Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 8: Thinking dominant

Barry’s most beautiful move: changing key

Episode 146 · 13:09 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Starting from Barry’s intro to Bud Powell’s I’ll Keep Loving You, which slips from B flat major to G flat major, Chris shows that the diminished in the B flat 6 diminished scale is shared with the sixth chords a minor third apart, with four dominants and with minor 6 chords. Through that one diminished, the scales of chords can take you into all 12 keys.

Step by step

  1. 0:00Barry’s intro to Bud Powell’s I’ll Keep Loving You moves from B flat major to G flat major for the bridge.
  2. 0:48He uses the B flat 6 diminished scale, starting on the diminished, and arrives at D flat 7.
  3. 1:25Three scales of chords on B flat: B flat 6 diminished, B flat minor 6 diminished, and B flat 7 diminished (B flat 7 plus C diminished).
  4. 2:10B flat 6, D flat 6, E6 and G6 share the same diminished, so you can move between those keys.
  5. 2:46That diminished also goes with D flat 7, E7, G7 and B flat 7, which lead to G flat, A, C and E flat.
  6. 4:16Example: B flat 6 through the diminished to G7 and into C, with no ii-V.
  7. 5:38B flat 6 through the diminished to E7 takes you to A major.
  8. 8:13The last four keys (A flat, B, D, F) come through minor 6 chords: the minor 6 on the fifth of a dominant, or the tritone’s minor.
  9. 9:32B flat minor 6 as E flat 7 leads to A flat; E minor 6, the tritone’s minor, gets there too.
  10. 11:16G minor 6, the minor 6 on the fifth of C7, takes B flat 6 to F major.

Barry’s own words on this

8.7 The diminished as ‘ruler’8.3 Four dominants from every diminished chord9.8 The 7th diminished and 7th flat 5 diminished scales9.7 The important minor and the tritone’s minor (minor 6 dim over a dominant)

In the course

Take it up every degree of the scaleBarry’s four scales of chordsThe major 6 diminished scaleThe dominant 7 flat 5 diminished scaleThe minor 6 on the fifth: don’t think C9Modulating through the shared diminished

