Barry Harris's 6th Diminished: The Basics - Adam Maness | You'll Hear It S2E80

[Music] hey what's up folks at a man is here for the Friday edition of the you'll hear at podcast back at you solo flying solo for the rest of this week hopefully we're gonna get Peter Martin back in here in the pod cave on on Monday but I am at the piano we get a lot of requests for episodes of the piano and I'm talking about some some popular requests we've had and meaning to do at the piano but haven't haven't had the time and we thought with Peter gone we can move over here and cover some of this stuff today we're gonna be talking about Barry Harris's six diminished scale and how to use it just the basics of it this is this is a very deep process this this study I highly highly encourage you to go to YouTube there's tons of videos I think he even has some stuff for sale check it out on his website try to find it from the source guys a genius I've been lucky enough to attend a couple of these master classes and be be the guinea pig when I was young and it was really really eye-opening and I'm by no means like a 6th diminished expert with it you know fully in my hands to the deepest levels but I think I understand the basic concepts of it from these master classes and I'm happy to try to try to highlight some of the things I think are important about it and then I'll say another thing about this too like because Barry is so charismatic and so dogmatic about this approach a lot of people think that maybe this is something that every jazz musician should know and does know and it's it's just common knowledge at this point and that's just not true I was talking to a friend of mine a really really great tenor saxophonist and he was saying that he he doesn't think about it like this at all cuz because the way this works you know conflicts with the way he thinks about things melodically so the point is I'm saying is like there's there's more than one way to skin a cat in this case a scale so don't don't take this as absolute gospel this is just barry Harris's approach to this one particular sound but it is a cool sound and it's a cool kind of rabbit hole that you can get get into for harmony and voice leading and melodic content and here's what it is at that the the basic premise of it is a major scale with a half-step in between the fifth and sixth tones right so a C major scale and then after the fifth there's that half-step in between the fifth and the sixth now why is this the thing why why is this a sound well it's because this makes your melodic ideas line up with the strong notes of the chord on the beat that's kind of how this became about been really put a half-step in between any of these notes which is what my friend John Ellis was saying that he thinks about just being being able to put a half step between any of them but as a pianist actually that half step between the fifth and the sixth opens up some harmonic possibilities that we're gonna get to in a minute but that's the basic premise so if we're in 4/4 right that a that six is on that third beat and then the the root is then again on the one of the next measure sorry the six on the fourth beat the fifth is on the third beat but on the beat notes if you start on the root are se major six chord very strong for a C major sixth chord and then if you start on any of those you end up logically landing on the beat for the strong tone so if we start on the third you end on the third if you start on the fifth you end on the fifth you always are ending on a strong note and that's true of putting a half step into any seven note scale you're gonna logically end or start over again on the beat and that's why this scale is useful the bebop scale is useful with the half step between the root and the the flat seven on a dominant chord okay so that's that's the basics melodically of why this works some things that you can do to really kind of get deeper into it first of all I highly encourage you to work this out in contrary motion so let's start on C and we'll go in contrary motion this is kind of the first thing that Barry Harris does in his master classes - same scale half step between look at that acha and you end on the octave two octaves apart I just added a third there randomly you can you can experiment with that too in thirds see it just creates kind of natural harmony for you and again starting from any strong tone see that where that that half-step is in the left hand creates these kind of natural resolving harmonic movements you can do it from thirds apart so that was from G and E this becomes really handy when you're dealing with melodies for kind of some-some contrary motion some some little inside movers with melodic content great for arranging you know anytime you have a melody that you want to move you know a little my romance you could do little contrary movements that that really makes sense and land on the strong beats okay so that's just some basic to note melodic content you might have noticed that when you start on the strong notes the notes that aren't strong are following a pattern and that's because if we skip a note on the strong notes we have a major six chord if we skip a note on the notes in between those [Music] we have a diminished chord and this follows suit the entire way up so let's say we have four voices moving up the scale together it's a major six to start that built on CC e G a and then we have D F a flat B and then eg a see that's another C major six and then F a flat B D another diminished so it alternates between major six diminished C major six diminished C major six diminished and the diminished is you know this diminished chord can act like a five to the C major six if you put a G on the bottom of this it becomes a G seven flat nine acting as a dominant to that major six it's so logical it's ridiculous and that's why you hear this a lot we talked to Wednesday about the the shearing style voicing the lock and voicing you hear this used a ton for that go up and down scales [Music] [Applause] really really really logical it's so much fun by the way you can do this with minor - with a harmonic with a melodic minor sound excuse me is that legal yes so this is just the very very beginnings of it it goes pretty deep when you start getting into multiple voicings and and you start switching some things up I encourage you again to check out the long form master classes that Barry Harris does just brilliant stuff and this kind of information can really help you with getting good voice leading no matter what the situation because you understand the relationships between the strong notes and the leading tones and in especially for like you know a bebop sound a hard bop sound these can be really really useful okay that's it for today and thanks so much for sticking with me this week as I am solo you'll hearing it for the first time ever Pete's gonna be back next week and really enjoyed this time of the piano we're gonna do more this year at the piano where we're plotting out our 2019 you'll hear it and we're gonna have lots of cool stuff for you as always can go to you'll hear calm you can leave us a voicemail you can leave us a message you can get your you'll hear it swag they have t-shirts we have a whole bunch of stuff yeah and until next time you'll hear you [Music]

Channel: Open Studio

Views: 67,682

Rating: 4.9331102 out of 5

Keywords: open studio, open studio network, jazz piano, adam maness, youll hear it podcast, youll hear it, open studio jazz, jazz talk, jazz talk radio, jazz talk music, jazz podcasts, jazz podcast, podcast funny, podcasts to listen to, jazz music, piano lessons, adam maness piano, adam maness jazz, music podcasts, jazz lessons, jazz radio, jazz piano lessons, online jazz, jazz piano lesson, music lessons, piano lesson, online lessons, barry harris, 6th diminished scale

Id: _n0vuuKdUyM

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 14 2018