Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 9: Sixth chords and the scales of chords

Making lines with the tritone’s minor

Episode 66 · 12:49 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

After announcing his Patreon page, Chris makes lines from what Barry calls the tritone’s minor: for D7 going to G, the tritone is A flat 7, and the minor arpeggio on its fifth, E flat minor, carries the sound. He finds where each note of E flat minor resolves in G, then builds phrases from its triads, Barry’s arpeggio, half steps and E flat minor 6, and runs D7’s own minor into it.

Step by step

  1. 0:36D7’s tritone is A flat 7; of its three important arpeggios (A flat, G flat, E flat minor), take the one on the fifth, E flat minor
  2. 1:46Find where each note of E flat minor goes in G major: E flat down to D or up to E, G flat up to G, B flat up to B or down to A
  3. 3:03Over a two-beat I-vi-ii-V turnaround, play the E flat minor triad and its inversions, resolving to the 6th or the tonic of G
  4. 4:11Play Barry’s arpeggio, the triad with its bottom note repeated on top, up and down from each inversion
  5. 4:47Add a half step below each note of the arpeggio
  6. 6:09Use E flat minor 6 (add C) and its inversions
  7. 7:20Come down from the 5th of E flat minor 6 starting on the 6th, with a half step between 6 and 5; or down from the 3rd starting on the 4th, with a half step between 4 and 3
  8. 9:35Over a longer A minor 7 to D7, play some D7 first (or A minor, D7’s own important minor), then run it into E flat minor and resolve to G

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line1:05
𝄞♭♭♭
C4C5E♭G♭B♭
  1. E♭
  2. G♭
  3. B♭

Barry’s own words on this

9.7 The important minor and the tritone’s minor (minor 6 dim over a dominant)8.5 The tritone6.1 Arpeggios on every degree; the three important arpeggios of a dominant scale

In the course

Barry’s arpeggio and its inversionsThe three important arpeggios of a dominantThe important minorHalf step belowThe tritone’s minorRun one chord into the next

