Barry Harris 6th Diminished Scale FULLY EXPLAINED

hi guys a very warm welcome to the channel in this video we're going to go super deep into the barry harris sixth diminished concept and how we can use the amazing possibilities it gives us within our improvising so stick around [Music] so barry harris is this incredible jazz pianist and educator who's famous for sharing his knowledge on the bebop tradition as well as his own approach to viewing the language of music as a whole there's a ton of stuff of him online which is all worth checking out but one of the things he's probably most well known for is his sixth diminished scale so if you've clicked on this video you've probably already checked out this concept and have a pretty good idea of what it is but my aim for this lesson is to teach it from the ground up so that you have the fundamentals of what this concept is where it came from and how to develop and apply it so that you've got everything you need to know to start on a lifetime of exploring this beautiful sound so let's get straight into it [Music] the sixth diminished concept is all about seeing relationships between chords and creating harmonic and melodic movement when supporting a melody or playing through chord changes berry often refers to the modern day jazz student or musician as being two five players meaning that we tend to see chord changes as separate blocks which we read from a page as opposed to seeing the relationships within a chord and the possible inner movements so let's first look at what the major sixth diminished scale is it's basically a major scale with an added flat six or sharp 5 interval making it an 8 note scale so in the key of c the notes would be c d e f g a flat a and b you might already be familiar with this set of notes if you've ever checked out any of the bebop scale concepts as this is the same set of intervals which make up a major bebop scale however even though both scales share the same notes you don't really want to think of the major sick diminished scale as the same as the major bebop scale just because the bebop scale concept is purely about adding that a flat to act just as a chromatic passing tone in order to make the chord tones land on the downbeats whereas in the sick diminished scale the a flat is an essential note which makes up the core sound of the scale when harmonized so even though both concepts share the same scale they are not the same purely because their functions are different another way of viewing this scale is by seeing it as being made up by a major sixth chord and a diminished chord this is because when harmonizing the scale by stacking thirds to generate four note chords or by barry's definition of constructing a chord skip a note skip a note skip a note within the notes of the scale if we do this all we get is a c major sixth and a d diminished chord which alternate between their inversions so if you harmonize each note of the scale you would get the four inversions of c6 and then also the four inversions of d diminished which is the equivalent of an f diminished a flat diminished and b diminished as they all share the exact same notes so for the purpose of this lesson let's view the scale as being made up of a major sixth chord and a diminished chord built from the major seventh degree of the scale so c6 and b diminished this also allows us to now see the diminished quarter is being built from the third of the dominant of c the dominant of c is the fifth which is g and so the diminished chord is built from the b or third of g so this also now tells us that when playing this harmonized scale it is technically cycling through a five one cadence because building a diminished chord of the third of a dominant gives you a dominant flat nine chord so what we are also getting is a repeating c6 and g7 flat nine chord sequence as we go through the harmonized scale hence why the sound of each diminished inversion is wanting to resolve to the next c6 inversion however this concept really goes so much deeper than just this so before we go any further i'm going to show you our go-to voicings for this scale as chords so as well as learning in closed position berry also applies the drop voicing system to these four note chords and this is actually really good for guitar because playing these chords in close position can be really hard or even close to impossible for certain inversions on certain string sets whereas the drop voicings work really well on guitar i'll be doing a really in-depth lesson on my view of the drop system but for now all you need to know is that drop just means to lower a note down an octave and in this system we think of all four notes in numbers so the highest note is one and the lowest note is four so if we had a drop two we would drop the second note from the top down an octave this makes the chord more of an open sound as well as making it less of a stretch on the gaza we also want to know drop threes which applies the same principle but now we lower the third note from the top instead which creates even more of a spread voicing and open sound the other one which i'll show you is the drop two and four this is where we drop more than one note the second note from the top and the bottom note there are others too such as the drop two and three or the double drop two drop three but we won't get into those for this video so here's what the major sixth diminished scalars chords sound like on the guitar and drop two [Music] we can also play the drop twos on the middle four strings as well [Music] and also on the top four strings [Music] we can only do the other drop voicings on the lowest four strings or the middle four strings so here's drop three [Music] and then drop two and four so you can hear that already there's some really lovely sounding movement going on just by playing through the scaler's chords here's an important bit of terminology to know barry refers to the four notes of the chord as being the soprano alto tenor and bass soprano being the highest note alto being the second highest tenor being the third and base being on the bottom if we take a drop three c6 in first inversion now the soprano is the note a g is the alto c is the tenor and e is in the bass it is a shame that not all of these chords voiced in closed position are possible on the guitar however if you want to get closer to the sound of playing those closed position voicings but without having the big stretches then what we can do is leave out one of the notes get rid of either the soprano or the bass voice so that we're left with three consecutive notes so if we do that with this voicing a closed position c6 and second inversion which actually isn't too bad of a stretch compared to some of the others but yeah if we get rid of the bass note we're left with these three consecutive notes which can really be quite comfortably taken through the scale [Music] some of these voicings actually sound really great and it's going to allow for so much more speed and control when playing ideas as opposed to using the full four note chord this is definitely something any instrument should experiment with we can also now try and open up these three consecutive notes by moving the middle note up or down an octave so if we take our starting three note voicing which was a c and e and drop the c down an octave we now have c a and e now