Barry Harris movements demystified on a tune

[Music] hi it's sean here and in this lesson we're going to look at something that i learned from barry harris which is the use of the major six diminished scale and chord movements now this can be applied to several different types of chords we'll focus on majors and minor sevenths today and look for areas in a tune where we can put some applications in as well it requires practice like everything else but these will be some tips to get you started if this is your first time here then please do hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so you know when i upload new content and please hit the like button so youtube knows it's a good video and other people should be able to watch it as well so let's get into it first of all we'll be looking at the skills required then we'll look at what to look out for on tunes so you know exactly where to apply these movements or at least to get you started and we'll look for a tune example where we can actually put these into practice as well the skills required major sixth diminished scale so don't worry if you're new to these and you're not sure about them i have other videos on them too i'll link all those below but we'll look at the scales we need and how to form them anyway in this lesson we'll need the f major 6 diminished and the b flat major 6 diminished and this is how you form them so f major 6 diminished we're going to take the f major scale and we're going to add an extra flat six you will see that the extra notes have a plus on them like that okay so how to practice these things first of all take them up and down [Music] stuff like that take them in contrary motion and then back together again these things can be really useful in chord movements and then also practice them in chords so if you take alternate notes on the f major six diminished play one miss one play one miss one until you have four notes you'll have an f6 on the first degree and then if you do the same thing on the second degree you'll end up with a g diminished there's your g diminished and you know the funny thing is if you keep doing that up the scale you've got an inversion for f6 and you do it again you've got an inversion for g diminished so as you keep going you just keep getting f6s and g diminished all the way up [Music] that's the f major six diminished scale now there are a million ways to form patterns and practice that and work on it but getting the scale up and down getting your chords through it up and down are your first steps okay so let's also have a look at the b flat one which we're going to need for the tune we'll be looking at which is polka dots and moon beams same sort of thing we're going to take the b flat major scale and we're going to add the extra flat six don't worry that the computer called it an f sharp it's g flat on the um on the chart here so same thing you've got a major scale with an added flat six and doing that gives you the same types of chords we had in the other key we'll get b flat six we'll get a c diminished so the diminished is always on the second degree i would suggest that the best way to learn these to start with is to know your b flat six inversions up and down and then do the same with your c diminished inversions [Music] and then you put those together so now you've got one of the b flat sixes one of the c diminished the next b flat six inverted the next c diminished inverted etcetera b flat six c diminished b flat six c diminished and then you're done okay same things practice things like contrary motion all that kind of stuff okay moving on now let's look at what i'm looking for to apply these to tunes now i will say that this isn't the only thing to look for by any means this is something that i show my students to get started because it covers a lot of ground and you can have a system where you know that there'll be a place to apply a movement or you might be better off leaving it especially when you're getting going so i'm looking for single steps on major chords and single steps on minor chords what do i mean by single steps well very very simple if we're back in the f major scale a single step for me is that or any single step up or down in the scale it could be three notes or it could be four notes or they could be notes that go up and down so it could be something like this as long as there are no jumps then we've got single steps and we'll be able to apply those to major chords and to minor seventh chords and let's see why looking at a tune example as i said we'll look at polka dots and moonbeams it's a great tune to look at because it has so many single steps in it that it makes it very useful for chord movement so let me just play a couple of bars of this so you get the idea [Music] so something to note is i played it as if it was the first time around this is an aab a tune you're seeing the a section on the screen which means that'll happen three times in the song and you're seeing the last time round on the screen here which ends on f and typically tunes will end on maybe the fifth on the first a section like this one does the fifth of f i'm talking about so it's less complete and then on the second and last day they may end on the root as it does on the screen something like that okay so just something worth noting next i'm looking for single steps in the melodies so next i'm just going to quickly mark up the chart according to what we've been talking about this would be a b flat minus 6 minus 7 is not right the a flat minor 7 would go with that last note where it works aside from that remember i'm looking for major chords and minor sevenths so let's just mark all those out very quickly this d minor would be a minor seven i'm not going to worry about the a flat minor it doesn't fall within what we've been talking about because there's only one note that goes without a a flat minor seven and that's it we've got f major at the end okay next we're going to look for single step scale movement so this has single steps all the way up to there there i'm not marking the end because you see the end is a little jump it's not a single step now these count as well even