In plain words
In Barry’s creation story God, still lonely after making the world, made man and woman. The man and woman of music, he said, are the two sixes you get when two goes into twelve: the two whole-tone scales. One starts on C and the other on D♭, and together they hold all twelve notes from C to B.
Student performances and coaching27:3228:1028:45Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart9:099:4510:19
Built in thirds, a whole-tone scale gives nothing but major thirds: with the whole-tone scale, Barry said, you get the major thirds, while the diminished gives you minor thirds. The scale also gives two chords, the dominant 7th with a flat five and the dominant 7th with a raised five.
Student performances and coaching29:18Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart4:58
Barry put the two whole-tone scales among the first things to know, with every way of playing them. They also belong to the bebop piano tradition: he said Monk used the whole-tone scale a lot, which gave him a certain sound, and that Bud Powell took it from Monk.
Student performances and coaching28:45The last train to Monk: an interview20:28The 2016 workshop, part 3: Monk’s tunes, not his style2:50Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶333
Step by step
Split the twelve notes into two scales of six, each moving in whole tones: one on C, one on D♭.
Whole-tone scale on C- C
- D
- E
- F♯
- G♯
- B♭
Whole-tone scale on D♭- D♭
- E♭
- F
- G
- A
- B
Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart9:0910:19Student performances and coaching28:45Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶9
Play the scale in thirds: in a whole-tone scale every third is a major third.
C whole-tone in thirds, first three- C
- E
- D
- F♯
- E
- G♯
Student performances and coaching29:18Practising the sixth diminished scales6:20
Find its two dominant chords: the 7th with a flat five and the 7th with a raised five both sit inside one whole-tone scale.
C7♭5 (G♭ is the scale’s F♯)- C
- E
- G♭
- B♭
C7♯5- C
- E
- G♯
- B♭
Student performances and coaching29:18
How he said to practise it
Learn both whole-tone scales first, and every kind of way to play them.
Student performances and coaching28:45
At the piano Barry ran a whole-tone scale, then the same in thirds, then the other whole-tone scale, and kept looking for other ways to practise it, trying mirror image between the hands: practise the scale any kind of way.
Use whatever fingering suits your hand: in a whole-tone clinic in Spain he told pianists to forget the book rule against putting the thumb on a black key.
The whole-tone scale, part 11:07
In Barry’s words
Each one plays from the moment he says it. Every other moment he teaches it is listed below.
The two sixes is two [whole-tone] scales. That’s the first thing you should know is two [whole-tone] scales and every kind of way to play them.
It gives you two chords... a dominant seven with a flat five and a... dominant seven with a raise[d] five.
Man and woman is two sixes, they come from the twelve.
Monk played the whole-tone scales a lot. It gave him a certain sound.
Where this comes from
Everything above is drawn from these. Open any one to check it.
Every moment he teaches it12 moments in 6 recordings
Each time opens the transcript there; the video plays when you are online.
Student performances and coaching
- 27:32
Retells The Creation: God made man and woman; asks the band what music’s man and woman are.
- 28:10
Two goes into twelve six times: two sixes. Quizzes the bass player and drummer.
- 28:45
The two sixes are the two whole-tone scales: the first thing to know, every way to play them.
- 29:18
Whole-tone scales give major thirds and two chords, the 7♭5 and 7♯5.
Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart
Practising the sixth diminished scales
The whole-tone scale, part 1
- 1:07
Spain 2008 whole-tone clinic: ignore book fingering rules about thumbs on black keys.
Believe: a talk to musicians
- 5:45
Talk in Almería: the whole-tone scales, man and woman, make the three diminished sevenths.
The last train to Monk: an interview
- 20:28
Says Bud Powell took the whole-tone scale straight from Monk.
From the lessons1 lesson, 2 points
Notes taken from Barry’s classes, each tied to the moment it comes from.
The two whole-tone scales: parents of the diminished chords
- Idea
Using a creation story, Barry divided the 12 notes into two groups of six, the two whole-tone scales, which he called man and woman. Learn the two whole-tone scales first, and every way to play them. Built in major thirds, a whole-tone scale gives two chords: a dominant seventh with a flat five and a dominant seventh with a raised five. He called one of them the most important, but the recording does not make clear which.
- Idea
The couple’s children are the three diminished seventh chords (12 divided into three groups of four). Each diminished seventh takes two notes from each whole-tone scale, so, as Barry put it, there is no mistaking where it comes from. In C, E-flat, G-flat, A: C and G-flat belong to the C whole-tone scale, and E-flat and A belong to the D-flat whole-tone scale. For him the whole-tone and diminished scales together are where most of the music comes from, and he presented all this as logic.
Student performances and coaching29:5330:34Believe: a talk to musicians5:45
In writing5 notes
What his interviews, his students’ class notes and other teachers’ articles add.