if we take that through the scale we get this [Music] if you know your shell voicings or have ever checked out some of the gypsy jazz guitar language then you probably recognize these voicings but barry will say that this is where those movements come from [Music] as well as the major stick diminished scale there are three more scales in this concept which we need to know the minor sixth diminished the dominant seven diminished and the dominant seven flat five diminished all four scales use the exact same theory of being constructed by the chord mentioned in the scale's name and a diminished chord built from the scale's major seventh degree so a c minor sixth diminished scale would be a c minor sixth chord paired with a b diminished chord giving the notes c d e flat f g a flat a and b a c dominant diminished scale would be a c7 paired with a b diminished so c d e f g a flat b flat and b for a dominant 7 flat 5 diminished again it's now a c7 flat 5 chord paired with a b diminished giving the notes c d e f g flat a flat b flat and b make sure to also get familiar with all of these scales as chords using all of those voicing options which i showed you earlier so now before we go further into the applications of these scales let's get into how barry came up with this diminished theory this concept has actually been around for a long time as it's been a common arranging technique used for early big band writing however barry discovered it from a completely different angle and categorized it gave it names and has been developing the endless possibilities ever since so barry has quite a unique perspective on the theoretical side of music which you won't find being taught at any music school he takes quite a spiritual approach starting with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale now these are all the notes in our western music and he refers to this as being our musical universe or the 12 disciples or the 12 zodiac signs or the 12 months of the year but basically he refers to these 12 notes as being god he then goes on to say that god then made man and woman or adam and eve which he refers to as being the two whole tone scales so one starting on c which gives you the notes c d e g flat a flat and b flat and then one starting on the note d flat giving you the rest of the possible notes in our universe so d flat e flat f g a and b so what then happened next the man and woman had children they had three children which barry refers to as the three possible diminished chords available to us in our musical universe c diminished d flat diminished and d diminished each of these three diminished chords as perry puts it all share a 50 50 split of dna or chromosomes from the two whole tone scales because if you take a c diminished chord you get the note c e flat g flat and a and two of those notes c and g flat come from the first parent the c whole tone scale and the other two notes e flat and a come from the second parent the d flat whole tone scale you'll find that this is the same for also the d flat diminished and d diminished so by changing a couple of notes you can get to any diminished chord from either one of the whole tone scales which is already giving us some options to create harmonic movement with this way of thinking is all very logical and it's a really elegant way to see these relationships but here it is with a more mathematical view so if 12 is all our notes the chromatic scale or god if we divide that by six we get two six note scales the two whole tone scales or man and woman divide 12 by four and we get the three four note diminished chords the children we can also continue this by dividing 12 by three which will give us the four augmented triads and finally if we divide 12 by two we get the six possible tritones so what we then do next in order to get all the other chords which are used in what berry calls the diminished family is we move certain diminished chord tones around so if we take a c diminished which we know is the exact same as an e flat diminished g flat diminished and a diminished but if we lower one of the chord tones we get a dominant seventh chord we can do this to any of the chord tones which will result into four different dominant seventh chords uh b7 d7 f7 and a flat seven this is also a way to see where the eight note whole half or half hole diminished scale comes from because if you put together the four related dominant roots which are below each diminished chord tone they make up another diminished chord which is a semitone below the original diminished chord put the notes of these two diminished chords together and they make up the eight note diminished scale and because these four dominant chords are related to each other as they all come from this one diminished chord they all work and play well together so we can stack any of these chords or triads over each other and it will bring out different tensions all found within the half-hole diminished scale so this is a very common bit of knowledge as most people know that a diminished chord is the same as a dominant flat nine chord and so by lowering one of the chord tones it replaces the flat nine with the dominance root creating just a regular four note dominant seventh chord but what isn't this common knowledge is that we can also raise each chord tone up a half step so if we raise one of the diminished chord tones we now get a minor sixth chord and again we can do this to any of the diminished chord tones which will result in giving us four different minor sixth chords so g flat minor six a minor six c minor six and e flat minor six so what else can we do now let's lower two consecutive notes down a half step consecutive meaning two notes closest together in a closed position chord so for c diminished c and e flat are consecutive e flat and g flat are consecutive g flat and a are consecutive and a and c are actually consecutive as well so if we lower two of these consecutive notes we now get a major sixth chord and because there are four possible consecutive notes which we can move we get four different major sixth chords d6 f6 a flat six and b6 so now let's move these consecutive chord tones up this is actually going to give us a whole other set of different major sith chords but which are still within this family so a6 c6 e flat 6 and g flat 6. the last thing we can now try is moving two non-consecutive notes we only get two non-consecutive note options which are c and g flat and then e flat and a so if we lower the c and g flat we get a b seven flat five chord which is also the exact same as an f seven flat five chord as they're just an inversion of one another this is because dominant flaw five chords are tritone apart share the exact same notes if we lower the e flat and a we get a d seven flat five or an a flat seven flat five if we go back and now raise the non-consecutive notes we get an a7 flat five or e flat seven flat five and a c7 flat five or a g flat seven flat five so to summarize within this one diminished family we get c diminished and of course all four of its inversions we get four dominant seventh chords four minor sixth chords four major sixth chords another set of four different major sixth chords and four different dominant flat five chords plus the other four dominant flat five chords which are just the inversions of the previous ones this also tells us why