First Step to Understanding Barry's Beautiful Scales of Chords EP 164 TILF Barry Harris

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to episode 164 of things I learned from Barry Harris.

[00:00:05]And before we get started, I just wanted to a quick reminder or an update about our school uh over on school.com, things I learned from Barry Harris.

[00:00:17]Uh we're having a blast there and uh like I've said before, we have let's see, three get-togethers a month.

[00:00:26]We have mini lessons four times a month.

[00:00:29]Uh there's all sorts of questions answered.

[00:00:31]We have a great forum where people just post their videos of things that they're practicing on. It's really turned into a beautiful community.

[00:00:38]Anyway, uh if you're thinking about getting in, now's probably the time because in September uh the rates are going up. So, all of you that get in before September you're going to be grandfathered in. So, if you've been on the fence thinking about it, now might be a good time. I'll leave a uh link in the description.

[00:00:58]Anyway, I thought we could talk about today um Barry's harmonic concept because it it really gets misunderstood or I don't know whether people do it on purpose, whether they call it a thing that it isn't really.

[00:01:13]But, Barry's harmonic concept, first thing is, is completely unique to him.

[00:01:20]I've never ever heard anybody talk about harmony like this, ever.

[00:01:25]And the way that Barry thinks about it is every chord that we see actually belongs to a scale. So, that's where Barry comes up with the thing where he says, "I don't believe in chords, I believe in scales. Scales are greater than chords."

[00:01:41]So, people get it bent out of shape.

[00:01:42]They say, "Oh, well, he's he's still playing chords." Yes, of course he's playing chords. That's what we play harmonically. We play chords.

[00:01:49]But, he thinks of those chords as belonging to a scale. So, I thought we would take just the first couple of chords that we learn as jazz musicians and we'll just relate them to C for a second and I'll show you what I mean.

[00:02:02]So, >> [music] >> a normal chord is C major 7. That's a four note chord. C major 7 is something that's [music] very common to us. C minor 7 is something that's very common to us. C minor 7 flat [music] 5 is something that's very common to us. C 7 is something that's very common to us and C diminished [music] is something that's very common to us.

[00:02:24]Now, each one of those actually belongs to a different scale.

[00:02:31]And I'll show you what I mean.

[00:02:32]The first one, the C major 7.

[00:02:35]And as uh well, at least in drop two form, we have C G B E.

[00:02:40]This belongs to one of Barry's eight note scales, which happens to be the C major 6 diminished scale.

[00:02:48]Which is what looks like [music] Some people refer to it as um major scale with a flat 6 added, which is okay, but I would prefer we look at it as a C major four notes of C major 6 and then the four notes of D diminished that you put together and you have this beautiful eight note scale.

[00:03:06]>> [music] >> See?

[00:03:07]But I I like to think of it like that instead. So, anyway, this C major 7 [music] comes from this C major 6 diminished scale and you may say to yourself, "Well, wait a minute. [music] You got C major 6 as the first chord, D diminished as the second chord." Yes, that's true.

[00:03:21]So, where do you get the B from? Well, the B is in the D diminished and the B would be what we consider as Barry people just one borrowed note from the diminished. [music] That's all and you could borrow any any note from the diminished. Listen to this.

[00:03:36]Sus, [music] we could borrow this note from the diminished and you get all these other pretty major 7 type chords like with a sharp 5 and all that that type of stuff.

[00:03:46]So, now that's a major 7. So, every time you see a major 7, you can immediately translate it into that same notes major sixth diminished scale.

[00:03:56]You do it every time, okay?

[00:03:58]Now, the next step would be like I do with the puzzle pieces with the single notes, what do I know how to do on that scale accords in terms of harmonically? Do I know how to play it up in thirds? Do I know how to play it up triads? Do I follow all the the things that Thomas has shown us, which is the his elevator system? Do Am I able to do contrary motion? Am I able to do oblique motion? Am I able to borrow on any of those things? You see? So, now you have limitless things that you could do when on a piece of sheet music you see C major seven.

[00:04:34]It's all dependent on the time, how long it lasts for, and things that you've practiced that you're comfortable with.

[00:04:39]That's all.

[00:04:41]Now, that's for a major seven.

[00:04:43]What about a C minor seven?

[00:04:45]Okay, [music] now C minor seven is interesting.

[00:04:48]A minor seven Barry used to say, every minor seven is a major sixth.

[00:04:54]So, the four notes of C minor seven, C E flat uh G B flat, also, if you start on the E flat, you got E [music] flat G B flat C.

[00:05:05]That's an E flat major sixth. So, every minor seven is a major sixth, a minor third above the minor [music] seven.

[00:05:13]Okay, that's the way you can look at it if you'd like. So, here's your C minor seven.

[00:05:16]Now, you go up a minor third, [music] there's your E flat sixth. It's just another inversion of a minor seven.

