6th Diminished Scale Workout

today's guided practice session is all about a simple but brilliant concept you know we love that around here we love things that are easy to explain and easy to understand but are so brilliant that they open up just a wealth of possibilities right so we have we start with a very simple grain of knowledge that we can just keep expanding keep making things out of and there's no doubt that this sixth diminished scale that barry harris uh has famously taught and i i encourage you to check out any kind of paid content go he's still doing zoom master classes this guy amazing he's a treasure he's a national treasure especially in the jazz community here um and so go check out all of his content on this he's the best ever and we're just going to practice his stuff here and i'll break it down for you a little bit so what is the sixth diminished scale someone was asking earlier today is it a diminished scale no it's actually not a diminished scale even though diminished is in the title of the scale you know a diminished scale in the key of we'll work in e flat because that's the key we're working on today would be either whole half a series of whole steps half steps like this [Music] or half hole like this right it's it's either a scale that we use over like a dominant seven flat nine or over a diminished chord itself the sixth diminished scale is not that at all in fact it's just a major scale so like e flat major but it's octatonic there's one extra note between the fifth and sixth degrees [Music] so why the fifth and sixth degrees well because for a very good reason for very specific reason what that does is sets up this whole world of melody and harmony and counterpoint that we can then draw on while we try to harmonize with our melodies while we try to harmonize with them either with chords or with like counter melodies or with just single single note harmony right so let's take a look at here what this e flat major sixth diminished scale is and i think you're gonna get uh some some eye opening moments here just by my color coding system here that i've worked out so here i have the sixth diminished right and then we're back to e flat here now you might notice that every other note i've changed the color and there's a reason for this when we do that when we skip a note here the notes in blue if we start on e flat and we just play the notes in blue right every other note we get this an e flat six chord right and if we do the same thing but starting on the second note f [Music] we get this f diminished this is where the name comes from sixth diminished sixth diminished and we can keep going by the way so when we get to the third right when we get to this next if you look down there at the third line right if we move every note up the scale we get another e flat major six just a different inversion and we do it again another f diminished just a different inversion i'll do it again e flat major six another inversion it just keeps doing that so here's the scale you could do this in thirds [Music] right it's all good the whole reason why it's called the six diminishes because it just alternates the strong tones of the sixth major six and the diminished now why does this work so well and why does this provide such great harmony because this e flat major 6 that this this scale creates by starting on the first note and skipping a note that's like a 1 chord right this is like the tonic of e flat right it's an e flat major chord the sixth is a super strong color note here that we have so we have one and then this f dimish what is this well if we put a b flat in this right like a five that acts as a dominant chord right it's all the juicy notes from b flat seven we have the the third d the seven a flat the five f and that b which is the flat nine so really this is like a e flat six b flat flat nine e flat six b flat flat nine that's why it's called the sixth diminished some people call this the major bebop scale because it kind of refers to what the bebop scale is where there's an extra note but i think barry harris is totally spot on to call this the sixth diminished if you think about it like that we alternate from from a six chord to the diminished six chord to the diminished right the major bebop scale is technically the same thing but let's call this what it is so that we can ingrain in our heads that we have this option that we're either every note here in this scale right is either one or two one or two options the major sixth or the diminished it's either a sixth or it's diminished it's either part of the sixth or part of the diminished why does this matter well this helps us to be able to literally harmonize any note of any melody using this very simple technique that's margo in the background that's a 17 year old dog by the way i just want to put that out there you look great margot uh she rarely gets to make a cameo because like i said i have to screen them but uh anyway so you can make you can harmonize any melody using this really simple technique but again if we think about it it's just an e flat major bebop scale well then it doesn't matter but if we think about it as it's either part of the major six or the diminished right so it's either this one of this blue set or one of this orange set that we have here [Music] right so we know that kind of the first way we've done this around here at open