there are four scales major sixth minor sixth dominant seven and dominant seven flat five diminished so this is a big family of chords which all share and come from this one c diminished and so they are all related to one another within each chord quality the chords are a minor third apart and barry calls these minor third relationships brothers and sisters and what he likes to say is who do children play well with first their brother and their sister referencing that all these chords work well together to create movement [Laughter] a common sound that barry uses to demonstrate connecting these relationships is by moving from a c6 chord to an f6 chord with a c diminished in between really this is just a movement in f major because c6 can be used as a voicing for f as c6 over f is basically an f major 9 chord which is basically just an f6 with borrowed notes but i'll get deeper into that later when we talk about some of the sixth chord options available to us and the borrowing concept so in drop two it sounds like this so that's c6 to c diminished moving to f6 this also sounds great when we take it through their inversions as well this move also exists for the brothers and sisters a minor third of part two so e flat to a flat g flat to b or a to d they're all using the same c diminished chord to connect to one another and so connecting any combination of these chords using that diminished in between will work really nicely for example connecting e flat to b this works because all these major sixth chords come from the same diminished by either raising or lowering two consecutive notes hence why they all share the same diminished chord we can also do a similar move by moving from the four chord to the f with a diminished in between so b flat six to b diminished moving to f6 that sounds like this [Laughter] and if we take it through its inversions so this time the diminished which b flat 6 and f6 come from is the d diminished here's another cool thing to spot let's look at the c6 to f6 again but this time see c6 as the one chord so this move is now using the one diminished to get from the one chord to the four chord but f six contains the same notes as a d minor seven which in relation to c is also the two chord you could also see the one diminished as the same as the flat three diminished and now say that we're going from one and then using the flat three diminished to resolve to the two and then back to flat three diminished to resolve to the one again so [Music] a well-known berry quote is when he says why doesn't anybody play flat 3 diminished anymore what he might mean by this is that in jazz we're so used to playing our two five ones and using the dominant five chord as our movement one that we forget about using the versatile flat three diminished which can resolve to either the one chord or the two chord it can even resolve to the three chord e minor seven which is typically a sub for the one chord anyway because e minor seven is actually g six and g six over c is c major nine again this will make more sense later on but anyway we've managed to move from the one chord to the two chord and back without ever needing to play a dominant five chord so you can apply this tension and release movement without being boxed in by the 251 terminology for example here's some movement from chord to chord without even using the dominant v chord but instead thinking in diminished instead the reason we can lower and raise different diminished notes around to generate the families of those four different chord types is because we're borrowing and mixing notes from two different diminished chords so if we look at c6 we got there by raising two consecutive notes up from a c diminished so this c6 chord now shares 50 percent of its dna from the c diminished the c in a notes and the other 50 comes from the d flat diminished so the e and g notes so now we know this c6 is made up of two different diminished chords but what about the other diminished the one we haven't used the d diminished we haven't yet included this one so what we do is add it by putting the d diminished together with the c6 this is what creates the c major sixth diminished scale and answers why we play through and move from c six to d diminished we can experiment with this on the other chord types too let's take c7 one of the notes the c is from the c diminished and the other three notes come from the d flat diminished so we include the d diminished c minor six three notes now come from the c diminished and one note comes from the d flat diminished so again we would add the d diminished the c seven flat five that has two notes from the c diminished and two notes from the d flat diminished so we add the d diminished let's change the root let's take an f minor six we've got one note from the c diminished and three notes from the d diminished so this time we add the d flat diminished this is where all four of these scales the major sixth diminished the minor sixth diminished the dominant seven diminished and the dominant seven flat five diminished come from this is all very theoretical however once you get your head around this very logical concept it will give you the ability to see all the relationships and it gives you a good insight into how barry came to the sixth diminished idea once you can visualize all these relationships and no longer need to think about the theory it will be very liberating and you'll feel very free to add movement when improvising [Music] the first thing we need to know when applying these scales is that barry doesn't think in minor seven chords for example if we see an a minor seven it is really just a c6 with the sixth and the bass as all the inversions of c6 are the same notes as a minor seven this is the same for an a minor seven flat five chord two is really just a c minor six with the sixth in the bass you probably spotted this already when i was showing you some of the inversions of these chords barry adopted this way of thinking after he heard thelonious monk reference a minor seven flat v chord in this way so now whenever we see a minor seven chord we think of it as just being an inversion of a major sixth chord and when we see a minor seven flat 5 it's just an inversion of a minor 6th chord another important rule to know is that every dominant chord has what barry calls an important minor the important minor is found on the 5th degree of the dominant so if you had a d7 the important minor would be a minor 7. this is what we know as the two-five progression however as i said before berry thinks in movement and not static two five ones and remember we don't think in minor seven chords so the two chord is actually a c6 and so we use the c major six diminished scale to create the movement which leads into the v chord here's a very basic way of what this can sound like [Music] you could also continue this sound over the v chord d7 as it creates a d7 sus sound plus the diminished movements however as we know there are loads of other options which we can use for playing over the dominant 5 chord so as well as using barry's dominant 7th and dominant 7 flat 5 diminished scales for creating movement and harmonizing melodies over dominant chords a good one to also know is that we can again use the important minor rule on d7 but this time think of the minor as an a minor 6 which allows us to use the a