In plain words
After man and woman come the children. Barry did it as arithmetic: three goes into twelve four times, so the twelve notes fall into three groups of four, the three diminished seventh chords. A diminished chord on any other note is one of these three under another spelling, and nothing goes beyond the twelve.
Student performances and coaching29:53Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart10:19Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings4:58Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶33
How do we know they come from the whole-tone scales? Barry’s answer was the DNA: in every diminished seventh, two notes belong to one whole-tone scale and two to the other. In C diminished, C and G♭ are in the C whole-tone scale, E♭ and A in the D♭ one, so the parentage cannot be mistaken. He called this logic, and proof.
Student performances and coaching30:2530:58Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart10:5511:28Believe: a talk to musicians6:16
The diminished matters because so much grows out of it. Barry told an audience in Spain that players who only know the diminished scale as half step, whole step miss most of the music, because most of it comes from the diminished. The first thing it gives: lower any one of its notes a half step and you have a dominant seventh, four from each diminished chord, twelve in all.
Believe: a talk to musicians5:105:45Student performances and coaching32:07Jazz theory, part 3: four dominants from one diminished8:36
Step by step
Build a diminished seventh (stacked minor thirds) on C, on C♯ and on D. These are the only three; a fourth one, on E♭, is C diminished again.
C dim7- C
- E♭
- G♭
- A
C♯ dim7- C♯
- E
- G
- B♭
D dim7- D
- F
- A♭
- B
Student performances and coaching29:53Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶33Howard Rees (Spanish translation; PDF author field ‘Ramon’), El método armónico de Barry Harris ¶114
Check the DNA: split the chord into its two tritones. One pair comes from the C whole-tone scale, the other from the D♭ whole-tone scale.
C dim7: pair from the C whole-tone scale- C
- G♭
C dim7: pair from the D♭ whole-tone scale- E♭
- A
Student performances and coaching30:2530:58Howard Rees, Chord Explorations ¶36
How he said to practise it
Play the diminished sevenths up and down, legato, the way Barry had a tenor player play C diminished in a master class.
Know diminished sevenths all over your instrument, as you should major arpeggios; Barry counted both among the ABCs of the music that many college students lack.
In Barry’s words
Each one plays from the moment he says it. Every other moment he teaches it is listed below.
The DNA is perfect because two notes belong to one whole tone scale, and two notes belong to the other whole tone scale.
Three going to twelve four times. Three fours. What are the three fours?... Three diminished sevenths.
It all comes from the diminished scale. Most of it comes from the diminished scale... The whole-tone scales make the diminishes.
I hate to go to a college and find students that can’t even play a major arpeggio, can’t even play a diminished 7th, can’t even play diminished 7ths all over their instrument
Where this comes from
Everything above is drawn from these. Open any one to check it.
Every moment he teaches it12 moments in 5 recordings
Each time opens the transcript there; the video plays when you are online.
Student performances and coaching
- 29:53
Asks what the two whole-tone scales create: three into twelve, three diminished sevenths.
- 30:25
Why the DNA is perfect: two notes from each whole-tone scale; no mistaking where they come from.
- 30:58
Spells it out for C diminished: C and G♭ from C’s scale, E♭ and A from D♭’s.
- 31:34
Has the tenor player play C diminished seventh up and down, legato.
- 32:07
Twelve dominants: four come from each diminished; from C diminished, B, D, F and A♭.
Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart
Believe: a talk to musicians
Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings
- 4:58
Recap: two whole-tone scales, three diminished sevenths, nothing beyond those twelve notes.
First class in The Hague, part 2
- 1:18
Opening a class in The Hague: we have three diminished chords (caption fragmentary).
From the lessons2 lessons, 6 points
Notes taken from Barry’s classes, each tied to the moment it comes from.
Minor thirds and the diminished family
- Idea
The twelve notes divide into two whole-tone scales and into three diminished seventh chords, and nothing goes beyond those twelve. Barry reminds the class of this as a basic fact to know before working with diminished chords.
Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings4:58
- Idea
Everything is minor thirds, Barry says; it is the most important interval of all. The whole-tone scale gives you major thirds, but the diminished chord gives you minor thirds. So the major keys a minor third apart, C, E-flat, F-sharp and A, are brothers and sisters: one family. C major’s family is E-flat, F-sharp and A, and you practise them together.
Jazz theory, part 1, with score4:23
- Exercise
In a class in Bilbao, given through a Spanish interpreter, Barry described the diminished scale as the four notes of the diminished chord combined with the roots of the dominants it relates to. Each diminished note therefore sits between two of those roots: E-flat, for example, is surrounded by D and F. Exercise: from a diminished note, move to a neighbouring note and come back to the original, and do this through every inversion of the diminished chord.
- Idea
The first way to modulate, Barry says, is with the diminished chord. He calls the diminished the ruler: you may think you are heading for G, but the diminished can say no and take you to F, B-flat or C instead. One diminished chord can lead you into several different keys.
11 March 2016, part 2: the diminished as ruler2:39
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 writing4 notes
What his interviews, his students’ class notes and other teachers’ articles add.
In Barry’s story as Howard Rees quotes it, the genes are tritones: each diminished seventh is built from two pairs of genes, one from each whole-tone parent. Rees adds that each whole-tone scale holds three tritones, so taking one from each scale gives the three possible diminished sevenths.
Howard Rees, Chord Explorations ¶36Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶5
Rees spells out the arithmetic that follows: lowering any one note of a diminished seventh a half step gives a dominant seventh on the lowered note, so each diminished yields four dominants and the three together yield all twelve.
Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶11
In the 2003 Hague workshop transcribed by Rees, Barry describes the diminished chords spreading out into the rest of harmony: lower one note and you get dominants, raise one and you get minor sixes, move two neighbouring notes and you get major sixes.
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
García-Valdecasas applies the same genetic view to a C6 chord: C and A belong to C diminished, E and G to C♯ diminished, and the third diminished, the one C6 does not touch, is what Barry adds to make the major 6th diminished scale.
Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶58Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶59Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶61
How other teachers explain it5 videos, 7 series episodes
Barry’s students, and their students, teaching it their way. A second opinion, not Barry.
- My Chat With Chris Parks From Things I Learned From Barry Harris
Two notes from each whole-tone scale make a diminished; three possible, each with perfect DNA.
62 min, transcript On YouTube
- Jazz Harmony According to Barry Harris. Part 1 [SUBTITLES]
The three diminished four-note chords, on C, C♯ and D, as the basis of the sixth diminished scale.
46 min, transcript On YouTube
- Getting Started with Sixth Diminished Scales
From the three diminished chords we get everything else; C6 takes notes from two of them.
6 min, transcript On YouTube
- Jazz Harmony According to Barry Harris. PART 3 [SUBTITLES]
Resolves whole-tone structures to the three diminished chords, keeping common tones.
38 min, transcript On YouTube
- Barry Harris Method: Our Musical World ()
11 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.
Where the accounts differ1 point
Barry presented the DNA argument as something he came to later: in the Lincoln Center lesson he told Eli Yamin he would never have thought of it when he taught him years before. Howard Rees’s 1998 article already quotes him on the tritone ‘genes’, so the idea goes back at least that far.
Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart11:28Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶5
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: the three diminished sevenths drawn from the whole-tone scales, and the four dominants from each.
- Vera Marijt, ‘Barry Harris: Exploring the Diminished’ (Master research, KC The Hague, 2014; ~35 pp of transcriptions from 8+ hours of Rees DVDs and ~54 Frans Elsen videos)
researcher (pianist) — Free research exposition by Vera Marijt, built on Barry’s own explanation of the diminished and what comes from it.
- 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) that treats the three diminished chords as the DNA of bebop harmony.
- 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 three diminished chords (paid).