Transcript

  1. 0:00hello and welcome to episode 66 of things i’ve learned from bear harris today i thought we would talk about what barry refers to as the tritones minor and how we can create lines using it but before we start i just wanted to bring to everybody’s attention that i’ve started a patreon page uh under things i’ve learned from bear harris so if you enjoy the content and you’d like to support it uh there’s three tiers on there that you could look through so i’ll leave a
  2. 0:32link in the description and probably in the comments section but anyway um tritones minor so we’ve been talking about lines going from pretty things to play on d7 pretty things to play on g major pretty ways to play d7 into g major so the rule for the tritones minor is this the tritone of d7 is a flat 7 and barry talks about the three important arpeggios on every dominant and the three important arpeggios for d7
  3. 1:05would be the one from the root d major the one from the fifth which is a minor and the one from the flat seventh which is c major now the tritone is a flat seven so the important arpeggios are still from the root which would be a flat major from the flat seventh which would be g flat major and then this is the important one well not more important but this one we’re going to discuss today which is the from the fifth which would be e flat minor
  4. 1:46so that is what we’re going to focus on today in creating lines going from tritone’s minor to the one chord which in this case will do g major so the first thing i would do is say okay where are the closest notes from e flat minor to g major so the first one e flat you could move down to the fifth of g which is d so this is nice the next note or you could have moved up to the sixth beautiful uh next one is the flat third
  5. 2:23of the um e flat minor which is the g flat and the g flat moves to g nicely or the g flat also moves down to the sixth which is beautiful next one is the fifth of the e flat minor which is b flat b flat moves up a half step to b which is pretty or it moves down a half step to a which is pretty it’s it’s like uh it’s like the ninth or it’s part of you could think of it as part of the d6 which is beautiful
  6. 2:54so [Music] beautiful resolution so that’s very important to first start then the next thing you have to do is think okay well how would i use this in a phrase so we’ll say to ourselves let’s say we’re doing a 1625 turnaround of two beats of everything something like that so we’ll let’s try the first thing which is um uh the triad so let’s say
  7. 3:35that’s nice i just went up the triad from the e flat now let me invert that let’s see what happens pretty all tritones minor let’s do the one from the we’ll start we’ll do a triad from the we’ll invert again from the fifth so let’s say pretty high resolved on the six or you could resolve on that tonic too [Music]
  8. 4:11that’s pretty really beautiful what are some other things we do on miner well we could play the arpeggio and barry’s arpeggio is a triad with the bottom note repeated on top so the first one has the e flat repeated on top the next one has the g flat repeated on top the next one has the b flat repeated on top so those are pretty too so maybe we’ll say so let’s see
  9. 4:47oh let me do [Music] that was nice i went up and down the arpeggio [Music] so [Music] pretty how about if we do a half step below each one of them so here’s e flat minor [Music] that’s really pretty that was nice i did a half step low and
  10. 5:26then i ended on the ninth if you want to call that uh next one let’s see i’ll start on the third that’s pretty that’s pretty too uh how about if we do if we start on the fifth we’ll do a half step below that’s nice let’s see
  11. 6:09pretty [Music] also another nice thing is instead of just playing e flat minor triad you can also play e flat minor six which is pretty so we’re going to add uh the c natural which is pretty now we can invert all those really beautiful let’s try that [Music]
  12. 6:44that was just coming down [Music] let’s see one two three four [Music] pretty let’s do uh that’s nice that’s pretty how about if we put a half step maybe
  13. 7:20this will be a nice one we’ll think of e flat minor the arpeggio coming down from the fifth but let’s do let’s start on the sixth and put a half step between six and five and we’ll end on the third let’s see [Music] well that time i ended on the second that was pretty too let’s do a chord up from the three after that pretty phrase how about if we put a half
  14. 7:55step uh we’ll put a chromatic for the next part of the arpeggio so we did from the fifth now let’s do it down from the third but we’ll start on the fourth and we’ll put in one half step between the four and the three it will end on the tonic that’s pretty fun [Music] man that’s now this is again we’re thinking tritone but more specifically we’re just thinking tritone’s minor and how many different
  15. 8:29ways we can play on it maybe let’s go up that’s nice [Music] that was just the chord up from the um sixth of the e flat minor maybe let’s go a chord up from the fifth that’s a nice one let’s see [Music] which is pretty well let’s go to tonic [Music] let’s see
  16. 9:03[Music] nice really really pretty how about if we start from the third that’s a nice one but let’s do it from [Music] here [Music] pretty now that’s me just playing the a flat sevens
  17. 9:35important minor e flat minor over d7 without even playing d7 then you have this other thing that you can look at which is okay if i have a little bit of a longer time of d7 let’s say if i have a measure of a minor 7 to d7 where i normally look at that as just d7 i could still play a really long a flat 7 over that whole thing it’s gonna sound fine or i could play a little bit of d7 and then maybe run it into a flat seven so let’s say if i did that’s a nice one let’s see
  18. 10:18that’s nice so i did a chord up from the seventh of d7 and then i went down a half step and i came down that e flat minor six again from the fifth so fifth third root sixth so that’s a nice one so let’s see let’s see that’s nice i’m just finding little ways to then resolve it to g but see now i can even play let’s see d7
  19. 10:51scale [Music] now i kind of resolved it into a flat 7 but i want to just make it uh e flat minor so let’s see uh [Music] that was nice i came back i should have done let’s see something that way but i’m trying to use the e flat minor every time not even worried about um thinking a flat 7 as much as i’m thinking that e flat minor that
  20. 11:25important tritones minor so that’s another way to think about it where you’re thinking about okay i’m going to think e flat minor after i’ve already thought a little bit of d7 so now d here’s an interesting one d7s import miners a minor so that was me running a minor into e flat minor so let’s see [Music]
  21. 12:01that’s a pretty one two and i just came down the regular a flat 7 scale so the fifth of g but that’s a pretty one that’s eight running a minor into e flat minor so now i’m doing a little bit of the d7 which was the um a minor the important minor on the fifth and then i’m running it right into e flat minor which is the important minor on the a flat which is the tritones minor so we could go all day like this but anyway i hope you enjoyed episode 66
  22. 12:36of learning how to work on tritone’s minor and again please be sure to check out the patreon page and donate if you can to keep these going but until next time thanks again