minor 6 diminished scale the reason this works is for the same reason as before both d7 and a minor 6 come from the same c diminished chord you just either lower the e flat to get to d7 or raise it to get to a minor 6. we can also use this same concept to get a different sound on the dominant chord by using the important minor rule on the tritone sub of d7 in other words we can use the minor sixth diminished on the fifth degree of the a flat seven which is the tritone sub of d7 this is what we call the tritones minor so this would be using a e flat minor six diminished scale over d7 which creates the familiar sort of altered dominant sound now that you know where the tritone's minor comes from an easier way to achieve this sound is just to say you can use a minor sixth diminished scale a half step up from the dominant chord and again this works because the e flat minor 6 also comes from the same c diminished it's also good to note that the makeup of a minor 6 diminished scale is great for creating harmonic movement as well as single note lines on melodic minor modes so here's what the tritone's minor can sound like for movement on the v chord [Music] it's also important to note that when you're playing around with these ideas you probably don't want to use the diminished to lead to the next chord for example in a 2-5-1 the movement between these chords already exists and work nicely we're just using the diminished to create more movement which live within each chord so we're using the major 6th diminished on the 2 chord to create its own dominant tectonic movement before voice leading from the 2 to the 5. [Music] as barry thinks mainly in 6th chords here are some important options which we need to know so that we can start to visualize which major and minor sixth chords can be used to create various types of harmony so let's start with the important major types if we have a c major chord we know that our go to is a c major six if we want to create a c major nine sound we can use a concept which barry calls the sixth and the fifth this is where we build a major sixth chord off of the fifth degree so g major sixth over c which gives us the notes of c major nine this got mentioned earlier when i talked about connecting these two chords with the passing diminished so let's check out our minor chord options if we see a c minor six we know our go-to would just be to build a minor six off of the root so giving us a c minor six if we see a seam on a seven we know that really it's just an inversion of e flat six so we would play a relative major sixth any time we saw a minor seven chord the same principle goes for a c minor seven flat five as this is just an inversion of an e flat minor six so anytime we see a minor seven flat five chord we can think of the relative minor sixth chord for the dominant chord options let's start with a c seven sus four if we wanted to create this sound we would build a major sixth chord off of the seventh degree so b flat major sixth over c it's worth spotting the connection of b flat major sixth also being the option for a g minor seven which is the important minor or the two chord of the c7 we can also create a c seven sus flat nine sound by now using a b flat minor sixth built from the seventh degree our other two options are the ones i mentioned before where we use the important minor rule and the tritone sub's important minor rule so if we saw a c9 we would use a g minor six or a minor sixth built off the fifth degree and for a c altered or a c seven sharp five flat nine sound we use the tritones minor the important minor of the tritone of c or in other words a minor sixth built off the flat two which is d flat minus six over c so because we can harmonize every note of the scale this now allows us to harmonize melodies and provide movement under those melodies you can apply this concept to any song but using tunes from the american songbook is a great resource to practice these ideas let's apply it to the song stella by starlight this is a standard which barry often uses to demonstrate these concepts because basically it works all over the place here's roughly how the tune goes [Music] so it's this section of the tune which we'll look at [Music] so it's that bar with the static b flat major chord and the descending scale as the melody [Music] so this is a really great place to use the b flat major six diminished scale because each one of these notes [Music] either come from the b flat major sixth chord or the diminished chord so if we look at each note and harmonize it the e flat that comes from the diminished d comes from the b flat major six c from the diminished b flat from the major six so already just by harmonizing these notes there's our movement if we take this up the octave and continue through the tune uh we get something like this [Music] d minor six here f major six [Music] c minor six [Music] if i demonstrate another example but using the same scales you could get something like this [Music] [Laughter] [Music] barry demonstrates a really cool counterpoint idea of this b flat major melody using the sixth diminished scale he harmonizes the descending melody as we've been doing but in the bass or in his left hand he adds a line which ascends through the scale what makes this really interesting is that the harmonized descending melody starts on a diminished the e flat however he starts the ascending bass movement on an f which is from the major sixth so you get both a diminished and a major sixth going against each other in contrary motion for each harmonized melody note this creates some really interesting intense sounds it's hard to do on the guitar but if you harmonize the melody and drop two like we've been doing you can actually just leave out the bottom note and replace it with the ascending bass notes starting on f so instead of something like this we get this this also actually voice leads perfectly into the flat five of the e-half diminished i'd probably break it up a little bit though when playing it on the guitar so maybe something like this same idea for the f fun thing you could experiment with is putting the melody in the bass and having the harmonized movement on top so instead of playing the melody here you could take it down an octave and now put the harmony on top of it you just might want to play the harmony notes a little bit quieter than melody notes so that the melody stands out but yeah you could get something like [Music] this here's a really cool move barry talks about when explaining where half diminished chords can come from barry says a half diminished chord is just a minor chord with the sixth in the bass and we can use that minor's relative major sixth diminished scale so if we had f sharp minor seven flat five or f sharp half diminished berry would say that it comes from c major because f sharp half diminished is just a minor with the sixth and the base and the relative major of a minor is c also look how these chords are a minor third apart as we know the family comes from minor third relationships berry uses this to create movement leading into the half diminished chord the reason we can use c major sixth diminished to connect to the f sharp minor 7.5 is because if we had a progression that went from the one to a minor two five cadence to three or even three major then in this key we would have c f sharp