Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 13: Tunes as the curriculum

First 4 Bars of I Got Rhythm

Episode 20 · 17:07 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris works through the first four bars of rhythm changes in B flat the way Barry would: B flat major and F7 scales, then a chromatic run of minor 7 chords seen as minor and major triads. He adds the B flat 6 to E flat 6 to E diminished movement and tritone substitutes, showing how many ways there are through four bars.

Step by step

  1. 0:38Play the scales: B flat major up and F7 up, tonic to seventh, twice.
  2. 1:17Play an easy B flat phrase, then bring in the third of G7 for the 3-6-2-5 behind it.
  3. 2:43For bars 3 and 4 try the chromatic run D minor 7, C sharp minor 7, C minor 7 to F7, running each chord up and ending on the third of F7.
  4. 3:23Vary the directions: up-down-up, down-up-down, two up and one down.
  5. 3:56See each minor 7 as two triads: D minor or F major, C sharp minor or E major, C minor or E flat major.
  6. 5:29Run the minor arpeggios from the root, the third and the fifth.
  7. 7:32Do the same with the F, E and E flat major arpeggios and their inversions.
  8. 10:15In bars 1 and 2, use the movement B flat 6 to E flat 6 to E diminished and find phrases that imply it.
  9. 12:13Use the tritone: B flat major up, then B7 up instead of F7.
  10. 13:44In bars 3 and 4, replace G7 with its tritone, C sharp 7 (D flat 7), and run it into C minor and F7.

Barry’s own words on this

13.2 Rhythm changes (‘seven songs in one’)6.4 Arpeggio inversions and permutations8.5 The tritone7.3 Getting through changes

In the course

Up, down, and up and downUp and down to the third ofBarry’s arpeggio and its inversionsA minor 7 is two triadsThe tritoneIV6, raised IV diminished, IThree, flat three, twoRhythm changes