[00:05:24]But, Barry liked to see it as the major sixth because, like everything else in his world, it comes from a scale. The scale that it comes from is [music] the E flat major sixth diminished scale, which consists of two things, the four notes of E flat major sixth and the four notes of F diminished. There you go.

[00:05:43]So, now C minor [music] seven belongs to a scale also. Every time you see a minor 7, you say, "Oh, that's a major 6 and it belongs to the major 6 diminished scale." So, that's the second kind.

[00:05:54]The third kind, let's say C7.

[00:05:57]Let's do C7.

[00:05:59]Uh C7 belongs to a lot of different things.

[00:06:04]But let's just talk about the first thing it can belong to. The first thing it can belong to is one of his scales of chords that he came up with after the major 6 and the minor 6, way later in the '80s. He came up with this uh what he called [music] C7 diminished scale.

[00:06:20]Which has the four notes of C7, C E G B flat, and the four notes of G [music] diminished. So, he would say this C7 comes from the C7 diminished scale. So, you have to know that scale of chords. Dominant 7 diminished uh dominant 7 diminished scale. That's an important one to know, too.

[00:06:38]Now, the two that he used to use almost exclusively before he came up with the dominant 7 were both minor 6s. I'll show you the first one. So, C7 [music] he would use G minor 6. Now, if you see it as a guitarist, we [music] have our G minor 6 shape here and there's our C and it looks like our plain C9 chord that we all play, that we all love to play. Well, what this is is that's a G minor [music] 6 with a C in the bass. That's the four notes of G minor 6.

[00:07:09]So, that means you have to know when you see a C7 >> [music] >> you should know your G minor 6 diminished scale.

[00:07:17]So, that's another one. So, now when you say a dominant 7, you say, "Okay." And Barry used to call this the minor 6 on the fifth.

[00:07:26]So, you got a C7, what's the fifth of C?

[00:07:29]G. You build the minor 6 from there. You got G minor [music] 6, which is going to give you a C9. Now, if you really want to get fancy, what he would do is he would say, "Okay, let's let's play a minor 6 a half step above this C7. So, we'll make it D [music] flat minor 6, which happens to be what he would call tritone's minor. It's the minor 6 on the fifth of C7's tritone, which is F sharp.

[00:07:53]Okay, but there's our or G flat, sorry.

[00:07:55]>> [music] >> There's our D flat minor 6. And if you look at the notes of D flat minor 6 compared to C7, you're going to see it's got a flat nine, cuz that's a D flat, and it's got a raised five or flat 13, if you want to call it that. And there's your A flat, you see? So, that over C7 See how pretty [music] that is? That's really beautiful. So, that's That's the other minor 6. So, you have the two minor 6s you could play for a dominant.

[00:08:21]The one on the fifth, which would be G minor 6, and the one a half step up, which would be D flat minor 6.

[00:08:28]Now, that's a dominant.

[00:08:29]So, let Let's see. We did major 7.

[00:08:33]We did minor 7. We did dominant 7. Now, let's do minor 7 flat 5.

[00:08:39]Here's minor 7 [music] flat 5.

[00:08:41]So, a minor 7 flat 5 is going to be no different than we treat a minor 7 in this sense.

[00:08:47]We said C minor 7 belongs to a major 6, a minor third above [music] it, which is E flat major 6.

[00:08:54]A C minor 7 flat 5, now you're lowering the G to G flat, [music] which now is going to give you an E flat minor 6.

[00:09:04]So, it's the same idea. You go up a minor third, but now it's a minor 6. So, the four notes of C [music] minor 7 flat 5 are the same four notes in E flat minor 6. Same exact.

[00:09:16]But, the benefit of knowing that it comes from a scale is now I know that it comes from the four notes of E flat minor 6 and the four notes of F diminished. Therefore, anything I know on this scale I can play every time I see a minor 7 flat 5.

[00:09:32]So, we already said a major 7 comes from a major 6. Now, by the way, these are not the only ones. There's also additions to these, but these are the basic.

[00:09:40]Major six comes from the major seven.

[00:09:43]Um minor seven we said was also a major six. We said dominant seven is two minor sixes or dominant seven diminished, which is pretty.

[00:09:54]Uh we said uh minor seven flat five or half diminished is actually a minor six, minor third up like we said the last one. Now, we got one more, and that would be just a regular diminished [music] if we said C diminished.

[00:10:08]Now, a C diminished is going to come from uh not one of Barry's four scales accords. Barry's four scales accords a major six diminished, minor six diminished, dominant seven diminished, dominant seven flat five diminished.

[00:10:20]This one comes from We would [music] probably call this diminished diminished.

[00:10:25]See, it's just a It's a C diminished, four notes of C diminished, and four notes of D diminished, and this gives us this beautiful [music] scale.

