Mirror image and contrary motion between the hands

Give the left hand the same facility as the right. When a student practises small three-note figures, Barry insists the left hand must be able to play them too. He uses the mirror image between the hands: whatever one hand does, the other does in mirror form, so you can practise this kind of figure in either hand.

The 2016 workshop, part 3: Monk’s tunes, not his style22:5724:4825:25

Barry contrasts pianists who play one note at a time in one hand with his own way of playing, which is combinations: the two hands working together. He says he does not know where one-hand piano came from, and demonstrates the two-handed sound on In Your Own Sweet Way, a tune from the previous day’s class, pointing out the diminished notes in it.

Practising the sixth diminished scales19:1719:5121:09

No chord should be played with the left hand alone, Barry insists; you have to learn chords played with both hands. He was struck to find piano students who had never played a certain chord in their lives, which he blamed on their keeping the left hand up high because, they say, the low register belongs to the bass.

Eyes of the Masters: the first progression2:28Believe: a talk to musicians16:43

Play small chords, not big ones. Barry says that at every school he has visited (he names North Texas, Berklee, Boston Conservatory, McGill, Concordia and schools abroad) pianists play big chords. A school, he says, should be dedicated to small chords, with nobody playing one-note melodies in the right hand: the chords should be blended across both hands. He saw this clearly when an older student in his class played a song as a blend of the two hands. In another class, too, he reminds players that being beboppers doesn’t necessarily mean big chords up at the top, just little ones.

Small chords, not big ones0:331:05Passport: teaching a blues by ear7:01

Practise drop voicings on the diminished seventh chord. Following a theory book that begins with the human voice, Barry names the four voices of a C diminished seventh chord from the top: soprano (1), alto (2), tenor (3) and bass (4). Then work through the drops: drop 2, drop 3, drop 2 and 4, and even the odd drop 2 and 3. Run a voicing up step by step and bring it back down, and you can make up a whole little song from it.

Jazz theory, part 2, with score5:306:086:447:17

Voice a C chord with C in the left hand and G, B and E in the right. First move it up the ordinary C major scale, then up the sixth diminished scale. The rule students keep forgetting: after G comes A-flat, every time, and after A-flat comes A. When a student got the order wrong or failed to move a voice, Barry stopped them and made them go back to the first chord.

Introducing the sixth diminished scale3:325:156:307:04

Try harmonising a melody with the scale of chords. Barry had a student harmonise a phrase of My Funny Valentine with chords from the sixth diminished scale, starting from the fourth degree and moving down the scale. The chords are pretty and quite different from what you get from the major scale, and intervals of a fourth appear in the voicings, which he called hip.

Introducing the sixth diminished scale8:589:3310:10

Once you know the sixth diminished scale, Barry says, you can do things you never did before without worrying. Working in E-flat six diminished, he says he can do anything he wants: he points out diminished notes and makes notes catch up, and it works as long as he ends it properly.

Practising the sixth diminished scales2:263:01