minor seven flat five b seven which would then resolve to either e minor or e major this is a very common progression which you'll find in so many tunes so if we chose the individual sixth diminished scales for each one of those chords we would use the c major six diminished for the c a minor sixth diminished for the f sharp minor seven flat five and c minor six for the b7 all of those six diminished scales use the same added diminished found on the major seventh degree of each of those scales b diminished so anytime you see a major chord moving to a minor seven flat five a tritone away you can use the major sixth diminish to get there as there's only one note difference between the c6 and the f sharp minor seven flat five or a minor six with the sixth and the bass if we apply this theory to the first few chords of stella by starlight the e half diminished could really be a b flat because e half diminished is just g minor with the sixth in the bass and b flat is the relative major of g minor so we can actually play g minor 7 to c7 instead of the e half diminished to a7 c7 works in place of the a7 because they come from the same family and share the same diminished so now if we look at the pattern of the first few chord changes we get g minor 7 to c7 to c minor 7 to f7 to f minor 7 to b flat 7 which resolves to e flat major this is really interesting to me because i always wondered how e half diminished to a7 to c minor was connected but seeing these relationships has helped demystify that chord change another way to see how a7 to c minor connects is that we know a7 comes from b flat diminished which is the same as d flat diminished and d flat diminished to c minor is a really common chord change which we see all the time this is because d flat diminished voice leads or moves really nicely to c minor 7 as c minor 7 is really just e flat 6 which comes from d flat diminished by moving two consecutive notes [Music] [Music] let's apply this half diminished concept to the section of the song we were looking at because it actually has this move in the chord sequence already so it moves from b flat major to the e half diminished a7 which then goes to d minor which wants to move to the sixth in the bass which then voice leads to the four minor of f and then you can play f with a in the bass to voice lead more [Music] it then goes to another e half diminished to a7 which then goes to a half diminished d7 so let's do what we did at the beginning of the song where we replaced the e half diminished a7 with a g minor seven to c7 instead because this is then going to allow us to move to c minor seven or e flat six instead of going straight to the a minor seven flat five we wanna do this because we wanna use the e flat six diminished scale to get there because as we know that a half diminished is really just a c minor with the sixth and the base and the relative major of c minor is e flat so we could do something like this [Music] same kind of thing again [Music] barry also demonstrates being able to play an e flat major seven chord with a b flat seven to get in there instead of going straight to there half diminished [Music] let's do it with the tritone sub so e7 instead of the b flat seven this half diminished major relationship is a really nice one to understand because this can be applied to so many standards this is just going to help us play more movement and disguise our common two five progressions a great example which barry shows is on the song night and day the chords are d half diminished to g7 c major but we know that really that d half diminished is just an f minor with a sixth in the bass and the relative major of f minor is a flat so we can play a flat instead [Music] a lot of people play this chord already for this tune but how about creating movement between the two by using the a flat major 6 diminished scale [Music] the tune then goes from the c major 7 chord to an f sharp half diminished well we don't really want to just jump from c to f sharp we want to play movement and connect the two so relative minor of c is a minor put the sixth in the bass we've got f sharp minor seven flat five so we know that this chord just comes from c major and then we can play a movement like this [Music] we could also choose to go through an entire song harmonizing every note of the melody using the six diminished scale for example if we apply it to the first bit the melody on the song there'll never be another u which is in the key of e flat we would use the e flat major state diminished scale if i do up the octave [Music] so this works however in my opinion i'm not always too keen on the sound of playing these big boxed chords while trying to bring out a melody on the guitar there's still movement happening and it can be really nice in the right moment however sometimes less is more and there are more subtle ways that we could apply this scale to complement the inner movements while still having the melody stand out this concept is great for voice leading and creating interesting counterpoint lines but in order to have some real control over the harmonic possibilities and movement we need to practice it the same way as we would practice any other scale as well as practicing the scale as chords with the different drop voicings and inversions barry also gets his students to practice the scale in other ways here are a few common ways to practice the scale to get you started with applying different ideas into your improvising i'll demonstrate these exercises in the key of c using the c major 6 diminished scale however you should also practice all these ideas for the minor 6th dominant 7 and dominant 7 flat 5 diminished scales 2 and of course in all 12 keys so that you can freely apply the ideas over any set of chords so just like any other scale we need to be able to play it with different interval sets here it is in thirds [Music] so it's good to spot that one of these thirds is actually a major second interval the between the g and the a however in this context that major second is actually acting as a type of third six are also a really good one to know especially for plate melodies in octaves yeah on guitar practicing that one without changing position is really good fingering and visualization practice another useful set for melodies is learning the scale intense [Music] berry also gets his students to practice this scale in contrary motion it's a bit tricky on the guitar but it's great for independence and you can use it for some really interesting movement within your lines [Music] and of course we want to practice all this stuff through all four scales so for example let's make this minor [Music] so in order for us to be able to freely do this on any part of the neck and so that we can practice different note combinations we should try starting it from each scale degree so for example i can move up the neck and practice this contrary scale starting on the second degree [Music] or we could move down let's start it on the sixth [Music] just have fun and experiment doing this everywhere on the neck what's really good is adding some polyrhythmic practice while playing these scales in country motion so for example we could play the ascending line in standard quarter notes and then maybe the descending line could be dotted quarter notes [Music] flip it around so now the ascending note's doing