studio is to use this in black chords right to actually be able to harmonize melodies using block chords this is a great way to do that because no matter what the melody note is it's either an e flat major six right or uh a diminished chord right which is the five it acts as the five same kind of thing so let's break it down even more simply over there will never be another you using our color coding system here we can harmonize the melody right you all know there will never be another you [Music] it's the least swinging version ever right just very simple oh this should be orange here come on adam uh this f and d should be orange that's part of obviously the diminished so we can harmonize this melody [Music] by asking ourselves one simple question is the melody note part of the one right the sixth or is it part of the diminished portion of the sixth diminished right is it in the blue set or is it in the orange set is it in this set of notes or that set of notes that's that's it so we can literally harmonize here uh you see i have written here parallel because we can do this parallel right so the first note of the melody is b flat we can harmonize it here starting a third below g now g is part of that e flat six chord right so that works the next note is the sixth c so you might think oh okay we can go to a flat here right no no no because remember in the sixth diminished this c is part of that blue set that e flat major six chord so we need to harmonize it with another note from that e flat major 6. so let's choose the b-flat it's a little clashy but i kind of like it now the next note d is part of that f-diminished chord right so we can use this b natural which is also a part of this f diminished e flat of course we can use the sixth here to harmonize and by the way we can use any note we want from that e flat major six we could use that that that any note f should this should be orange both these should be orange right because it's part of the f diminished so we can use that d g you see where i'm going with this [Music] it even works over this d half diminished g7 flat 13 flat 9. these are going to the relative minor so it works here too right even if we have this we can use the same six diminished scale to harmonize now it still works too over the c minor seven right this c minor seven is the relative minor to e flat so this e flat major six diminished this harmonic tool this this tool for counterpoint works so well over the minor seven chord check it out we can use the same principle it's just the same scale same rules apply right so we have our g in the melody which we can use as part of again e flat major six i'm just in the key of e flat here down to e flat we're still just parallel that f is part of the f diminished and then the rest is just all e flat major six and that b flat seven that's where that kind of stops and we'll switch keys there as we go to the four but but that's for another day we're just dealing with this one thing here so let's play this i want you to hear how this sounds right here how we can make some very simple harmony out of just using this one scale this one six diminished scale [Music] a to harmonize our our melodies one two three [Music] one two three so that's just keeping with a rule a parallel rule we can get even cooler things happening than that that's very basic bob but what if we wanted to do i don't know contrary motion right so what if we started here on b flat i've taken the color coding out because i want you to be able to recognize this for itself again if any note of this melody is part of a e flat major six chord right because we know it's just it can either be e flat major six or f diminished all the notes of this melody are going to be one of those two sets part of that so if it's if the note on the melody is part of the e flat major six we can harmonize it with literally any other note of that e flat major six chord so in this case of this b flat i'm going to use the same note because we're going to do contrary motion we need to start somewhere it's always great with contrary motion to actually start on the on the like a similar spot and then move out so again when we get to the c we can harmonize the c which is the sixth of e flat major six with any other note of the e flat major six so how about g and we'll just go we'll make a rule that will go down as the melody goes up the d right is part of the f diminished right so we can use that f e flat obviously f is part of the f diminished so we can use that d g we can use that c b flat is part of the e flat major six right it just doesn't matter whatever [Music] let's hear that whole thing as we work our way down one more time beautiful harmony and then again remember this rule applies here even on the minor chord even on that c minor seven so if we do some parallel mo or sorry some contrary motion right this is all notes in the e flat major six right because the g is part of that e flat major six so we can use c i mean and you can literally put the chord on it like whatever the note is it's g okay that's e flat major six i can play an e flat major six chord and pick any of these notes here whether it's that or that or that or that right it doesn't matter hey so just again some contrary motion we pick our spot to start and then we just keep with that rule listen to that melody that we've made the counter melody the counter point