Barry HarrisThe method

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

Do you know your minor 6th diminished scale?

Episode 123 · 11:02 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris combines two things Barry did with his scales of chords, drop 2 voicings and contrary motion, on the C minor 6 diminished scale. Using Thomas Eccles’s ‘elevator’ (thirds, triads, shells, octave chords), he builds an exercise in which the inner voices spread apart and land exactly on the next drop 2, and then places it on A minor 7 flat 5 and C minor in tunes.

Step by step

  1. 0:00Two tools: drop 2 voicings, and contrary motion, where notes move in opposite directions.
  2. 0:36The C minor 6 diminished scale: C, E flat, G, A from C minor 6 and D, F, A flat, B from D diminished.
  3. 1:09In drop 2 on four strings the first voicing is C, G, A, E flat; play up the scale, alternating C minor 6 and D diminished inversions.
  4. 2:27Barry would have the piano class play contrary motion and then ‘fill it in’; for guitar, Thomas’s elevator gives one note, thirds, triads, shells and octave chords.
  5. 3:43Learn contrary motion from every degree, and combine it with the drop 2s.
  6. 4:17The exercise: from C minor 6 go to a third (A flat and B), a triad (G, A, C), then a diminished shell (F, A flat, D).
  7. 4:52D moves up and F moves down to E flat, giving an octave chord that leads straight into the next drop 2, D diminished.
  8. 5:26Keep going: the outer E flats spread to F and D, and from D diminished repeat the third, triad, shell and octave chord.
  9. 8:38Use it on any C minor 6 or A minor 7 flat 5, such as A minor 7 flat 5 going to G major at the bridge of All the Things You Are.
  10. 10:32Practise the same on the major 6, dominant 7 and 7 flat 5 diminished scales.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Cm61:09
𝄞𝄢♭
CGAC4E♭
  1. C
  2. G
  3. A
  4. E♭

Barry’s own words on this

9.5 The minor 6th diminished scale and its diminished partner9.4 Playing the scale of chords (block chords up and down the 6th dim scale)10.5 Drop voicings11.3 Mirror image and contrary motion between the hands

In the course

The minor 6 diminished scaleThe elevator: Thomas Eccles’ floorsParallel, oblique and contrary motion