the dotted quarter note [Music] try and finger it so that every note lasts their actual note value as well you could even try and combine this counterpoint idea with the interval sets from earlier for example we could move down the scale in 6 but also with a contrary bass movement [Music] swap the direction [Music] barry also likes to practice gradually filling in the notes from the corresponding chord when playing the scale and contrary motion so as his right hand ascends through the scale and his left hand descends a note gets added for each degree which creates an expanding effect which makes the sound of the scale get bigger and bigger also by playing it backwards it will then create a contracting effect making the sound go from big to small so this is of course impossible to play on the guitar however there's loads of other ways we can voice each degree in order to create the same kind of effect just remember the most important thing is to keep the soprano note and the bass note moving in contrary motion and then to just fill in the notes from the corresponding chord gradually changing from three note voicings to four note voicings when you can the way i like to do it is like this [Music] this is a good one because even though we aren't adding an extra note each time when we get to the four note voicings we go from a drop two to a drop three and then to a drop two and four and because these voicings are naturally more spread out each time it helps create that expanding or bigger effect berry likes to use segments of this idea in loads of different ways when he's improvising lines when practicing different keys he often applies it to a recurring 2-5 progression which change key down a tone each time [Music] another common example he teaches is a move which he does as a sort of response with his left hand it doesn't necessarily have the strict country motion but it does use the idea of gradually adding more and more notes so the idea is he does a jump from the root to the fifth and then he goes up the scale up until the third while adding extra notes and expanding so it sounds like this one note one note one note two notes two notes three notes three notes four notes so in context you could do something like this [Music] let's say we wanted to do this move on the two chord and let's make this two chord half diminished so for d half diminished we would think f minor 6 and do the same move [Music] you can really take this idea and voice it with any added notes or you can even try different starting points just experiment and find what you like but the main thing which all of this is going to hopefully open up is the ability to create some interesting lines with real movement and to get us away from thinking that we always need to play these big harmonized block chords all the time here's another one berry likes to do which is actually really well suited for guitar he moves up from the diminished to the c6 and then descends through the scale with that same pattern but what's really interesting about it is that for the diminished he only plays two notes which then expands to three notes for the c6 this naturally creates beautiful inner movement and a counterpoint type line here's what it sounds like [Music] you can play it more in position or the minor version [Music] let's try it in a two-five so c6 diminished for a minor seven and then we'll play the pattern in e flat minor zip diminish for the v chord d7 [Music] there are some other things which we can do to help break up playing each block chord for example for each diminished chord we could just play the bass note so instead of playing everything [Music] we just get this this creates a much more fluid sound which complements the movement and it's also a lot easier to play at higher speeds but let's say you do want to hear the full sound of the diminished voicing so let's condense down the c6 instead let's play the c6 chords intense eliminating the alto antenna voice [Music] or we could do tense and full chords for both we can also take this idea further and practice connecting chords with the scale in the bass so using a bass line as the movement [Music] we can also descend [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so we also want to practice the scale in a way where we can improvise single note lines and again we tackle this the same as any other scale so starting by getting comfortable playing it up and down with a nice fingering and then we can play in thirds remember g to a is a third and of course when we practice groupings like this we should try all the variations too so like this one [Music] or this is a good one too [Music] the next thing would be practicing the triads barry likes to repeat a note so that it rhythmically fits back down [Music] here's a really musical descending triad pattern which is worth practicing it's sort of a triad pivot move where you start on the fifth and then jump below to play the root in the third before repeating the fifth again here's how it sounds [Music] this one sounds really great for minor actually [Music] next we practice four note chords [Laughter] [Music] descending and again this one sounds great for minor [Music] so all of these ideas should help us create lines when using this scale to improvise for example as we know the six diminished scale has the sound of the perfect cadence already built into it so it can work very well over our 251 progressions let's try using some of those nice minor ideas over a minor two five something like this [Music] okay so now let's talk about borrowing this is a really important concept within the sick diminished scale which is going to truly open up endless harmonic possibilities and choices when playing movement so what is the borrowing concept as we know the major 6th diminished only has two chords a major sixth and a diminished chord and the scale comes from putting the notes of these two chords together so borrowing is taking one or more notes from one of the chords and playing it within the other the example barry will often show first is taking a c6 chord and replacing the six with the borrowed diminished note from above giving us a new chord with the notes c e g and b so we may know this chord as a c major seven however in barry's way of thinking this is actually a c6 chord with a borrowed diminished note and it's going to be best for us to think of it like this too when we're using this whole barry harris concept so what he then gets his students to do is run that new chord up the sixth diminished scale so the second chord would now be a diminished with a borrowed sixth note and it would continue with that pattern as you went up the scale and if you did want to give conventional names to each one of these new chords then we would technically get a c major 7 d minor 7 flat 5 e minor 11 f diminished major 7 g7 sus a flat diminished major 7 a minor major 7 and b minor 7 flat 5. so this has now given us some really interesting and more modern sounding chords to harmonize with the next thing to experiment with would be to try and borrow other notes to generate more new sounds for example borrowing a diminished note from above or below the root of the c6 chord or the third or the fifth and then we would take these new voicings through the scale you could also borrow two diminished notes such as one replacing the sixth and one