Barry HarrisThe method

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

Half step below is beautiful: scales and sixth chords

Episode 72 · 14:01 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris takes Barry’s ‘half step below’ from single notes on a C major scale to the C6 diminished scale in drop 2 and drop 3 voicings. Besides borrowing notes from the diminished above or below, you can borrow the half step below one or two voices, which brings in new sounds on sixth, minor and diminished chords and in tunes such as Star Eyes.

Step by step

  1. 0:30On the C major scale, put a half step below each note (B to C, D flat to D, E flat to E, and so on), then try it in thirds
  2. 2:19Look inside a C6 drop 2 (C, G, A, E): two sixths (C-A, G-E), a tenth (C-E), two fifths (C-G, A-E), and a second in the middle (G-A) that acts as a third in this scale
  3. 3:26Practise those inner intervals on their own up the scale, e.g. the lowest two notes or the highest two as fifths
  4. 4:12Besides borrowing from the diminished above or below, borrow a half step below one of the sixths, then resolve
  5. 5:42Where the fingering won’t allow it, split the notes apart; apply it to minor and diminished chords too
  6. 6:42Use it on Star Eyes: hear F minor 7 to B flat 7 as A flat 6, and decorate a tenth with the thirds moving in the middle
  7. 9:12On a C6 drop 3, borrow G flat (a half step below) for the G instead of A flat from the diminished
  8. 10:22In tenths on C6, use the half step below in place of the diminished below
  9. 11:31On G minor 6 heard as E half-diminished to A7, lower two of the notes a half step

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line0:32
𝄞♭♭♯♯
C4BCDEFGAD♭E♭G♭A♭
  1. B
  2. C
  3. D♭
  4. D
  5. E♭
  6. E
  7. E
  8. F
  9. F#
  10. G
  11. G#
  12. A
C62:19
𝄞𝄢
CGAC4E
  1. C
  2. G
  3. A
  4. E

Barry’s own words on this

9.3 The major 6th diminished scale (a major scale with one more note)10.4 Borrowing10.5 Drop voicings6.6 Chromatic pickups and the well-placed half step

In the course

Half step belowSixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6Barry’s four scales of chordsInfinite ways to play I-VI-II-VDrop 2, drop 3 and drop 2 and 4The intervals inside a drop 2Borrowing a half step below