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 20 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. Today I thought we would go over the first four bars of I Got Rhythm or Rhythm Changes. I thought since most of them are written in B, it’s either B-flat, F, or C, or even E-flat sometimes, but I thought maybe we’d do it in E-flat. we’ll talk about what scales Barry talks about using there we’ll talk about some of the substitutions and some of the little movements and we’ll see how it
  2. 0:38goes so first I got rhythm in B flat is gonna be B flat major up B flat major scale up and remember Barry only does the scale up to the major 7 and it’s It’s gonna be F7 up, again, only up to the seven, tonic to seven. And then it’s gonna be, again, B flat major up, and then F7 up. So if we were gonna do it in tempo, this is what it would sound like. One, two, two, three, and. Okay, that’s just the first four bars.
  3. 1:17So within that though, there are a lot of things happening. a lot of things happen. Sometimes Barry says that the first part usually is just B-flat major to F7. And then you do something to bring in the third of the G7, because the chords that are being played behind it are. And now, three, six, two, five. So what he’ll do is maybe he’ll play a very easy phrase for B-flat.
  4. 1:58Maybe a... Well, I went a little bit further than that, but that’s the idea behind it. Another thing that he does is, well, let’s take a few more of those. So B-flat major. Maybe another one. Or maybe... Now that was something different.
  5. 2:43That one was Bb major, then to F7. And then a lot of times you’ll hear people play this. Instead of 3 to 6 to 2 to 5, they’ll play 3, flat 3, then to 2. So they’ll do a chromatic rundown. So what this is is D minor 7 to C sharp minor 7 to C minor 7 to F7. So if we were going to play D minor 7, that has four notes in it.
  6. 3:23So Barry will say, okay, well let’s play them all up. D minor 7 up. C sharp minor 7 up and then C minor 7 up and end on the third of F7. So let’s see what that sounds like. Now maybe let’s do one up, the second one down, the third one up. So that would be 1, 2, 3, 4. Now maybe let’s do the first one down,
  7. 3:56the second one up the third one down one two oh I’m sorry down up down so that’s nice too maybe the first two up and the last one down nice another way you can practice it is he sees these D minor 7 as two things it’s a D minor triad so that means all your D minor things that’s your D minor arpeggio but he also sees
  8. 4:41it as within the D minor 7 is D minor but it’s also F major triad So because of that you could do D minor arpeggio, C sharp minor arpeggio, C minor arpeggio, into F7. You can play F major arpeggio, E major arpeggio, E flat major arpeggio, into F. So those are all different things to practice. And like we practiced D minor 7
  9. 5:29up, then C sharp or D flat minor 7 down and then C minor 7 up, you do the same thing with the arpeggios. So maybe we’ll do the arpeggio from the root. Or we’ll do maybe from the third, the arpeggio from the third, which is... So it’s still the D minor, but it’s starting from third, and you’re going to play third,
  10. 6:11fifth, tonic, and then minor third again. Let’s do it from the fifth. So let’s try that again, which would be from the fifth. So we did it from the root, from the third, from the fifth.
  11. 6:47Now you can do the same thing we were doing. Let’s do them down. One up. That’s a nice one too. Again, all these, you know, and then maybe do a run into it. Like, um... That’s nice too. Sometimes you just play one of them down. And instead of playing it up, maybe just play two notes of the next one. So let’s see.
  12. 7:32Now that’s for just D minor. Now we can do the same thing, but with F major. So here’s F major. That’s a nice one, too. Let’s do F major from the third, which would be this. So now here we have F major. If we invert the arpeggio, it’s this. So we’ll do that one. And remember, these are coming in the third and fourth bar.
  13. 8:14So it would be... That was the minor, but let’s do this instead, so let’s do the major. The F major. That’s a nice one too. Let’s invert the F major again. We did it from the root, we did it from the third, let’s do it from the fifth. So let’s do that one.
  14. 8:50That’s a nice one too. From the fifth. And again, we’ll do one up. Let’s do a molo. That’s a nice one too. Let’s do the first one down, next one up. And again, you don’t have to do all of them each way.
  15. 9:38Maybe do one. Let’s see. But those are nice little ways to get around it. Now, the first two bars, I didn’t want to glance over the first two bars. The first two bars are also interesting because not only can you just play, sometimes you’ll hear them just play a B-flat major phrase. That was, I went into the D-minors, into the minor things. So sometimes you can just play a pretty Bb major phrase running into the next. But sometimes you can do our change, which was the first, which we talked about in an
  16. 10:15earlier episode about the blues, of this change. Which is like Bb6 and then we’re going to go into Eb6 to E diminished. So let’s see what that sounds like. So Bb6 is this, oh sorry, that’s Bb6. Here’s an inverted, here’s an inverted, and the last inversion. So that’s all of them.
  17. 10:49And then here’s Eb6. Here it is inverted. I’m sorry, that’s the E diminished. So here’s the Eb6, here’s another one, Eb6, here’s another Eb6, and the last one. Those are all E flat six. And then, obviously, diminished. So now you have to figure out cool little ways to play that first. One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four. Except instead of playing that, you’re thinking this.
  18. 11:32I went a little bit further than that. So if we take, let’s do that idea of the B-flat. Let’s start from the third of B-flat. So let’s try it again. One. That was just going down. Once again, F-major down to the E-major down to E-flat-major. So you see I’m trying to throw all these different things in at the same time. Let’s try it from the fifth.
  19. 12:13So now that was just running down to the third of... But after I played the first part, which was this change. So look at all those things within the first four bars. And we haven’t even talked about tritone. So really, the first part of the song can be B flat major up, and instead of F7 up, we could play B7 up. So how would we play phrases around that?
  20. 12:48Let’s see. So let’s say, let’s see. try a nice one. So that’s one nice way to do it, or just start. That’s a nice one right into it. Now that was a little bit longer then, but still you get the idea of just the first four
  21. 13:44bars. Also, we said, which is the part, the second, which is the third and fourth bar when we said, But sometimes you can do Bb major, and instead of G7 you can play G7’s tritone, which is C-sharp 7. Yeah, C-sharp 7. Or Db7. So then you can run Bb major into C-sharp 7, running it into F7.
  22. 14:22F7 F that whole C minor F7. So it would be like... So let’s see... I don’t like that one particularly, but let’s try another one. One, two... That’s a nice one too. Let’s see.
  23. 14:59One, two. Two, three, four. There it was. So you see all the different things within just the first four bars. It’s limitless. How many different ways you play? And obviously it’s a fast song. So you know, you’re going to want to work a lot of these out. but not work them out like you’re going to play these verbatim, but work them out like you want to be comfortable within those changes.
  24. 15:38So you have just the I chord to the V chord, or B-flat major to F7, and then we were thinking B-flat major to F7, or B-flat major to B7. And then after that, the next two bars, we were thinking that our half-step run, which was D minor or D minor 7 down to C sharp minor 7 down to C minor 7 which we discussed was D minor 7 is a D minor it consists of a D minor arpeggio or triad and an F major arpeggio or triad So you have D minor or F major, C sharp minor or E major, C minor to E flat major.
  25. 16:26So those are all little things within the first four bars. I would love to hear your comments on how you’ve tackled it or how you plan on approaching it yourself. and maybe some suggestions on how I can make this more understandable to you. But like I’ve said in previous episodes, this is the kind of thing that if you were in Barry’s class, he’ll talk about just this movement. He’ll talk about that movement.
  26. 17:00He could talk about that for two hours. And just do one phrase after another phrase after another phrase. create