replacing the fifth and then take that through the scale or borrow one from below and one from above when taking these new voicings through the scale a lot of the chords you'll generate will be hard to give a conventional name to however it doesn't really matter because we know it's just a major sixth chord with x amount of boron diminished notes or vice versa the true key to borrowing is being able to visualize the diminished notes which surround each sixth note so on the guitar and drop two here's our c6 now with the boro diminished note and then let's take this through the scale [Music] so even with this we can use this as a sort of suspended movement for each chord [Music] so the diminished note is resolving to the major sixth note add some chromatics for even more movement [Music] also try on different string sets [Music] now let's change the borrowed note from being in the alto voice to the soprano [Music] voice there's some really great stuff to discover here so make sure to also practice this idea for all the other types of drop voicings and of course in all 12 keys these borrow sounds also work great for harmonizing melodies too for example if i take the tune we looked at earlier there will never be another you and do something like this as you can hear by experimenting with all this we've managed to get some really modern sounds which has all just come from this traditional sixth diminished concept here's a nice berry example for a two five and g so a minor seven to d7 the movement is going to happen on the two chord leading into the five chord and our melody is going to be this [Music] okay so we know that the two chord a minor seven is really just a c major sixth and we can use the c major sixth diminished scale which does work perfectly to harmonize this melody and also voice leads really nicely into the d7 so that starting a minor 7 or c6 already has a borrow diminished note because of the melody the b [Music] but in order for the other notes to accurately move through the scale in the same way as the melody does we need to set up our starting chord with more borrowed diminished notes let's borrow another diminished note for the bass replacing the g to a g sharp so this is now our starting chord which supports the first note of the melody and with this the bass voice can now share the same melodic shape as the melody as they can now move perfectly through the scale together [Music] because before when the bass voice was a g and when we jumped to this block voicing to harmonize the next melody note the bass voice had to skip a note of the scale which doesn't copy the same melodic shape as the melody in the same way that g sharp does let's now add a third borrow diminished note by changing the e to an f and now let's move these three diminished notes through the scale to harmonize the melody [Music] as you can see these three notes can move perfectly through the scale together [Music] giving them the same melodic shape this sounds really great and even though if you look at the harmonized notes it's just the same as the original harmonized c6 diminished version but with the tenor voice missing however to me it sounds so much better because those three notes are set up perfectly to move through the scale and then voice sleep to the d7 and so the specific notes all have a purpose which was set up by the starting a minor seven or c6 chord with the necessary bar of diminished notes this has helped achieve a much more sophisticated note choice rather than just playing the go to block voicings to harmonize the melody let's apply the same kind of movement for the v chord so we know for d7 we can use the e flat minor sixth diminished and if we copy the melody idea we get this [Music] so again we now have an e flat minor sixth chord with a borrow diminished note the f and this is already interesting because this is a very common d altered move which people do to lead to a g major but what we probably don't think about is that it comes from borrowing a note from the diminished so why not borrow more but going back to the melody let's now add the second borrow diminished to the first chord and move it through the scale now let's borrow the third one put the two and the five together [Music] so that's some really nice movement let's try another example but change key to a 2 5 and c major so for d minor 7 we use f major 6 diminished and let's do something different for the 5 chord let's use notes from the half hole diminished scale here's the idea so what i did there was i went up the f major six diminished but skipping a diminished inversion just for a melodic choice i then skipped again to an f6 chord with a borrow diminished note again just for the purpose of the melody i then went up to the diminished and then before resolving to the v chord i played an f6 again but the one with the three borrowed diminished notes this gives a whole new tension which allows me to gradually voice lead to the v chord so the bass and alto voice resolve first wow they i let the e hang which is nice to do but i resolve the e before going to the five and then for the v chord i did this pattern what this is is using the diminished scale for the dominant tension if you remember earlier i mentioned that the eight note diminished scale was made up of two diminished chords in this case an a flat diminished and also the diminished which is made up of the four related dominant roots that come from the a flat diminished so g diminished so when played over g7 this gives us a half hole diminished scale in the same way the f major six diminished only has two chords which we've been borrowing between i can do this same borrowing concept the two diminished chords which make up this half hole scale so that five chord line is really just an a flat diminished with a borrowed note from g diminished which i resolve i then just move this through its inversions [Music] which happens to all be the same as it's only using diminished chords which are of course all symmetrical and you can borrow between these two diminished chords for any chord tone too [Music] so as you can hear there is so much we can do to provide different movements between these chords because we're not just moving from a sub dominant to a dominant to a tonic or in other words playing two five one these concepts allow us to create movement within each chord like what we've been doing on the two chord this is because the scale creates its own inner subdominant to dominant relationships within this two chord so we know the 251 is found everywhere in music but this sixth diminished scale is showing us where it's found within each chord so by seeing these inner relationships this is what's going to allow us to break free from just being 2-5 players and instead musicians who play movements so the short and long voicings are basically a technique which produces a really beautiful and easy way to get movement on a static chord let's apply this to c6 so to generate what barry calls a short voicing you start with the closed root position c6 and then you precede it with a closed position g6 from above this g6 happens to be in its second inversion this ties in with our sixth on the fifth sixth chord option from earlier where we said that a g6 over c gives you a c major nine sound so now what we do with this is we move that pattern through the scale however