that we've made [Music] beautiful right [Music] just based off of harmonizing that with the other notes of the sixth diminished scale again uh let me just bring this up from the start here so you can see exactly what i'm talking about just to reiterate here that's the sixth diminished scale if we skip a note we get two sets of four notes it's an eight note scale if we skip a note and make chords we get either a sixth chord or a diminished chord and then that just keeps going up as we move up it's so brilliant so that was the contrary motion let's play through the contrary motion shall we let's try this one two three [Music] isn't that great so i did i didn't keep contrary when the melody changed i just kept going down which is fun we'll get into that in just a second let's do the second phrase pick up to the c minor seven one two three again just i love this melody here the counter melody just from doing some contrary motion of that of that melody let's try it again from the top two three play with me [Music] one two three [Music] how great is that how great is that okay so we have these rules we've done some parallel motion we've done some contrary motion it's all good and you know you might notice that especially works well with melodies here that move step wise well what if we took off some of the handcuffs and we kind of did a little bit of both right what if we did any direction we want this is when it gets super cool this is when you can actually form little counter melodies based off of is it part of that blue set right the sixth the sixth chord or the orange set right the diminished chord so check it out when we want to go counter we can go counter and we want to go parallel we can just switch it up how great is that [Music] isn't that super cool and then check out the second phrase oh lost my camera check out the second phrase [Music] isn't that great so again i'll play that second phrase one more time here [Music] so you can switch direction at will it only matters that the note you're harmonizing with is part of either that major six chord or the diminished remember it's just that that's the brilliance of the sixth diminished scale is that once we know that it's part of either the major six or the diminished we just harmonize with a corresponding note and it makes it all good let's try this one two three play with me hear what this sounds like brilliant just so easy to make it sound good one two three [Music] put a little chord there on the end try it again one two three [Music] [Music] just a little counter point it's an easy way to do this by the way like all good things that start out simple like this you can add complexity you can add more than one note as you get going you know you can add thirds sixth you can start adding four notes you can do block chords you can do drop two with this scale it's all good hey by the way before we get going into improvising with this if you like what you see here hit that like button how about a subscribe for the open studio channel and then again we're offering bebop enclosures for beginners 30 off today just follow the link here in the chat or in the description for our youtube folks it's just all about bebop enclosures it's a systemic way to learn how to play bebop uh the bebop sound in the most basic level it's a very complicated and beautiful and rich art form but just the most basic versions of the sound we get through in all 12 keys great workbook that goes with it okay so how do we practice this well i just want to loop this melody here right so i'll play the melody with you and i want you to play the melody as well [Music] and just keep it simple we're just practicing harmonizing here and what i want you to do is just practice different ways to harmonize this melody using the six diminished scale so [Music] whatever that means to you recognize when a note in the melody is part of either that first set right recognize that a note is either part of the blue set or part of the orange set and it's the whole way through here it doesn't matter what section we're on what chord we're on is it if it's part of the blue set if it's an e flat g b flat or c you can harmonize it with any of those other notes e flat g b flat c if it's part of the second set the orange set f a flat b there are no b's or d you can harmonize it though with f a flat b or d it's that simple and you can come up with some just super hip counter melodies right so i'll leave this up as a as a guilty uh guilty i'm reading comments as a as an example here of what we can do but i want you to start improvising just getting used to okay this b flat is part of e flat six this c is part of e flat six so i can [Music] it works so well it's just so much fun so let's go very very slowly there's no need to to start at some kind of tempo that sucks we can just go very very slowly through here right here one two i think this will be good [Music] right so play the melody and practice harmonizing we might even go slower than this man yeah let's go right here i will play just a simple bass line to keep it going and i'll play the melody with you but you play the melody and practice doing this simple harmony using the sixth diminished scale and then uh once you do the melody a few times maybe try improvising a little bit using the six diminished scale and harmonizing with what you're doing i think you're going to find there's