what I started looking at, too, is if you think about it, every note of the D7 scale is going to be within one of these arpeggios.
  12. 6:33Either the D major, the A minor, or the C major. except for one note, and that’s the sixth, the B. The B is not in any of them. So let’s take a look. The D is obviously in the D major. The E is in two of them. It’s in A minor, but it’s also in E major, which is nice. The third of E major or the fifth of A minor. The F sharp is in the D major, which is nice. The G is in the C major. The A is in the A minor. or the A is the fifth of the D.
  13. 7:12The B is the different note. That’s the note that’s not in either or any of the three, I should say. Then you have the C, which is also the third of the A minor or it’s also the root of the C major. And I like them going up or coming down. That’s a nice one. See that’s a pretty thing to do so you say okay from the flat seventh there’s a bunch of stuff I can do and this is This is where you start to really use all the things you already know how to do and you’re putting them together So you say okay the C that’s the flat seventh
  14. 7:48Now the one that I do to death is this pivot I do that to death but now we learned how to do different things on pivots like instead of doing this Maybe we’ll put a half step below like this I’ll say That’s a nice one. Or maybe the top note. That’s a pretty one. So you could do that from the seventh. Or come up a chord. Or pivot it. Or pivot with... Or pivot on the top thing. All those are nice. But another thing you could do is the C. You can also come down a C major arpeggio. That’s really nice. Or, since it’s the C, you could come down the A minor. You
  15. 8:32arpeggio from the third. Those are all pretty. So now that’s the C. We came down the C major or we came down the A minor from the C. But these are so useful. I did one. Let’s see. That’s just coming up from the F sharp major arpeggio from D. Thinking D major from the third. and then I came down C major. I like that sound.
  16. 9:09So. I mean, those are really pretty. So that’s why we got to really get into those arpeggios. That’s a really nice one. That was just D major down from the fifth. And then I did some of Barry’s chromatic from the fourth. That’s a nice one.
  17. 9:41Let’s see. All those are pretty. Then you start to get into things like, all right, wait a minute. That’s D7 going to G major, let’s say. We’re doing A minor, D7 going to G major. But then D7, you think of it’s tritone. was D7’s tritone. A flat. Now you have A flat 7. So now you have to think of what are A flat 7’s three important arpeggios. And they’re found on the root, on the 5th, and on the flat 7.
  18. 10:14So I mean the first one’s going to be A flat major. The second one that’s going to be found on the 5th is going to be that E flat minor. All these are going to be super important when you soloing. Look, suppose I said... That’s a nice one. I came down the important arpeggio from the fifth. Starting on the fifth of the E flat minor.
  19. 10:51That’s a pretty one. So watch. That’s really pretty. What if I came down the A-flat major arpeggio? That’s pretty. That’s a beautiful one. That’s just the A-flat major arpeggio. The last one is the one that’s found on the flat 7th of A-flat, which would be G-flat major. so what if I said look uh one two three or I could have come down the arpeggios so let’s do that
  20. 11:34so see look that’s G flat major so you’re going to use these all the time so these important arpeggios are really important And when you really get to see them in all the positions, especially for us guitar players, they are very effective. And they’re going to be, you’ll just be able to throw them in as another part of your thing that you do, like chords up and down, half step below, chromatic scales, pivots, it just becomes another part of your playing.
  21. 12:10So I hope you enjoyed that, and continued practicing with your important arpeggios. Until next time.