though they're going up and down just like we said just two little notes there and that's it so as you can see a tune like this is really conducive to movement because there are plenty of single steps up and down little moves up and down there not every team will be like that if you're just getting started and using this strategy and you don't see it on a tune that's okay just pick a different tune or just focus in on little areas of a tune that may do it that's fine as well so when we have an f major six which we would move on an f major normally it's the same as d minor seven because if i invert f six down i get d minor seven same notes so they move in the same movement scale but remember we said that movement scale had the extra flat six the d flat but the melody is moving straight through the major scale so i'm not going to start moving immediately because it's not moving through the major six diminished scale so i'll begin moving from the second note like this so bass note first to cover that rest [Music] now we'll start moving contrary motion see i'm this is f6 this is the nearest major note in my left hand and we're going to go in different directions very effective in movement f6 g diminished f6 g diminished f6 i'm going to put in an a flat 7 which is a tritone substitution on the last note but this isn't to do with movement anyway because now we've got a jump so we're heading for single steps today i've got another lesson on tritones which i'll link below the g minor 7 also comes from a major 6 diminished scale remember we said that f 6 equals d minor 7 and b flat 6 equals g minor seven so that's why we're going to be making those sorts of movements so g minor seven begins on an a i'm right here is am a g a b flat major sixth note no it's a diminished note from that same scale but it's not going to sound right for me to put a whole diminished over the g minor so what i'm gonna do is [Music] just move a couple of notes i have that rule that if the top note is a move note in other words the g has been moved up to a i'm going to move the next one down as well to complement it and then in my left hand i've got the g and the f has moved up because otherwise it would fight with the right hand so we've got diminished major major diminished major major because in b flat six that's your scale and you're not going from major to diminished to major so diminished major the best you can do is an inversion okay or the best i'm gonna do is an inversion uh where are we c7 and then we've got the same stuff as before on the f minor f major to d minor now here i love those so let's see what we can do there that g minor seven is a nice interesting area because you've got a quarter note followed by two eighth notes or uk people crotchet two quavers we could fill some of that time so [Music] i'm gonna fill the second eighth note on that first quarter note one and so a major note in the bass another major note to fill it up and then diminish note to go with the diminished chord there's the diminished note back to major notes like that now we're not talking about these today maybe another time now on the d minor seven we've got an up down up down so it could be a bit clunky depending on how quickly you're playing to try and play every note so the options can be things like top two notes is fine many people put the d flat in the bass on that b flat minor six so and then the c in the bass [Music] that kind of falling thing that's fine but coming back to that d minor seven so top two notes could be a movement that's fine those of you who are more advanced and may know drop two chords this is considered one two three four so we drop the two the d down to the bottom so yes those can be really pretty okay this a minor seven is a bit trickier i'm actually going to move that a minor seven through the f major six diminished scale y i know if you've studied this kind of method before you'll probably expecting that a minor seven is a c6 yes but in the key of f you always have to look at context with one and three so one and three in any key harmonically mean the same thing f major is one a minor is three and you would see that if we did say oh a minor seven is a c6 and then start moving in the c major six diminished you can see these melody notes aren't going to work out [Music] maybe there's a case but i find it better to move that on f6 um let's find a note [Music] maybe something like that [Music] and then see we only have those two notes written on that g minor seven and they are both major notes anyway so there's no movement so you don't have to do anything you know [Music] and that's how you do it so i would recommend to get into this kind of stuff look for tunes look for those single steps try not to be in a ranger mode which a lot of people get into and they want to know well how do i move every single note there must be something here there must be something there and i should be able to do everything try to stay out of that mode and stay in just learning mode when i first learned this stuff i really just got as good as i could at just running the major six diminished up and down you know just just up and down and getting to know them in different ways and the application starts to take care of itself but if you look at a tune and you want to know what happens everywhere you'll be so much in a ranger masterpiece mode that you won't be in flow mode learning skills that you can apply anywhere because they suggest themselves to you in real playing okay so i hope you enjoyed that and got something from it if you did perhaps you'll consider becoming a jazz skills member where i have hundreds of videos on movement voicings improv rhythm you name it thanks a lot for watching see you on the next one bye for now

Channel: JazzSkills

Views: 28,045

Keywords: barry harris, 6th diminished scale, barry harris 6th diminished scale, sixth diminished scale, 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, jazz improvisation, harmony, music theory, bebop, chord, lesson, things ive learned from barry harris, polka dots and, polka dots and moonbeams

Id: Y2lTqPPzfYg

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022