some really cool things going on you might even try some black chords or some four way close or some drop two if you know it using again the sixth diminished scale the most important thing to do here is to explore is to poke and prod at what we're going over here with this beautiful concept in simple scale and see what you can come up with let's try it one two one two three [Music] let's go from the top one two three [Music] from the top again one two three [Music] you got it [Music] from the top again one two three practice harmonizing [Music] again one two three [Music] one more time one more time three four [Music] [Applause] [Music] there it is the brilliance of the sixth diminished and like i said this is just the tip of the iceberg i mean it gets you can do pretty much anything you can go from here to a whole orchestra score using the harmony that you can derive from this scale and you can use it in different ways and different six diminished over different cadences uh it really is an endless well and it's so much fun to get going and i think a lot of you it looks like here in the comments have agreed that it is just it can be mind-blowing and really a wealth of fun to implore into our melody playing so go to different melodies we've been working on blues that but it really works over any melody you know my romance or anything like that especially things my one and only love things with stepwise pennies from heaven uh stepwise movement is so great uh to use this technique on so i hope you enjoy this i'm going to check the comments here for any questions and hopefully to clarify anything hey uh check out again our bebop enclosures for beginners there's a deal today it's 30 off that's a pretty significant discount for this course it's a super popular course that i released about a month and a half ago all about bebop enclosures and broken seventh chords and how to get that sound uh so check out the link there in the chat or the description and if you have a question about what we've just been practicing hit me up in here in the chat and i'm going to go through and see what we got and try to clarify let's see what we got here just gonna try to clarify any kind of theory questions we have so okay so simon says the difference between diminished six chord and bebop scale the major bebop scale uh i think i covered that as i saw this but if you need some more clarification again it's really just a naming thing but how you think about it like we just kind of proved that if you think about it as either a major six or diminished right this altering alternating between the major six and the diminished um chords that's how the scale sets you up for harmony it becomes a little bit more of just a thought process than a passing tone to land you on the strong chord on the strong chord tones a la like playing bebop right it's not really what what we're using it for we're using it more for creating harmony and counterpoint nick says b flat minor seven has d flat which is not part of the scale yeah that's why we kind of stopped there you would actually when you hit to that b flat minor seven you know then you're kind of in this a flat major realm so you could use the a flat six diminished scale and the h and the harmony derived from that so this d flat here is actually part of a b flat diminished right if we're thinking now that we're in this a flat major bebop or sorry a flat major bebop a flat major uh sixth diminished harmony right so when you change keys there that's when so i chose those first four bars because those first four bars up until that b flat minor seven are all really a part of that e flat uh six diminished harmony and when you change to the four four chord to that sort of different key you would then change to that a flat six diminished and if you experiment around with that i think you'll see that it works really well even over two fives like if you have a two five going to a flat [Music] you can harmonize melodies i mean let's say if it was like right you can harmonize melodies using [Music] a flat major six diminished and it'll work out just great over the entire two five and one now there's some other things you can do over the two if you want to get a little more complicated but just starting off at that basic level realizing that that two five one is really just five one and that we can use the sixth diminished over five one the whole way it doesn't matter you can use the you can use it to harmonize a melody that's diatonic the entire two five one now it's it's up to you to just determine well what what key is this cadence in is it an a flat okay well then i can use the a flat six diminished fede says why do you end with c on the right hand and f on the left mixing notes from blue and orange oh that i think that was on the [Music] yeah that was on the b flat minor seven so i kind of switched again fede i switched to that a flat to that a flat six diminished right so c c in the right and f on the left is part of a flat major six it's part of that a flat six diminished which is why i ended that b flat minor seven now we're out of e flat six diminished territory we're in a flat six diminished territory so that's why uh let's see here what's up vins from the philippines thank you bill and then fede says what scale would work on that b flat minor in that moment again the a flat 60 minutes just to clarify so the b flat