Barry Harris' 6th & Diminished Scale: Explained, A Jazz Tutorial

[Music] hello welcome back to the jazz wrench I know I'm not dressed like I live in a ranch but I'm off duty right now anyway and the older dominant man is out he's taking care of everything with the horses and so on but anyway I'm glad you joined me because it has something special for you this evening and you know I had the privilege of meeting Dave Brubeck many years ago I went to one of his concerts for my friend knew his bass player and we got to go in the dressing room and so on you know and I loved that group I've been a faithful follower of all these years and also Paul Desmond was the coolest cat I mean he said he made this comment once that he thought his sound someone had told him his sound was like a dry martini with two olives I'm a martini fan myself so I loved it please write to me if you are anyway I'm going to be showing you something about Frank asked me to do this from a German he said can you do something to explain the Barry Harris concept of the diminished sixth scale and how to utilize it so I'm going to do that for you this evening so here we go with Barry Harris my interpretation our bearing Harris's diminished sixth scale getting right into it now my interpretation of the Barry Harris video on diminished sixth scale first thing he talks about is a major sixth chord then then he says there's two diminished chords inside of this now what that means is when you think about a diminished chord it has minor third stack so there's always going to be a major six in there because see up a minor third up a minor third up a minor third you can see those intervals well - third is the whole step and a half step four three we have a major sixth in there so if you're playing a six crew are to see any sixth chord I'm going to this is C of course there's that particular diminished chord in there the C diminished and then you have this e and the G well that's another diminished chord because it's a - so really you can say it's an e diminished I like to break it down to the C F and G just because those are the easiest key so this one would be the G because this G is in there right so then he said is one diminished chord that's missing in this and it's the yep because we just saw we have the C and the G so the F is there right and there it is there's the F diminished amount you put that in there invert it let's take the day and put it down here and then we'll put the up there and then put the a flat in there and then the B now you have a scale that is built see I'm not getting all of it up there it is built on the major scale but with an additional note and it's that a flat so you have this scale like a three major scale but with an a-flat we have a notes in the scale one two three four five six seven eight now this is a very interesting scale because I'm going to show you how this scale works okay so now I'm doing everything in segments so you get a little break and you can watch a segment over again and I get a break and I can sort of collect my thoughts and I swear in between of them because I I certainly blow a lot of these so I have to complain and so on but anyway if you take that scale diminish six scale that period in other words that's the major scale with minor six in it or you can say it's a flat 13 however you want to interpret it we have that extra note and then what does that do for us well first of all it's going to create a relationship between the major 6th chord and diminished approaches so I'm going to explain that in detail as we go along here but the first thing you should have someone do what you should do is practice the scale well I can do it slowly you want to use really familiar with the scale then you can play it [Music] now Annie had that he had his students play it this way just what are you going to do with that that's not important thing important thing now is to say let's try it playing it in thirds because what we have to do is after more we have to play only scale tones now we can't have any other notes that aren't in the scale like these we have to play and we have to make sure we get all the scale tone so let's play it like this let me get to there now we have to go to their right and then then we get to their way up there so see what we have is a major a minor I made minor a minor major I made your imma later plus/minus Uruk major third minor third minor third monster was a major third minor third - third a third a third a third a third midnight doesn't mean anything let's try triads major triad diminished triad now we could do well let's see we could go here minor triad minor triad try it make triad a triad a minor triad let me try it that doesn't mean anything either so try it on seven major sixth inverted right to force the school minutes car inverted major six inverted right now we have to go here diminished chord inversion something is happening here that is symmetrical major sixth inverted right and then we go here diminished chord inversion yes that's what makes this whole scale fantastic and amazing is how it really has there's meaning to it that's underneath the surface so while I'm breaking it down the way I'm understanding it is we have a major chord then we have a diminished chord then we have a matrix or inversion then we have a inverted so what we are hat we have here is like a one chord in the key and then a5 requires that a five chord because it's really imply any diminished chord is really alive acting in another way or having a disguise it's incognito whatever in other words it's really that's really a g7 flat nine or to D diminished or an F diminished this is so much ambiguity here it's abstract that could be an a minor seven that's an interesting thing because this also works for the relative minor but anyway major sixth year then we have its five then we have convergence then we have another version of its five but in version then we have another version of the one for it again and then we have another version of an inverse of it I've gone inverted so in other words this is showing you a deeper sense of how the one chord in the five chord or tonic and dominant relate to each other through a scale which he calls the diminished six scale and but it's important because it's really like dominant tonic going all over the place all over the keyboard and you can use this in such a variety of ways in playing songs and it's very sophisticated but at the same time it's simple if you understand it but it's also complex so it has the dichotomy of being simple and complex at the same time so let's look at it a little further okay so you missed the swearing i9u delude the cat heard it herbie hurried but anyway now explain is that a relative major and there's a relative or a major six relates to a minor seven so the giro is the sixth step of the scale is the relative minor so now take you little one going up that skin in chords is the same for either C major a minor but the chords are different in other words in say this is a gene altered chord you know G seven flat nine C six inverted seven flat nine inverted whatever that's the latest of the relative minor now it has to be the five you know this was for one and the following right the one and it's done so now in the lair it has to relate to its dominant which is easily so there's your family because g7 and e7 are insulating families always based on a diminished chord so these are the fam the dominant family dominant seven family seven B flat seven D flat seven D