Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 6: Line devices

Using the pivot to make lines on I Got Rhythm

Episode 42 · 13:40 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris explains what Barry calls pivoting: start a chord on one note, then play the rest of it an octave lower. It keeps a guitarist (or a saxophonist with limited range) in position, and it turns lines around instead of letting them all go one way. He pivots the chords of the D7 scale and builds lines with them, with half steps and triplets, on the I Got Rhythm bridge.

Step by step

  1. 0:36The I Got Rhythm bridge: D7, G7, C7 and F7 scales, each up and down
  2. 2:05The problem: on guitar, running thirds, triads and chords up the D7 scale soon pushes you out of position
  3. 2:38The pivot: play D, then the rest of the D7 chord (F sharp, A, C) an octave lower instead of going on up
  4. 5:03Pivot the chord from every degree of the D7 scale and play all seven in a row
  5. 5:42Over two bars of D7: start on D, pivot, then come down with two half steps between tonic and seventh; try it with sixteenth-note triplets
  6. 6:56From the third: pivot, come down to the seventh and play the C major arpeggio, one of D7’s important arpeggios
  7. 8:05Pivot a diminished too: from F sharp, the third of D7, keep F sharp and play the rest of the diminished an octave lower
  8. 9:17Aim at the pivot: to pivot the chord from the fifth, start on the sixth and put one half step down to the fifth
  9. 10:23Don’t lean on one favourite pivot (Chris’s is the one from the seventh); make every degree feel good so you can pivot anywhere
  10. 12:36Pivot on any scale (harmonic minor, major, sixth diminished) and in different places on the instrument

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

D72:38
𝄢♯
C3DACG♭
  1. D
  2. F#
  3. A
  4. C
Line4:27
𝄞♯
C4GBC5DG♭
  1. G
  2. B
  3. D
  4. F#
D77:32
𝄞♯♭
C3ACG♭E♭
  1. F#
  2. A
  3. C
  4. E♭

Barry’s own words on this

6.7 Pivoting13.2 Rhythm changes (‘seven songs in one’)5.3 Dominant 7th scale descending

In the course

The scale every way: up and down, thirds, triads, chordsKnow it everywhere on the guitarScale outlinesThe descending half-step rules for the dominantTriplets and the half-step rulesThe three important arpeggios of a dominantPivotsWhat can I do from each degree?Come up a diminished from the thirdRhythm changes