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 146 of Things I Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would talk about something that I heard Barry play, and he plays it a few times, he’s played it a few times. There’s a standard that Bud Powell wrote called I’ll Keep Loving You, it’s one of Bud Powell’s tunes, and Barry loved that tune. And he used to play it a lot. But there’s something, there’s a way that he introed it one time that was really interesting to me, and that was as follows. So he started off like this, something like this. It was because then the bridge goes to F sharp, something like that. So what he’s doing is he’s going from
  2. 0:48a B flat major to get to G flat major. So it’s interesting how he goes about it. And I never understood, like, how did it sound so seamless? Why did it sound like he didn’t even really move? And then it occurred to me, he’s using the B-flat-six diminished scale, which is beautiful, but he’s starting on diminished, but he’s using B-flat-six diminished scale. And then somehow, he arrives at D-flat-seven. And I always thought, like, how is that possible?
  3. 1:25here’s how it’s possible. We have a B-flat-six diminished scale. That’s the one that we use, right? B-flat-six diminished scale. That’s one of his four scales of chords. Another scale of chords is B-flat-minor-six diminished scale. That’s another nice one. Another one that he uses is B-flat-seven diminished scale, which is this. That’s also pretty, which gives us these chords, these beautiful chords with the diminishes in between. So it’s composed of a Bb7 and a C diminished. But what’s really nice is when you think about those diminishes and you think
  4. 2:10about all the family members, you can come up with quite a few things. I’ll show you what I mean. You know, there’s one exercise where you hear Barry do these kind of things like And then in another key. And the reason that he’s doing that is because he’s going into four keys. The first one is B flat. He plays three of them and he plays two of the next key. But the reason why they sound so good is because they all share the same diminishes.
  5. 2:46So you’ve got Bb6 shares the same diminished as Db6, shares the same diminished as E6, shares the same diminished as G6. So if Bb6 shares the same diminished as Db6, then Bb6 shares the same diminished as Db7, which then takes you to Gb major, because the dominant, the 5-4 of Gb is Db. So that’s how he intros it. He starts off with a six-dimension B-flat and then ends up on B-flat 7. So that got me thinking, like, that is so deep in terms of how you can modulate and go into different keys.
  6. 3:31So if you’re thinking about, if B-flat 6 has in common all those other sixes that are minor third-way, D-flat-6, E-6, G-6. That means that B-flat-6 also has in common the diminished that goes with D-flat-7, or the diminished that goes with E-7, or the diminished that goes with G-7, or the diminished that goes with itself, B-flat-7. So that’s really pretty. So that means D-flat-7 takes us to G-flat major. E7 takes us to A major. G7 takes us to C major. So this little move that he does
  7. 4:16to get us from B flat major to G flat is this, which is really pretty, right? But suppose I wanted to go to C major, and then obviously he ends up on G, suppose I wanted to go to C major. So that’s kind of a hard modulation to do and most people if they were going to modulate they would just play B flat major and then they would do a 2-5 to get to C or some sort of 2-5 to get to C to really heighten it. But you don’t even have to do that. You could go in through the diminished because B flat 6 diminished shares the diminished with
  8. 4:56G7. Isn’t that beautiful stuff? Listen to how pretty that is. Yes, Bb6. Now here’s G7. Isn’t that pretty? I’ll do that one again. That’s so nice for Bb to get to C. That’s really beautiful. Now what’s the other dominant? let’s say um let’s do e7 so let’s do again b flat six here’s e7
  9. 5:38which gets you to a major isn’t that beautiful b flat six through the diminished which shares the same diminished as the e7 which takes you to a major this is beautiful That is gorgeous. So now we know if you’re on B-flat, I can go to any one of those keys. Or, like I can go to D-flat-six, I can go to E-major, I can go to G-major. Or, I can still use those to go to the other majors.
  10. 6:17Like if I went to, if I wanted to go to, like Barry uses in I’ll Keep Loving You, to go to G-flat major. Or to go to A major. Or to go to C major. So it’s just a really slick thing. And he does it so like it’s nothing. Like this is how he starts it. Like it’s nothing. But that is so not nothing. that is so deep in how we can look at harmony and moving around to different keys, you know. So now we know we’re in a standard or playing a tune and getting to a different key.
  11. 6:56That’s a really nice way to get to a different key. That’s a beautiful way to get to it. I love that sound. It’s such a pretty sound. Really pretty sound. So the last one would be that’s if we had B flat, that’s if we had major sixes and diminishes. that connect. And then we have major sixes and also dominant sevens, diminishes that connect. But what if we wanted to connect, see this is another pretty thing. So I started off on B-flat and I said I want to go to different keys. Now I know I can go to B-flat, it can take me to D-flat
  12. 7:38major, it can take me to E major, and it can take me to G major. That’s three keys. Four keys altogether. B-flat, B-flat, D-flat, E, and G. Then, I want to be able to go to possibly other keys, and that’s where this dominant takes us. So if I go from B-flat-6 to now dominant chords, instead it’s going to take me to a different major. So for instance, the one that Barry did was B-flat major going to D-flat 7, which took him to G-flat major.
  13. 8:13But that means if I can do all those, I’m going to do all four of those keys. That means I can go to G-flat major. That means I can go to C-major. That means I can go to A-major. And it means that I can go to E-flat major. All those. So those are four more keys. Now there’s four keys that we haven’t been able to go to. So what keys would those be? Those would be A-flat, B, D, and F. And interestingly enough, what does the B-flat-six diminished scale share in common? If we went to the minor six on the fifth, or the minor six of the tritone.
  14. 8:55So for those of you that you don’t know, every dominant chord has a minor six on the fifth. okay so let’s say we wanted to go to we want to go to a flat right so here’s here’s a here’s b major I’m sorry here’s b-flat major the diminished that goes to b-flat major is c diminished but now Now if I wanted to go to let’s say E flat 7, that’s E flat 7.
  15. 9:32But a lot of times we play the 6 on the 5th, the minor 6 on the 5th of the dominant, which would be B flat minor 6. And what the minor 6 on the 5th does is it makes it like an E flat with a 9 on top, so it’s really pretty. So we got this, which takes us then to A flat major if we wanted. Now what’s interesting is the Bb major to the diminished also takes us to the Eb7 tritone, which would be A7.
  16. 10:05It takes us to the tritones minor, which is Em6. So if we did, let’s do a couple of Bb6. B-flat-6, diminished, B-flat-6, diminished. Now here’s E-minor-6. And then it would take us to A-flat-major, which is also pretty. So think about this. The scales of chords, through the diminished, can take you to all 12 keys. The majors take you to each other,
  17. 10:40because they’re a minor third apart. but then you also the majors can take you to dominance which takes you to the other four keys then the majors can also take you to minor sixes which takes you to the last set of four keys so this one this last one let’s say it takes you to a flat major takes you to b major it takes you to d major and it takes you to f major let’s do the one to f major and we’re going to go through I guess the minor 6 the minor 6 on the no, not, yeah, does it?
  18. 11:16yeah, it takes you to F major, yes so let’s do the minor 6 on the 5th of to get to F major, so the minor 6 on the 5th would be C7 takes you to F, so the minor 6 on the 5th of C7 would be G minor 6, yeah, of course this takes you, here’s B flat 6 here’s G minor 6 there it is so isn’t that pretty b-flat but let’s do b-flat six a couple more times and now here’s g-minor six takes you to f oh man now thomas and i have talked about these before we’ve chatted about them on and
  19. 11:57off and i’m not 100 sure how to go about teaching these but this is just a little outline of how these scales of chords using these eight note scales, major six diminished, minor six diminished, dominant seven diminished, and of course then any time you use dominant, you can use dominant seven plus five diminished. Those four scales of chords can help you modulate into all 12 keys, depending on which one you want to use. And that all comes from Barry doing this little thing to intro, going into the bridge of I’ll Keep Loving Out.
  20. 12:33Now that’s how deep Barry Harris is. That’s why I almost consider this as strange as this sounds because all the moves that I’ve learned from him are beautiful. This could be his most beautiful move, or at least it is for me right now at this moment. So anyway, enjoy trying to check this out and learning all your different major six diminished, Minor 6 Diminished, Dominant 7 Diminished, and Dominant 755 Diminished scales. Until next time.