Transcript

  1. 0:00hello and welcome to episode 72 of things i’ve learned from bear harris and today i thought we would talk about um something that barry just refers to as half step below so he brings these up from time to time and i’ve heard it a million times and just now or just within the last couple of weeks do they start really it’s like a light bulb one off to see it so let’s just take a look at what he’s referring to if we take just regular c major scale
  2. 0:32[Music] his idea is you could put a half step below each one of those notes so [Music] b to c d flat to d um e flat to e e to f f sharp to g g sharp to a a [Music] which is really beautiful so now when
  3. 1:10you do thirds like that listen how pretty it sounds [Music] really beautiful so [Music] so even if we were just going to say demon [Music]
  4. 1:46pretty just for c now besides though um regular major scale i started thinking about it for six diminished and when you start thinking about it for six diminished it brings up a lot of things one thing i was looking at is uh and i was talking actually to thomas eckles about this we were discussing it that’s why i figured i’d make this video first before he got to it so i’m beating him to the punch but i want to see i’m curious to see what his take on it
  5. 2:19is but uh this is what i was thinking here’s our drop too now what’s interesting about drop two for guitar player or for piano players is and i’ll just uh the notes are c g a e so that’s our voicing for drop two now what drop two consists of is not just drop two there’s a lot of things in there for instance there’s two sets of sixths so the c and the a are a sixth the g and the e are a sixth um there’s a tenth
  6. 2:53c and e and then there’s and i know this is a second but really it’s going to be a third because as we move it further that happens to be the one spot in the sixth diminished where the third is the second but you’ll see what i mean in a second so also you could think of it as two-fifths so think about just that for a second that you could say so here’s the drop too obviously okay so if you know some of various
  7. 3:26things on guitar you already know how to do that but think about the fact that do you know how to do this [Music] that would be it in fifths or even from here and i’m seeing those because i see the drop two so i’m just saying that’s the highest two notes in the drop two see the ones before were the lowest two
  8. 3:58notes of the drop two so all these things are inside that little thing so you got the sixths you got tenths and thirds and then you have fifths which are beautiful all that stuff is super important now if you dig even further and we start doing some of those half step below these are really fascinating because normally what we would do is with borrowed notes we borrow from either the diminished above or the diminished below sometimes we do a combination [Music]
  9. 4:32which is diminished notes with six notes but now this changes the game because this also says hey i can do a half step below so for instance the first one i might say i might do a half step below the first six so i might say which is beautiful now that one happens to be part of the diminished below and sometimes it’s going to end up that way but if i say [Music] now this is certainly not the these two
  10. 5:07notes are certainly not part of the diminished book they’re not this is the diminished below so if i was going to do that and borrow those two notes it would be this [Music] that’s borrowing the diminished so now i’m borrowing a half step it’s beautiful same thing with the diminished so here’s our diminished so i’m gonna say [Music] i’ll borrow this next six which would be the um these two and then um let’s see it would be uh
  11. 5:42so let me try to how i’m gonna finger that now the ones that you can’t do you know like um the ones that you can’t do just separate them so watch i’ll do something maybe like this [Music] those are beautiful minor let’s do miner
  12. 6:18now diminishes will all be the same [Music] wow this is really pretty [Music] oh sorry about that really beautiful so now how can we use this kind of stuff so i was thinking okay let’s say if we were doing the song star eyes which starts in e flat major
  13. 6:52star eyes f minor seven so f minor seven to b flat seven so the first thing is just to turn around so as barry people we know f minor seven barry thinks of a flat six if left six diminished that whole way so i was thinking how about we do something on star rise so maybe [Music] that was just this drop too with a two
  14. 7:29with the i did a tenth and then the thirds in the middle i could have done this one let’s try that one [Music] i could really do that better i’ll do it again so it just shows you
  15. 8:05like that half step below that barry has been talking about for years like a light bulb just went on like oh yeah i can really practice a half step below now the cool thing about it is um i want to see what thomas comes up for it with it i’m sure he’ll make a video on him i’m going to harass him about it until he does but i want to see what everybody else comes up with too because this is fascinating stuff to me previous to this the things that i would use to borrow
  16. 8:38would be uh diminished notes or six notes depending on which chord i am but part of the scale i would use only from the scale to borrow but now if you think about hold on a second i can also borrow half step below things that brings in a whole new sound now some of them are going to be the same like i said before because sometimes the diminish is a half step below for certain notes but man that brings in something beautiful you know really really beautiful the the the possibilities are
  17. 9:12endless absolutely endless so even if i did just a basic let’s say uh c6 drop three here so those notes are e c m g a now i used to like to borrow i borrow the a flat for the g and h which is pretty just like half step [Music] that was beautiful to do but now maybe i was just borrowing the a flat for the
  18. 9:45g but what if i borrow the g flat for the g [Music] wow so if i said that’s pretty i mean how beautiful is that how about if i did this any of them um how about if i say [Music]
  19. 10:22and again some of them are going to be part of the diminished like this one is this one is not this is so pretty too oh man some of these are going to be so nice so let’s see here’s c6 so what if i said just tense [Music] yeah so normally if i were going to do uh tenths for the c6 diminished it would be this diminished below to the sixth diminished below to the sixth
  20. 10:56diminished below to the sixth those are pretty but what if i just did a half step below now i’m doing now it’s not much of a difference but it it is i’m telling you wow [Music] wow
  21. 11:31[Music] wow so it’s just something that i’m really starting to discover now here’s a a g minor six but really like if i’m playing e half diminished [Music] to uh a7 so let’s just see something suppose i took these two notes a half step lower let’s see so now i got that’s beautiful
  22. 12:16if i could really do it right now just imagine using this as part of your overall repertoire where this is just things that you can just do comfortably you know within a scale within a chord movement within a change i mean there’s just oh my goodness there’s so many things that you can turn this into so i’d be curious to see what all of you come up with too with your half step below things because they are really
  23. 12:49pretty now i know half step above i i don’t know why i don’t i don’t find them as beautiful i don’t know why i like the half step below is okay but the half step above i’m not i’m not a sold on those so i don’t know about those per se and i haven’t really heard barry mention a whole step a half step above but the half step below after hearing all those things and i still have to think about it but i’m sold i’m sold on those right away and i you know i was sold the first time i heard it but all i did was a typical you know
  24. 13:23thing where i just copied barry’s one example of it and then i tried to put that in and then that was it but instead of thinking about the bigger picture of it which what does that mean for everything not just a regular scale but for a six diminished scale for minus six diminished scale for dominant seven diminished scale for dominant seven five five diminished scale man is endless endless so okay i hope you enjoyed this uh episode um about how a half step below is so beautiful
  25. 13:57okay until next time thanks