Transcript

  1. 0:04hello and welcome to episode 42 of things I’ve learned from Barry Harris today I thought we would talk about something that I pointed out in one of the previous episodes but I kind of glanced over and I realized that there’s a lot of questions about it so we can talk about it it’s called pivoting or what Barry calls pivoting but before I get started I just wanted to tell everybody I really appreciate all of the comments and enthusiasm about the channel and I’m gonna keep going I’m just bringing that up because it’s been
  2. 0:36about a year since I started making videos and yeah I’m really excited to still to make more and coming up with many more videos in the future so but right to this if we talk about pivoting let me give you an example of what he means by it let’s say if we were taking if we were playing the the bridge for I got rhythm and the bridge for I got rhythm is gonna be d7 up and down g7 up and down c7 up and down up and down okay
  3. 1:22so one of the things we talked about was well what are some things that you have to know how to do on a scale and we said for instance for d7 we said well you have to know do you scale up and down scale in thirds [Music] scaling triads scaling quartz which is a triad but with an extra note and down [Music]
  4. 2:05okay so all those things are super important now the problem comes in on your guitar for instance if I started my D seven scale on the g string let’s say and I was just playing the top three strings and I played this as a D seven scale okay we’re good so far I did it in thirds okay I had to change position a little bit but not terrible triads now already I’m at a position still out of
  5. 2:38position still out of position way out of position chords I can only do up to the second one and eight early at the second one I’m out of position them in the next position now saxophone players have a similar problem because they only have a certain amount of octaves they can play so here’s where pivoting comes in so let’s take just the first one which is the chord up from the d7 starting from the tonic and it’s going to use four notes D F sharp a C so the idea of a pivot is this you start on
  6. 3:14the first note instead of playing the next three notes up from that point you’re gonna play the next three notes an octave below what they were normally played so this would be the normal way to play a chord up now I’m going to do the pivot so what I did was I kept D in the same spot but now the F sharp AC I played an octave lower look let’s look at the chord from the second which would be G B
  7. 3:52D so I’m gonna stay with the same idea and I’m gonna play here but now instead of playing the G here I’m gonna play an octave lower [Music] so now so the first one was this the second one’s gonna be this now the one from the three starts on the f-sharp I’m sure hey see II will keep the F shop where it was but now we’ll play the a an octave
  8. 4:27lower the C an octave lower and the e Anaka so now you got this and if we did it from G which is what we’re up to the G would be so now it would be G B D F sharp but now we have to play G here but we’re gonna play the B D F sharp and octave lower so B this and so on so I’ll do them so
  9. 5:03here’s the first one is the second one [Music] is the third one is the fourth one now let’s keep going here’s the fifth one is the sixth one seventh one and then back to the first one okay so there are all of your chords on a d7 scale pivoted so how do you use
  10. 5:42this okay so let’s try to use it in a line that conforms to playing the first part of the bridge if I got rhythm which is d7 for two bars and then g7 for two bars so let’s pick any note let’s let’s start on the D let’s right away do a pivot so one two three four and then I put two half-steps between the tonic ii
  11. 6:18and the tonic and the tonic and seven so let’s see say one two three four and I also put in some sixteen note triplets one two three four that’s with no triplets now let’s try the second one two three four now put in one half step on the way down between tonic and seven but that’s a pretty phrase let’s try the third one two three four which was kind
  12. 6:56of nice I did from the third minute and then when I got to the tonic of the d7 I came down really it’s an I came down to the to the seven and then I did an important well one of the important arpeggios from from C major from the seventh of d7 which is pretty but you see now all of a sudden you start to create lines using these pivots so let’s say let’s start on the fifth of the
  13. 7:32fourth so there’s another one so we did the fourth we pivoted now I did two half steps now I could have came up to minish watch this one one two three four which is a pretty phrase but you know what why don’t I pivot that diminished so here would be a diminished from the
  14. 8:05third of d7 which would be a F sharp C E flat right so now we got this so now I’m gonna pivot that switch we’re going to hit the F sharp here and instead of playing the a here I’m gonna play the a an octave lower so let’s try that so it works really beautifully these pivots
  15. 8:44work so well to change up your playing instead of playing everything you know in one direction it really causes you to change the lines around so let’s try the fifth that’s a nice one one two three four also pretty phrase now you can also start to build lines like this let’s say
  16. 9:17if we wanted to do let’s say my target note is is the five how about if I just started on the six and came down and put one half step to get to the five see that’s a nice one too I put just put one half step because I knew the note that I’m gonna get to before I pivot is the five and I knew I wanted to pivot a chord for the five however if I start on
  17. 9:50seven [Music] it’s a pretty phrase too so there’s all these different ways to approach it you know you can decide like well when I when I get to this see I happen to do this one a lot the one I mean I’m guilty of it from the seventh which is a really nice one are sorry so I do that one a lot so let’s say if I said one two three
  18. 10:23I like that one from the seven so I tend to overuse that but if you do different things to it like a half step before then you can change your lines up a little bit but so that I’m thinking at those points I’m gonna trigger a pivot now like I said the one from the seventh I generally tend to overuse because it feels good it sounds good I already know
  19. 10:55what it sounds like but you have to make all of them feel good and all of them sound good and then just throw that in as part of your improvising a nice way to do it is you take let’s do the one from the fifth let’s say [Music] so we did Vaughn d7 and then we
  20. 11:31surrounded and we didn’t play much on g7 I think we just played the fifth and then we did the same phrase we did for d7 on c7 which is also pretty but see these are all little things to teach you how to improvise and to teach you how to change your phrases up create new sounds in your head create new little patterns in your fingers which are the the fingers are really the worst things in the world because they only want to do
  21. 12:04Barry used to say this all the time they only want to do what they feel comfortable doing so like I was saying like I like the one from the seventh I’d do that pivot all the time I probably do it too much and probably if I listen back to myself playing I would hear that way too often so you want to find you want to get used to a lot of them this way you can play any of them at any time and choose to pivot at any point you want that’s the that’s the obvious goal to get to as an improviser where you’re really not even thinking about it you’re
  22. 12:36just doing it yeah so that’s I think that’s good enough for this lesson because the pivot itself can be used for any scale we happen to be using it for d7 scale you could use it for harmonic minor scale you could use it for major scale six diminished scale whatever scale you want to use it on and practice pivoting in different spots of your instrument especially for guitar I know these are important for saxophone too and saxophone players do it all the time but guitar players really need to do it and piano players obviously need to do
  23. 13:08it also so okay I hope you enjoyed this last episode 42 of practicing pivots on I got rhythm bridge and there should be a lot more posting coming soon and again thanks again for my one-year anniversary that just passed from making videos and hopefully there’s gonna be many more to come thanks again see you guys soon