In a 2003 Hague workshop transcribed by Howard Rees, Barry put the order plainly: after the chromatic come the two whole-tone scales, and their babies are the three diminished chords. He added that every 7th chord with a flat five is two dominants at once, so learning six of them covers all twelve.
Vera Marijt (research coach Jarmo Hoogendijk), Barry Harris: Exploring the Diminished (MA research paper) ¶39Vera Marijt (research coach Jarmo Hoogendijk), Barry Harris: Exploring the Diminished (MA research paper) ¶42
Howard Rees notes that each whole-tone scale contains three tritones, and that the three diminished sevenths are made by taking one tritone from each scale.
Masayasu Tsuboguchi, Barry’s student for fifteen years, recalls him calling the two scales Adam and Eve. He notes that notes 1, 3 and 6 of a whole-tone scale already make a dominant 7th without its fifth, and that dropping notes 2 and 4 gives the augmented 7th.
坪口昌恭 Masayasu Tsuboguchi, バリー・ハリス・ビバップ・メソッドの実践と応用 ¶15坪口昌恭 Masayasu Tsuboguchi, バリー・ハリス・ビバップ・メソッドの実践と応用 ¶16
To get used to the whole-tone scale, Tsuboguchi suggests playing it in mirror image between the hands, then in major-third double stops in either hand, also in mirror, with chromatic notes added in between for a more complex sound.
坪口昌恭 Masayasu Tsuboguchi, バリー・ハリス・ビバップ・メソッドの実践と応用 ¶16坪口昌恭 Masayasu Tsuboguchi, バリー・ハリス・ビバップ・メソッドの実践と応用 ¶17坪口昌恭 Masayasu Tsuboguchi, バリー・ハリス・ビバップ・メソッドの実践と応用 ¶19
García-Valdecasas points out that, up to this stage, Barry’s scheme closely resembles Olivier Messiaen’s first two modes of limited transposition; Messiaen was also religious but did not explain his modes through religious allegory.
How other teachers explain it8 videos, 6 series episodes
Barry’s students, and their students, teaching it their way. A second opinion, not Barry.
- Jazz Harmony According to Barry Harris. PART 3 [SUBTITLES]
Whole-tone scales on C and C♯, major thirds practised with paired fingers, Bud Powell intros and endings.
38 min, transcript On YouTube
- Jazz Harmony According to Barry Harris. PART 2 [SUBTITLES]
Part 2 of his series; Part 3 says it drew the two whole-tone scales from the chromatic scale.
28 min On YouTube
- TILF Barry Harris Ep 44 Whole Tone Scale
16 min, transcript On YouTube
- Barry Harris whole tone ideas
17 min On YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 10: Revisiting the Whole Tone Scale ( Barry Harris )
11 min On YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 53: Wholetone Movement over Body and Soul (Barry Harris Harmonic Concepts)
Turns dominants in Body and Soul into 7♭5 chords from the two whole-tone scales.
15 min, transcript On YouTube
- Barry Harris Showed Me This Whole Tone Sound
6 min On YouTube
- Whole tone moves - Barry Harris style
16 min On YouTube
In the teaching series
Episodes on this idea in the long series by other teachers. Each name opens that whole series in order.
Read further4 links
These open on the web.
Books and paid courses
- Howard Rees, ‘Evolutionary Voicings Part 1: Barry Harris keeps things movin’’, Keyboard Magazine Oct 1998 (chromatic scale -> whole tone -> 3 diminished -> 12 dominants; 6th dim scales)
student (Howard Rees) — Free article by Howard Rees with the chromatic scale split into the two whole-tone scales in notation.
- Frederic Galliano, Notes on the Method of Barry Harris (HTML + PDF, updated Jan 2026): scale exercises, chromatic scale, Parker ideas, families, 4 chord scales, moving in fourths, 5-4-3-2, half-step tables, important arpeggios, scale outlines of blues/rhythm/Cherokee/Donna Lee/How High the Moon/Night in Tunisia
attendee-of-videos notes (from Chris Parks’ TILF + Labyrinth + Kingstone) — Free notes by Frédéric Galliano that show the chromatic scale split symmetrically into the two whole-tone scales.
- Masayasu Tsuboguchi, ‘バリー・ハリス・ビバップ・メソッドの実践と応用’ (Practice and application of Barry Harris’s bebop method), Shobi University journal vol. 28, 2018, pp. 21-39 (chromatic, whole tone, diminished, 6th chords)
other teacher (Japanese pianist) — Free paper (Japanese, English abstract) whose first example sets out the chromatic scale and the two whole-tone scales.
- The Barry Harris Workshop Video Part Two, Howard Rees: ~4h15, 156-page workbook; chapters Improvisation (49 sections), Rhythm Section (17), Harmony (41)
Barry himself (produced and transcribed by Howard Rees) — Barry on video; the workbook has a section on the two whole-tone scales (paid).