The chromatic scale is the source of every scale

Barry stresses learning simple things first, because most students don’t really know their scales. To know this music you begin with the twelve tones from C to B. Being religious, he links the numbers to his faith (the twelve disciples, the Trinity) and says that for musicians the chromatic scale of twelve tones is our world.

Jazz theory, part 1, with score7:288:08Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart8:009:09

He tells the next step as a creation story. Divide twelve by two and you get two sixes: the two whole-tone scales, on C and on D flat, which he calls man and woman. Then comes three: three groups of four make twelve, and those are the three diminished seventh chords. Their DNA, as he puts it, is that each diminished seventh takes two of its notes from one whole-tone scale and two from the other.

Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart9:0910:1911:28

Everybody has to know certain basic things, above all the major scale. Barry argues that exotic scales, such as an Egyptian or Arabian scale, can only be written down because of the chromatic scale: you can derive them from the chromatic scale, but you cannot derive the chromatic scale from them. So the chromatic scale is the most important scale, not the exotic ones people chase.

Music is like math0:000:37

Barry dislikes naming the chords that sit on a scale, because the names confuse people. Try his suggestion: imagine you know no chord names at all. A chord is just skipping every other note of the scale, so you could play a C minor 7 without knowing what it is called.

Practising the blues with the horns, part 20:46

Barry dismisses the usual description of the diminished scale as alternating half and whole steps: saying only that means nothing. A student has to know where the scale comes from, what it is built from and what it gives you, which is families. He counts this among the fallacies going around, and says he needs to teach the teachers so they would stop spreading them.

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In class Barry tries to show students that the very things they hate most are the things they must know best.

Interview on Italian television8:28

Barry often recalled a writer who complained in Down Beat that he was tired of playing the major scale. Barry called that foolish: no single player has played all the ways of playing the major scale, and if everyone in the country played it, each would play something different.

Believe: a talk to musicians27:4428:20Student performances and coaching26:09

To show why, he counts. Across the two and a half octaves most horns have, the possible orderings of notes grow fast: multiply 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 and you already have 720. He compares it to a penny doubled every day for thirty days, which ends up worth more than a million dollars. Music is math, and math has no end.

Believe: a talk to musicians27:4428:2028:54

Some students act as if Chopin and the other masters played everything there is. Barry disagrees: nobody has, not even Charlie Parker. He recalls that when Coleman Hawkins played All the Things You Are, Bird came down a little in his estimation, because he saw that no one plays it all. Since music, like math, has no end, the best piece has not yet been written. He still calls Bird, Bud and Dizzy great, but insists there is a whole lot left for you to play.

Music is like math0:371:121:473:00

The masters who came before did not tell us everything, Barry says; they couldn’t, because there is too much to tell, and some things you have to find out for yourself. There is a lot in this music that hasn’t been played yet, like scientists who reached the moon and now want Mars and then other planets. What you need is to learn certain things and then get into them and solve the mysteries yourself.

Student performances and coaching26:09Barry Harris Spanish TV22:29Believe: a talk to musicians29:29