[00:10:34]So, whenever you see a diminished, you could think it comes from that scale. The four notes of C diminished and the four notes of D diminished, which gives you this beautiful scale.

[00:10:45]Now, the only thing that you have to learn are things to do on those eight note scales according-wise. So, you know, a lot of times like let's just take C major six, [music] right? So, we said, "Okay, C major six has all these."

[00:11:00]I'm just [music] moving up parallel [singing] and drop two.

[00:11:03]Those are great grips. You got to get those together.

[00:11:06]But, some people just think, "Oh, this is the only thing we do with it. We just run around. We just play this to this diminished." [music] Nonsense. That's not true. That's That's That's a sign of not understanding the theory behind it. The theory behind it is Look Look at all these beautiful things I could do by borrowing notes.

[00:11:25]See? And then we have You see how pretty that is? [music] So, now instead of saying C major 6, I'm thinking A minor 7. Okay? Now, I'm going to do pretty things with this.

[00:11:38]>> [music] >> See, that's knowing the scale.

[00:11:44]I could have said um >> [music] >> I did some contrary motion. Maybe I'll do some oblique.

[00:11:58]See, that's [music] that's knowing how to move oblique. Maybe I'll just move thirds.

[00:12:04]>> [music] >> That's knowing the scale in thirds. But, do you see how it frees me up to do things?

[00:12:12]It frees me up. I'm not constrained with just this one stagnant chord. Oh, here's A minor 7 and here's this [music] thing that I usually do with it where I put the ninth on top or something like that.

[00:12:23]Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. But, if you knew that doing this is actually just borrowing a note, that means you might do this instead. Watch.

[00:12:33]You might say this borrowed [singing] note and then maybe I'll borrow this note.

[00:12:37]I'll borrow the F. Watch.

[00:12:41]See, you may never play that in your whole life if you're not thinking about the A minor 7 as belonging to the C major 6 diminished scale.

[00:12:50]So, what it does is it gives you limitless options.

[00:12:57]Now, if you're a person that's been studying uh harmony for a long time and let's say this is just it's too much for you to digest and that you're already kind of set in your own ways. I totally understand that.

[00:13:08]I would say try to reframe it and say to yourself, "I'm keeping all the stuff I know before I learned about this and I am now just going to use this to add on to things that I want to be able to do." Cuz cuz as a guitarist, I know just speaking personally, nobody gets sick of me quicker than me.

[00:13:31]I get sick of myself very quickly. And the way to get out of that feeling is to be able to create new things.

[00:13:38]I have found that through these scales of chords, the second you're sick of yourself, you go back to the drawing board, and you can learn how to create new movements, new little things, new borrowing notes, new moving parallel with drop threes, maybe, or maybe moving parallel with drop threes and borrowing a note at the same time.

[00:14:00]This will You will never be bored of that. Never.

[00:14:04]Absolutely never. So, again, if you're coming from the point of view where, let's say, you went to Berkeley for years, or you you've been studying guitar or piano or anything for years, and you have 20 or 30 years experience, and it's very hard for you to now, all of a sudden, transfer and start thinking about them as scales of chords, I would say, don't worry about that.

[00:14:26]Instead, just say, "I'm going to add this to my ideas, to my whole Rolodex of things that I like to do. Add it. That's all. You don't have to rethink about the way that you think about things entirely. Slowly, that'll happen. You'll start to say to yourself, "You know, I I actually prefer looking at this. Oh man, when I see a D minor 7, I like thinking F6.

[00:14:50]I don't like thinking about uh D minor 7 anymore. I like thinking about it as F6, cuz then I know how to do these cool things on F6. That's the idea. Movement is the idea. Movement.

[00:15:01]So, uh and by the way, this also covers any type of altered scale you're going to come up with. So, you might say, "Well, what about a minor ninth chord?

[00:15:10]Or what about a sharp this chord? Or what about that?"

[00:15:13]All of that is included. You'll see, is included within the scales of chords.

[00:15:19]Every single chord.

[00:15:21]So, this is the thing Barry used to do, by the way. Used to used to knock me out. He would have a pianist go to the piano, put 10 fingers anywhere right on the piano. He'd say, "Plop them down."

[00:15:33]And then he could say, "Well, if you move this note here, move this note to here, you're you're playing D-flat minor sixth diminished scale with two barred notes."

[00:15:44]Like he could just see it. He just saw every kind of possibility of a chord. He could see so fast. I saw him do that many times. Incredible. Incredible. So, um try not to fight it. Try to just say, "Okay, let me just on this part of my brain, I already know the way that I think about harmony, but let me just be free to think about it this way just for a period of time and see what happens."

[00:16:09]See And do me a favor. Let me know in the comments if you've done that before and if you found it beneficial.

[00:16:16]So, anyway, until next time. By the way, hopefully see you all at school, but until next time, enjoy thinking about chords as scales.