seven so g7 and e 7r link they're the same exact notes but in different of order shall we say so that is the G seven flat nine right but it's also an e seven one nine now if you look at this on the scores intimate 7 1 3 5 flat 7 to 1 9 on the bottom it's 1 3 5 that's 7 there's the flat 9 there's the third there's this amazing symmetry in the families so you can see now that the relative measure and the relative minor relate to this same diminished scale that he's talking about perfectly sorry when I do a retake it's usually less enthusiastic so maybe I should just keep the first take you know they'll miss the swearing and just go with whatever I say when I make a mistake just go on that way what what he's perfect right so let's up so what he did is Barry did was he had the students play it in a variety of ways and he didn't demonstrate it for them he explained it at the beginning but then he said just play and then they played it they played it wrong so that's the wrong though that's the wrong though well I'm I'm easy so I give you the right notes but they had this right I had that now what he did we said play it like this the words voiced a different way in the right hand this is really a drop - he doesn't explain it as a drop - but he just says put the base on down here and play this voicing and actually had him laying like that the first time around but I'm not going to do that to you that's to us difficult anyway listen better and what it is is an assisting drop to progression with the same scale that means that taking that second note from the top and I putting it down there which puts the base note of record really down there and then it sounds has a really pretty sound like this when we do the scale now you have to be sure that you're making every no no you can't omit any notes like that you have to make sure all the way up then every finger is playing the right note so that means the next one is ears and I have to go there right not here you have to get it exactly right and you know once you hear this and you get used to the sound of it then you'll know when you're playing a wrong note so here it is that's really pretty sounding is it now this is really what classical and the great composers used even crosser composes and you know Tin Pan Alley and like all your great standards is you know when you get delete the original sheet music going to hear that they're using this court but but not in that way not in a scale but in sort of segmented parts of the song you know little interludes a little parts that join to another part so like you'll hear that so now see so there it is now I'm going to go the relative minor to I invented a word segmented which you know it's a mallet property it's a good word sig mated there made it together right in other words not meant it but segmented now here's here's the descending drop to in a relative minor now if you really want to hear the minor as opposed to the major then just put the bass note in like this alright like that you hear the bass most line here's the minor so really all that's going on is you're playing a scale using the relative major going to its five inverted going to itself inverted going to another version of the five just going up in inversion so like you're going up this he doesn't explain is that whether that's really what's going on c6 inverted like that and then the diminished chords inverted like this and the amazing thing that they really don't fit that to scale that's what's amazing about it to go to relative major same thing happens relatively content version you want doesn't matter if you're starting here and you go down then you're going from the relative major to its v Lord to it you know now you're seeing all the possibilities that there are within songs and that's just one key now you have 12 keys this is an incredible assignment if you were to master this you know if you're if you're a scientist kind of person or a geek or whatever you are and you're studying piano and you want to master this then this is like one of the greatest assignments you'll have because you'll understand the keyboard thoroughly in every possible way in this in this manner okay so what Barry had his students do is he took during the key of C right so we haven't take this this the diminished chord going to another diminished down to the sixth chord then another diminished like that and then going to a like that now what that is is a - it's a to five in other words it's a to five in it in G a minor seven D seven no so this is the which relates to you know the five chord G seven B the five chord of C so it's this would be like a six and then a five of five saltiness you had in place all you there's this concept in that diminished chord diminished chord b6 inverted diminished chord c6 inverted then to this now that's an all through d7 but it has what does it have one three flat seven flat nine sharp eleven right thirteen so it's very rich sounding so what I did was this once I heard that in anyway you know you want to play this with all the keys of course I mean it sounded like part of the song as time goes by so then I applied this little lick to that song and how how was sound there it is the end of the 8 bar section of the song you know like where you played this song I'd be [Music] your account we saw it's very sophisticated and then you could transpose it to another key just to be putting into the key of e-flat at the original Jesus all right so there you see the practical application so we'll take it one step further I always say what good are scales or concepts or chords or anything unless we can apply them to a specific song so here on be my love is a post thing I did on a arrangement by Barry Harris to use this this song concept perfectly right here you show you do right here there it is there is diminished chord approach and drop two to the sixth chord the relative minor in a-flat then he does it again the relative minor and the key of B flat zone over in the key of E flat but he's using particular type of voicings and he's using that scale at that point I might not want to look at this score at the study this an understanding because it will take a little bit more than that but that's an example of it and what it sounds like so my suggestion to you is I hope I've cleared some of this up if you've watched the Barry Harris video of him teaching in Germany anyway practice the scale and see okay and then practice you know what they are and practice them in the key of F like this same thing practice them in G start with those three keys the easiest keys and then go from there if you're really interested in this and see how they apply to songs that you're playing and if you can utilize them and it's a fascinating thing so well we'll wrap up now okay so that's wrapping up now for the diminished scale and that's just a tidbit as we'll say and I hope to see you next time around and I'm going to be doing something wrong and left hand techniques so stay with me please write to me I love to hear from you and give me some time to write back because I try to write back to every comment I get so give me some time and until next time novel saying the words of my great friend her Mead wrestle swing loose and we'll see you next time around bye life [Music] [Music]

Channel: Kent Hewitt

Views: 212,812

Keywords: Barry Harris, 6th and Diminished Scale, Jazz Piano Tutorial, Jazz Tutorial, Jazz Piano

Id: AF67azWnMvw

Length: 20min 43sec (1243 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2017