berry doesn't include the flat six in this scale so we're essentially just taking it through the c major scale what you'll notice is for each g6 to c6 cell the two inner voices the alto antenna stay the same and the two alto voices the spiral and bass move this is what we get so when we deconstruct what's happening here the inner voices are giving us these thirds which move up the scale for each cell and the outer voices are giving us a major sixth interval which is doing this pattern [Music] okay so for what barry calls the long voicing what we do is take the same g6 to c6 cell which we started with but we flip the outer voices so the top note goes down an octave and the bottom note goes up an octave middle notes stay the same by doing this it actually generates drop two voicings and like before we take this pattern through the scale so that's our long voicing we still have the thirds moving in the middle but now the outer voices are moving intense [Music] [Laughter] it may help if we give these generated chords a conventional name but only for the purpose of learning the voicings we shouldn't necessarily think about this in block chords otherwise it takes away the aspect of this being all about movement so what we can now do is combine both of these voicings into short long or long short this is where some really pretty movement starts to happen here's what i mean for short long we would play the first short voice g6 to c6 cell and then follow it with the first long voice cell and doing that through the scale would then sound like this so this creates a really nice scale down movement in the bass [Music] and on top we get this nice melody so together [Music] for long short we would do the same thing but just change the order to the long voice first and then the short voice which sounds like this so now we have the descending scale movement on top and the nice melody in the bass i believe barry actually plays these movements by only hitting the middle voices once within a cell this makes it much smoother and it's better for speed on the piano these systems actually work really nicely on the piano and the fingerings are quite easy but really satisfying to play however this isn't something that necessarily works or comes across well on the guitar there are a few things we need to work around because even though the long voicings are in drop 2 which work really well on the guitar it can be a real struggle to play the close position short voicings or even impossible if using any other string set other than the top four so here's a tip for what we can do on the guitar in order to achieve this concept more easily and with more control so our options are to either leave out the outer voice or the tenor voice on the short voicings so that it eliminates any nasty stretches and it's up to you if you want to continue leaving out the chosen voice when switching to the long voicing so it's consistent i don't actually mind playing the full voicing as long as it doesn't interfere with the flow of the music however you should definitely practice both so here's what short long sounds like without the alto and the short [Music] voicings [Music] now here's what it sounds like without the tenor voice instead but i'll do it long short this time [Music] do [Music] there's also a cool demonstration of barry practicing this but also including key changes as well he starts in c and then does a key change up a minor third which sounds really great barry likes to practice in different keys by often finding a creative and musical way to change key up a minor third for example he'll do this pattern when moving through a scale as chords he'll play the one the two and the three and then he'll move up a half step to play the two chord with the key a minor third above he'll then move down to the one of the new key and start that pattern again until he's moved through all four keys this is cool because remember the family is based off of minor third relationships so this is practicing the brother and sister keys within that family you're also going to want to practice this system for minor as well so to generate c minor sound just flatten the third so every e becomes e flat [Music] let's again use the important minor rule to apply on a dominant chord so on a 2 5 and g let's use the c6 for a minor 7 and then e flat minor 6 the tritone's minor for d7 let's get rid of the outer voice to make it a bit easier or there is another thing which i've experimented with with this short and long concept which is starting with the different inversions of c6 and then moving through the scale with those new starting points it's generated the same way so the short voicing starts with a closed position c6 chord but this time in either first second or third inversion and we then precede it with the g6 chord from above so if it was a first inversion c6 with e in the bass you would proceed it with a closed voice g6 in third inversion with e in the bass and so on and then again to generate the long voicing you would just flip the top and bottom note however these sounds don't work as well as the original because the voices which move in each cell to create the melodies are now in the inner part of the voicing and the notes which stay the same are now on the outer part of the chord so you don't really hear the movement as clearly however i did check them out so i thought it was worth sharing the final thing i experimented with was including the flat 6 in the scale when moving the g6 to c6 cell through it this generated some really interesting sounds have a listen this is just an insight to one of barry harris's concepts as he has loads more amazing views on music and methods to learning the jazz language and what's really beautiful is that they all tie in together so i hope you found this video useful please feel free to comment if you have any more thoughts on any of these ideas practicing this concept is a never-ending journey so if you have anything to add i'd love to hear it if this is all new to you then i encourage you to experiment with this stuff and to develop your own ways of applying these sounds and of course go check out barry harris so that you can learn straight from the source so i thought i'd finish the video with a loose improvised example of using some of these ideas over one of my favorite standards autumn in new york but yeah if you found this video useful please go ahead and like subscribe and share the video and also remember to hit the notification bell if you don't want to miss out on any future videos and lessons huge thanks for watching and i'll see you guys in the next one cheers [Music] bye [Music] hmm [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Robbie Barnby

Views: 158,460

Rating: 4.9622641 out of 5

Keywords: barry harris, 6th diminished scale, barry harris 6th diminished scale, sixth diminished scale, guitar, piano, barry harris giant steps, barry harris masterclass, barry harris transcription, barry harris blues, barry harris stella by starlight, jazz, how to use 6th diminished scale, 6th diminished scale chords, explained, jazz improvisation, arpeggios, music lessons, harmony, music theory, robbie barnby, bebop, guitar technique, chord, lesson, things i've learned from barry harris, tilfbh

Id: 7reOAaveCi0

Length: 69min 27sec (4167 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021