Chris Parks · Stage 0: How Barry taught
The difference between a chord and an arpeggio
Chris clears up Barry’s vocabulary: what most players call an arpeggio (play a note, skip a note, four notes up the scale) Barry called a chord, to be run from every degree without naming each one. For Barry an arpeggio is a triad with its bottom note repeated on top, and on a dominant the important ones sit on the root, fifth and flat seventh.
Step by step
- 0:40On the B flat 7 scale, a chord is play a note, skip a note, four times: B flat, D, F, A flat; run it up from every degree.
- 1:59You don’t need to name each one; Barry would just say ‘a chord up from the fifth’.
- 2:37Bird and Bud played five-note chords: keep skipping for a fifth note; learn them from every degree.
- 3:12Play the five-note chords as triplets starting on the ‘and’.
- 4:18Six-note chords too; an arpeggio, for Barry, is a triad with the bottom note repeated on top.
- 5:01The first important arpeggio on B flat 7 is on the root: B flat, D, F, B flat, then inverted from the third and fifth.
- 6:07The second is on the fifth, F minor, also inverted.
- 7:19The third is on the flat seventh, A flat major.
Chords and notes in this video
Tap a time to jump to it in the video.
Barry’s own words on this
In the course
Chord up: Barry’s ‘chord’Five-note chordsEighth- and sixteenth-note triplets in linesThe three important arpeggios of a dominant
Transcript
- 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 152 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought I would talk about a difference in what Barry refers to as a chord as opposed to what everybody else refers to as an arpeggio. And I’ll show you what I mean. Most places I’ve seen this, the language, and I’m not saying which is right or wrong, I’m just saying this is what the language is. So if we start with what most people refer to as an arpeggio, and let’s take a Bb7 scale. What most people refer to as an arpeggio is this.
- 0:40If you start on a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note, which would give us Bb, skip a note, D, skip a note, F, skip a note, Ab. Most people refer to those as arpeggios. In Barry’s world, Barry always referred to those as chords. So that’s a chord up. So Barry would say go a chord up from B-flat, the root of B-flat-7, go a chord up from the root. So you had to be able to do that from every degree of the scale. So there’s B-flat, just going up the B-flat-7 scale, but you should be able to do that with any scale that you work on.
- 1:19Whether it’s major, minor, dominant, whatever. the concept is start on a note, skip a note, play another note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note. That’s the idea of a chord. Again, most people refer to that as an arpeggio, not Barry. Barry referred to that as a chord. Now I’ll show you the significance of that. A lot of people, they’ll name every one of these. They’ll say that’s a B flat 7, that’s a C minor 7, that’s a D half diminished, this is an E flat major. And that’s totally fine to know that there’s nothing wrong with that but it’s not necessary in that to understand
- 1:59barry’s language he would just say really fast uh run a chord up from the fifth of b flat seven so if you know your fingerings for b flat seven that’s the fifth that’s the chord up from the fifth yes it is an f minor seven but that’s almost the least significant part about it because each one of those chords up or chords down is just as important when thinking about a B flat 7 scale. Okay, so each one of those is just as important. Now the second thing is, he would have this other thing that he would say, because obviously a lot of his concepts came from listening to Charlie Parker and Bud Powell,
- 2:37and something that they would play is they would play what he would refer to as a 5-note chord. So here’s our normal chord B flat D F a flat, which is really pretty But sometimes bird would play and but pal would play what he would refer to as a five note chord Which means start a note skip a note play a note skip a note play a note skip a note play a note do it again Skip another note play another note that is a five note chord So you see you have to know your five note chords as well You have to know these
- 3:12See, the Bird would play those all the time. And then actually, if you did them like with a like a triplet instead, if you started off and started on the and and played them with a triplet, so instead of playing them as eighth notes, like if you played, ah See, those are pretty. Those are really pretty. See, from the second from the third. That’s really nice.
- 3:46Those are really pretty. From the fourth. From the fifth. From the sixth. From the flat seventh. And then back to the root again. Those are really nice. Five note chords. Up and down. This one. From the flat seventh. Those are really important to learn. Five note chords.
- 4:18And then of course if you wanted to, even six note chords. Those are really pretty. Oh, sorry. One, two, three, four, five, six. A six note chord. But see, that’s stuff you have to know. So anyway, that’s what Barry would refer to as a chord. Everybody else refers to that as an arpeggio. He doesn’t. But what he does refer to as an arpeggio is a triad with the bottom note repeated on top. So for instance, he said on every dominant scale, there’s three important arpeggios or ones that he likes to use.
- 5:01And the first one will be found on the root. So here’s a B-flat 7. There’s your first triad, B-flat, D, F. and then all you have to do is repeat the B flat on top again. That is an arpeggio in Barry’s world. So that’s different from a chord and it’s really important to because when you watch videos of Barry’s stuff unless you know that the language is going to be strange to you and it’s going to come across in a way that you’re not going to understand it. So that’s the distinction between the two things. The first thing is what is a chord up
- 5:35or what is a chord down and what is an arpeggio up or an arpeggio down. So the arpeggio is a triad with the bottom note repeated on top again. And then he would say invert that. So that’s root, third, fifth, and then back to the root on top. So B-flat, D, F, B-flat. And then he would say invert it. So that means I’m going to start on the third, which means now if I’m thinking about an arpeggio, whatever note I play on bottom, I have to play on top. So that’s a third on the bottom, third on the top. So now you have this.
- 6:07So starting from D. D, B flat, F, D. Same thing from the fifth now. You’re going to invert it again, which means if I have a fifth on the bottom, I have to have a fifth on the top. And then back to the root again. So that’s the first important arpeggio. The second important arpeggio, and that was a major, obviously. The second important arpeggio on a dominant, Barry used to say, is found on the fifth. which gives you a minor. It’s an F minor. F, A flat, C. So again, I have to have whatever note I have on the bottom. The F, I have to have it on top.
- 6:42So if I do it from the A flat, I have to have an A flat on the bottom, A flat on top. Sorry. If I have a C on the bottom, I have to have a C on top. So I have C on the bottom, C on top. And then the C. Same thing down and up. That’s the second important arpeggio. The third important arpeggio is the one that’s found from the flat 7th. So every dominant scale, the flat 7th, there’s an important arpeggio.
- 7:19And this one’s also going to be major. And this is in Bb7, it’s going to give us Ab major. So again, I have to have Ab on the bottom. C, E flat, and then A flat again. And then I have to invert it, which means I’m starting on the C. Which means I have to have C on the bottom and C on the top. Same thing here. Same thing. Repeat it. Down and up. So those are the distinctions between the important arpeggios or arpeggios and chords. And I don’t think anybody else refers to those as chords.
- 8:04Almost everybody else I’ve ever heard refers to that as an arpeggio. But that’s Barry’s lingo. So if you watch those great videos, the Barry Harris videos, or any of the other ones that people have put up of Barry teaching. That’s the distinction that you’re going to hear between chords and arpeggios. And what’s funny is, since I only studied with him, I had never heard these called arpeggios before. Never. So when I heard everybody saying that online, it was kind of odd to me because I had never heard that before because I only studied with Barry.
- 8:37But then, of course, those people find it odd that he calls those chords. But that’s what it is. So it’s a chord. So hopefully that’s helpful in kind of sifting through all the Barry Harris stuff and figuring out what it is exactly that he’s talking about. But okay, I hope that was helpful. And see you next time.