The major 6th diminished scale (a major scale with one more note)

Each time opens the transcript there; the video plays when you are online.

Notes taken from Barry’s classes, each tied to the moment it comes from.

What his interviews, his students’ class notes and other teachers’ articles add.

• Howard Rees A teacher

  Rees describes the scale as the major sixth chord put together with a diminished seventh chord, and points out that it contains two dominant sevenths: the V7 of the tonic and the V7 of the relative minor.

  Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶19Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶23

• Howard Rees A teacher

  Rees’s worksheet pairs C6 with D diminished (D, F, G♯, B) and spells the extra note G♯ both up and down the scale, where Barry in class said A♭.

  Introducing the sixth diminished scale3:32Howard Rees’ Jazz Workshops, Major & Minor 6th Dim. Scales: Becoming Familiar with the 6th Diminished Scales ¶4Howard Rees’ Jazz Workshops, Major & Minor 6th Dim. Scales: Becoming Familiar with the 6th Diminished Scales ¶5

• Masayasu Tsuboguchi A teacher

  Masayasu Tsuboguchi, who attended Barry’s workshops, reports that Barry called it the ‘True Major Scale’, and the same scale with a flat third the ‘True Minor Scale’. His own explanation of the extra note: it lets C, E, G and A, the notes of the sixth chord, fall on the downbeats.

  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 ¶69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 ¶70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 ¶97

• Guillermo García-Valdecasas; Brian de Lima A scholar

  García-Valdecasas notes that the added note works two ways: as the leading note of A, the relative minor, and as the flat nine of G7. De Lima describes the diminished chord as a rootless dominant seventh with a flat nine, built on the seventh degree.

  Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶61Guillermo García-Valdecasas Vaticón (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid), The Barry Harris harmonic theory in Chopin’s work ¶62Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶102

• Barry Harris (Smithsonian oral history) Barry, in his own words

  Asked in 2010 how the sixth diminished concept began, Barry said he did not know. His rules for practising improvisation went back to weekly rehearsals with Yusef and Bernard McKennie; the piano side, he thought, might have started before the Jazz Cultural Theater.

  Barry Harris, Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program ¶292

• Howard Rees (workbook to Barry’s Workshop Video Part 2) A teacher

  In the workbook to Barry’s second workshop video the major sixth diminished scale comes first under ‘Barry’s Four Key Scales’, followed by a section on the two dominant sevenths it contains, then the minor sixth, seventh and seventh flat five diminished scales.

  Barry Harris (on video); Howard Rees (producer, The Barry Harris Workshop Video Part 2: product page and 156-page workbook table of contents ¶16

Barry’s students, and their students, teaching it their way. A second opinion, not Barry.

• Writers often file it as the major bebop scale; Barry called it his personal scale, the sixth diminished scale, and the real major scale.

  Introducing the sixth diminished scale1:08Jazz theory, part 5: the sixth diminished scale8:56Brian Jude de Lima, Reanimating Dissonance: Cultivating the Antecedents of Barry Harris’ Concept of Movement as a Multidimensional Pedagogical Tool for Ontario Post-Secondary Jazz Curricula ¶102jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris method (jazzguitar.be forum thread) ¶52

• When did the scale begin? Howard Rees wrote in 1998 that Barry developed the two sixth diminished scales some forty-plus years earlier, and in one class Barry said he had the major and minor ones before he moved to New York, finding the other two later. Yet asked in the 2010 oral history, he said he did not know how the sixth diminished concept began, guessing only that the piano side might date from before the Jazz Cultural Theater.

  The 23 May Zoom class, part 121:3122:07Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶6Barry Harris, Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program ¶292

• Why the extra note? Tsuboguchi explains it as putting the four notes of the sixth chord on the downbeats; Christian Miller, who studied with Barry, says he never heard Barry himself talk about chord tones on the beat.

  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 ¶69jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), Barry Harris’s opinion of harmonic minor scale? ¶31

These open on the web.