minor is the d-flat six diminished um so again you would think so that the b-flat minor and it could be it could be the d-flat six diminished actually that would be like sort of the next level up but we could also just think about it all as five one right that b flat minor seven is actually part of e flat seven which is the five it's kind of just the delay of the five right it's the cadence really is right if we wanna get back to its beginnings two is developed as a way to just delay that but it's almost like we're sussing out the five right we're suspending the third of the five to get that thing that's what a 251 actually is it's an old cadence you know that you might hear in classical music but we we're sussing that which is why you also often hear it it's just e flat seven sus it's a variation with the bass moving we like to complicate things in jazz a lot in berry world this is cnb in berry world a minor seven chord is a six chord with the six in the base yes done oh thank you jp says bebop and closures course has great workouts fun to sing too awesome thank you jp cool cool i'm just going through the comments here making sure that i'm covering everything let's see here so for harmonizing melody with the b flat minor you would use the d flat six diminished again you could you could also just use a flat six diminished you can use either one if you use that d flat six diminished over the b flat minor right it's nice because it gives you like a five to the minor and then when you get to e flat then you can switch to you can switch to a flat six diminished but you could also just consider that b flat part of the five and there's nothing wrong with that it's really that's when it's like i said it starts very simple and very quickly we have all these options so cmb says trying to mix this school of thought with modes is counter-intuitive yeah this is not modes and in fact this is this is deeper a little bit than modes this is getting out of chord changes quote-unquote this is getting off of the map of chord changes and realizing that every melody note can have different harmony i made the example today anybody especially pianists if you've ever looked at old piano sheet music right old copyrighted great american songbook sheet music you'll see the melody there's almost a different chord change with every melody note right because they're harmonizing the melody note differently every time even if if let's say we were to call that bar you know b flat minor seven you know if they have a melody that goes and you see old sheet music it could be you know b flat minor c diminished d d flat six c diminished part of the reasoning behind that there's some other reasons too but part of the reasoning behind that is that this deep way of we can harmonize each note of the melody with its own thought of five one five one with the own sense of resolution it does it's not about these like this is the chord change right and it's just always right we can actually have different parts of this melody [Music] that are harmonized differently it's brilliant it's really a different way to think about it it's a it's a way to get us into really you know jazz counterpoint or or modern music counterpoint it's the very beginnings of that cool cool let's see here can you play this e flat major sixth over a flat major seven not really you would probably want to harmonize it i mean it depends it that that question is depends like i said it gets complicated fast so if it were an a flat major that had i don't i don't it really depends on the situation depends on the melody that's kind of what what we're going off of here malty says what about e flat dominant b-bop scale on the 2-5 so but see the e-flat b-bop scale like the dominant bebop scale i got i assume you mean the two five going to a flat right where there's a b flat minor seven e flat seven to the four chord so again if we use the e flat bebop scale right that doesn't make great harmony that doesn't harmonize the notes of the diatonic melody great right but that a flat sixth diminished does that gives us the five one cadence what it does is it gives us a five chord possibility and a one chord a five chord or a one chord possibility for every diatonic note of the melody which is amazing because we can build little bits of tension within the melody itself so it's not just about like b flat minor seven here's some tension and then here's the release it's like each step of the melody can cause either tension or release depending up if it's part of the sixth or the diminished cool cool awesome y'all thanks very much for all the questions for all the practice again if you liked this video click the like or subscribe if you're not uh subscribing to openstudio's youtube channel we do a bunch of cool stuff all the time so hit the subscribe i'm i'm happy to shout that out actually proud to shout that out and then check out uh my new course b weapon closures for beginners you could save 30 bucks today that's a pretty uh hefty chunk there click the link that's in the chat or the description and it just slashes that price right off from the top so thanks everybody i'll be back on friday with some herbie hancock work we're going to switch it up until then happy practicing

Channel: Open Studio

Views: 82,980

Keywords:

Id: j6KYpvGravc

Length: 35min 47sec (2147 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020