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 123 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would take two really special things that we do with chords or Barry’s scales of chords. One of them is playing drop 2s and the second one is going to be using contrary motion. And for those of you that don’t know what contrary motion is, it’s when you take one note and move it one direction and the other note and move it in the opposite direction. Or it could be moving them this way or moving them this way. And I’ll show you the first thing you have to know is, because we’re going to use one of Barry’s scales of chords as the example.
  2. 0:36And for this one, we’re taking C minor 6 diminished scale. So for those of you that don’t know, the C minor 6 diminished scale is two things. It’s a C minor 6 and it’s a D diminished. And you put the four notes of the C minor 6 together with the four notes of the D diminished, and you get this beautiful eight-note scale. So what it is, here’s the four notes of C minor 6, C, E flat, G, A. And you take the four notes of D diminished, D, F, A flat, B, and you put them together. And there’s our beautiful eight-note scale.
  3. 1:09Now, as guitar player, most of the time, what we go right to is what we call drop twos. And what drop twos are, are four consecutive strings. So here’s our four consecutive strings. So our first voicing would right away be C, G, A, E flat. There’s our first voicing. So let’s play this up the scale. If we play this up the scale, another thing that makes the scale beautiful is it only consists of two chords. C minor 6, D diminished. Now once we get up to the E flat, it’s a first inversion of C minor 6. When we get up to the F, another inversion of D diminished. G is another inversion of C minor 6. Ab, another inversion of D diminished
  4. 1:50A, another inversion of C minor 6 B, another inversion of D diminished and so on. There’s our C minor 6 again. So we have to know these in drop 2s and then back down so there it is so now we’re going to combine that with something that Barry calls contrary motion, well it’s not just Barry, but it’s contrary motion where the notes move separately. And we’re going to start with something, see the contrary motion thing,
  5. 2:27I really learned, I used to know how to do these like contrary motion, but I would always only take two notes. I would only use two notes. And then once I was in touch with Thomas Eccles, he has this beautiful system that works beautiful for guitar, this elevator system. So it taught me that you don’t just play one note and just keep these two separate, which is fine, but then you always only have two notes, which is fine. But I can remember all the time in piano class, Barry would have the class do this, or the piano players do this,
  6. 3:04and then he would say, okay, now fill it in. And once he said fill it in, I was lost. But what he meant by fill it in was, you’ve got the first one which is one note, a third, a triad. So now you have two notes, but then he has you play a note in between those two notes. That’s a triad. The next one. Now, piano can actually do four notes in between those, but we don’t do that. We can just do three notes, which is beautiful. And then here’s our octave chord. So what we have for guitar, what Thomas’ system says is, one note, thirds, triads, triads, he calls this a shell voice, I call it a broken drop too, and then octave chord.
  7. 3:43So that’s what we’re going to do, which is really a beautiful thing, just that in contrary motion is gorgeous. And you should be able to know this from every degree. That’s from the root, from the second, from the third, and so on. You should be able to know it. But what I like to do is combine it with practicing drop twos. So the way that I thought of it, and it’s just one exercise. It’s nice. Everybody can come up with their own. But I started on the C minor six, the first one.
  8. 4:17And then I went, I skipped the floor of the single note. I went right to thirds. So I started on C minor six. Then I used two notes, which is a third. And I used the A flat and the B. And then I used a triad, which for this one’s kind of tough. It’s G, A, and C. So I said, and now the next one is a shell voice of a diminished, which I used F, A-flat, and D. I could have used F, B, and D, but I like F, A, for this particular one.
  9. 4:52And then it leads us to, the D has to move up to the E-flat, and the F moves down to E-flat also. So we get one of our octave chords, what Thomas calls octave chords, which means the bottom note and the top note are identical. So here’s what I have for this. And what’s nice is, the very next chord of the drop too, is this D diminished. So what happens is, it continues the contrary motion.
  10. 5:26The last one we ended up was E-flat, E-flat. Now the E-flat, high E-flat moves to F. The low E-flat moves down to D. So it’s beautiful. It works perfectly. So we say... Next one, D-diminish. Now we’re going to do the same thing for this. So we’ll start on A and C. We’ll move it to a triad from A-flat. Broken drop 2 from G. And then an octave chord from F. Which leads us to our next one, which is E-flat.
  11. 6:02Beautiful also. Which then, we’ll move to 3rd. To triad. Broken drop 2. And then to our octave chord. And then leads us to our next diminished, which is really beautiful. And then, octave chord again, and that leaves us a C-3 drop too. So let me just see if I can do a couple of them. Oh, what’s the next one?
  12. 6:44Oh, diminished. Um Uh Hmm hmm
  13. 7:22It’s just a nice way to not only practice your drop twos, but now you’re also seeing these little inner voices move. So it’s just a very nice exercise, I think. And again, you can come up with any one you want. You can start on any note. You could have started with just one note, thirds. That would have worked nicely, too. but what I like about this one is it leads you perfectly to the next drop too that’s what I like the voice is moving in an exact way
  14. 7:57so it’s just a little exercise but it’s very helpful to get you to see C minor 6 every place see to really see C minor 6 oh sorry I mean to just see it everywhere I love this exercise. It’s really something.
  15. 8:38Now you say, okay, well, where am I going to use it? Anytime you use a C minor 6 or A minor 7 5 5. If we’re playing... We’ll say... Oh, let’s do it from here. Let’s do it from here. So let’s try it again. A minor 7 flat 5.
  16. 9:11We can do it right from there. Or we’ll start with the chord. uh we’ll say going to G major A-7-5-5-5-5-7 going to G major for the bridge of all the things you are really pretty so you can start Maybe. So pretty.
  17. 9:46So sometimes the catch to these things, or the trick to it, is after you’ve practiced these things and you have them in your fingers, you’ve got to find a really nice placement for it. So also, any time you’re going back to C-Mex, so let’s say if we’re playing a song. It works perfectly. I mean, it works perfectly. I mean, they work so well.
  18. 10:32I mean, I don’t have them perfect in my hand, but it just shows you different ways to practice the six diminished is fantastic. And as if you’re a Barry person, you know, not only do you practice them with minor six diminished, you can practice them with major six diminished. You can practice them with dominant seven diminished. You can practice them with dominant seven five five diminished. It’s endless, endless amount of things. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. And until next time, keep practicing your minor six diminished.