Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 6: Line devices

Playing the blues with Barry’s chromatic scale and pivots

Episode 48 · 12:23 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris joins two of Barry’s devices, his chromatic scale and the pivot, to make lines over the first bars of a B flat blues. In Barry’s chromatic scale the chord tones stay on the beat: where a dominant scale has no half step to fill, you jump to the next scale note first. Chris then starts the resulting phrases from different degrees and different beats.

Step by step

  1. 0:04Work on the first bars of a B flat blues: the B flat 7 scale going to the E flat 7 scale
  2. 0:42Barry’s chromatic scale: fill in the half step wherever one lies between two scale notes; where there is none (3 to 4, 6 to 7 of a dominant), jump up to the next scale note first
  3. 1:16Play the whole B flat 7 scale that way, so from D you go to F before E flat
  4. 2:27Practise the chromatic scale in seconds, then in thirds
  5. 3:38The pivot: play the first note of a four-note chord, then the rest of the chord an octave lower
  6. 5:07Line from B flat 7 to E flat 7: start on the tonic, play seconds through the chromatic scale, then pivot instead of going up a chord; start it on beat one, then on another beat
  7. 5:44Vary it: a third down instead of seconds, then start from the second and from the third
  8. 8:11Start on the sixth and come down fully chromatic to the fourth: a pretty way to open a blues
  9. 8:47Start from the flat seventh, then begin the same phrases on the second beat
  10. 11:01Take each device into a real tune and turn it into phrases, not just finger practice

Barry’s own words on this

6.10 Barry’s chromatic scale (chromatic runs with chord tones on the beat)6.7 Pivoting13.1 The blues the Barry way7.5 Rhythmic placement

In the course

Scale outlinesBarry’s chromatic scaleStarting phrases on different beatsPivotsThe blues the Barry wayPut it in a song

Transcript

  1. 0:04hello and welcome to episode 48 of things I’ve learned from Barry Harris today I thought we would talk about putting a couple of Barry’s ideas together to create phrases while playing and in this instance I thought we could look at the blues so we’ll take a look at the blues and b-flat maybe we’ll just cover the first couple of bars so the scales for the blues just for a normal blues in the first couple of bars would be B flat seven scale then a flat seven scale and that’s about as far as we’ll
  2. 0:42do just to create the lines with it so we got B flat seven scale now what I thought we would look at is he has this idea of his chromatic scale which is really beautiful mmm and I talked about this in one of the previous episodes but it’s definitely worth mentioning again and his chromatic scale is this any place where you have a chromatic in between two notes you use that chromatic but in a place where you don’t have a chromatic between two notes like in the instance of a dominant scale between the
  3. 1:163rd and 4th or between the 6th and 7th you use the scale note higher so for instance if I’m going to play B flat seven scale in between B flat and C I have a half step in between C and D I have a half step in between D and E flat I have no half steps so I have to insert once I put the F so now that’s what this sounds like and then between E flat F natural half step in between F and G natural half step in between G and a
  4. 1:51flat that’s where I have to do that same thing where I jump up to the next scale so I do mm-hmm and then back to the original which is so here’s what this scale would sound like in its entirety [Music] so that’s B flat seven or you could actually do dr. fire so the next thing you that we’ll be looking at well when
  5. 2:27we look at that we can look at it in let’s say if we’re just going to go up a second so we could say so that’s just playing seconds you can also play thirds
  6. 3:07[Music] okay so that tackles that one aspect which is his chromatic scale which is really beautiful there’s a million things you can do with it but I thought be interesting is if we tie that in with
  7. 3:38something else that he talks about that other people have played before obviously but it’s his idea of what he calls a pivot now pivot is this naturally if we’re going to play let’s say a chord and for his definition of a chord it’s play no skipping all play no skipping up skipping up other note so that’s four notes okay so what he likes to do on pivot is he says you play the first note that’s naturally the chord up but a pivot just
  8. 4:12means hit this first note and then play the next three notes so the idea is let’s take maybe those two things and
  9. 5:07let’s come up with a line that runs from B flat seven to e-flat seven so let’s just start randomly let’s say we’ll let’s say we’ll start on the tonic and we’ll do let’s see let’s do a second so there’s our first second with Baris chromatic scale and then when we get to this note instead of going up a chord we’re gonna pivot so there’s our first phrase one two three [Music]
  10. 5:44so let’s try that again one two three four so there it is in two different places I’ve started on the first beat and I started on a different one a different beat I started on the second Peter I think the second time so that’s an idea so how about if we instead of saying if we did a whole third down which would be this so one two three four [Music] how about a second from the from the
  11. 6:24second let’s say that’s pretty - one two three four one two three four really pretty let’s start on the third let’s start on the on this on the third mm-hmm one third to the second one two three
  12. 6:58four let’s see one two three four let’s say one two three four that’s a pretty one - one two three four that’s a pretty one too let’s do starting from the third and we’ll do a third down really nice let’s start from the four but see this is what I mean
  13. 8:11coming up with phrases using all Barry’s ideas let’s start on the let’s just pick a random let’s start on the sixth it’s a pretty phrase let’s start on the six and we’ll do totally chromatic down to the for his chromatic scale down through let’s see what that sounds like one two three four pretty way to start a blues one two three four
  14. 8:47[Music] really pretty just startup lose like that on the sixth if we start on the flat seventh one two three four that’s a nice one one two three four let’s see one two three four it’s a really pretty one about starting on the second beat one
  15. 9:24two three four one so even if you take these ideas and start them on different beats you start creating your own lines using these ideas of his half steps or his pivots and you could add a whole bunch of things I mean I mean his his pivots are so important so many people ask me about those those are so important but this chromatic scale is
  16. 9:56really beautiful and I think a friend of mine corrected me he came up with this I think he came up with this idea of his chromatic scale in about 1998 even 97 or 98 and and I remember him going over it and it was a totally new thing none of us had ever heard of it before but see how many beautiful things you can come up with and it gets you out of trouble if you really know your chromatic scale and where you can put your half steps it gets you out of trouble every time it also creates beautiful
  17. 10:29lines I like this one this one’s a nice one [Applause] [Music] so it’s just a short little video today but it’s just to show you how to maybe make that transition from taking the things that you’re practicing of Berry’s
  18. 11:01method and then trying to utilize them in a phrase you know line so you take any song you could take I got rhythm you could take a blues you could take a standard that you’re working on and say how am I going to make some music out of this particular idea because it’s great to practice them it’s great to get them in your fingers but then you have to be able you have to have the ability to improvise with them that’s the whole point of it it takes time and it might seem like in comparison to a lot of other people it might seem like we’re really getting bogged down in the minutia of things but
  19. 11:35really this is what creates or this is what separates somebody one person’s playing from another person’s playing if a person really spends time thinking about all these things in all the different places that you can put these half steps or that you could put these pivots just imagine how much more creative their phrases are gonna be other than just running up in scales up and down scales which can tend to be boring I imagine even for the person running up and down scales it can be boring after a while so anyway I hope you enjoyed this video episode 48 of creating lines with
  20. 12:12berries chromatic scale and pivots until next time thanks