Brother chords - Barry Harris

I love what I call the brother chords and what I believe Barry Harris used to call a family of dominance and I think he called them brother and sister sometimes but what they are is they're a set of four chords that we call a family of dominant chords that play together Barry used to say you play with your family first right so I'll show you how they all work and what you can do with them just to get you started an introduction to it we teach this much more deeply on Jazz skills but what you can do is get sounds like this on a G7 let's say or we could have had let's say or or or all kinds of stuff on that G7 which we don't even have to start thinking about long extensions either to do it you know 13 sharp 11 flat 9 all that stuff this is just a family of four dominant chords so how does it work what you do is you begin by saying okay G7 you need to be at least what I would call Upper intermed immediate to advance to do this I call them level threes but if you followed my videos on voicings before you probably know that on a G7 you can raise the root in the right hand to get a diminished chord A flat diminished in this case but if you now look at that diminished chord it gives you four different dominant chords just by moving one different note each time so the first time I'm going to move down the a flat gives me a G7 now if I move down the B to B flat hopefully you'll recognize this is an inverted B flat 7 if I did that by move by inverting the diminished and then moving the B you'd probably see that easier many of you but anyway that's B flat 7 so you got to be able to recognize these right if I lower the D we'll get d flat 7 if I invert that d flat 7 to its root position it might be easier for you to see depending on your level and then if I lower the F I'll get E7 and once again if if I invert it some of you will find it easier to see like that but I would say it's really important to be able to see all of those in whichever inversions they're in okay that's something a lot of people struggle a bit with if you're enjoying this lesson would you please give it a like And subscribe to the channel hit the notification Bell so you know when there's a new video a positive comment in the comment section really helps as well and if it's time to level up your playing and get some Freedom then consider joining us on Jazz skills more about that at the end for now let's get back to the lesson now we have the diminished which of course is four diminished right if you know anything about diminished chords then inverting the a flat diminished gives you four different diminished chords it gives you a flat diminished B diminished D diminished and F diminished so of course anything I can do to it once can be done to it four times so if I can move down a note once and get a dominant chord then I can move a note down four times and still get a dominant chord because the diminished is a uniform thing all all the notes are equidistant 1 2 3 half steps 1 2 3 1 2 3 half steps or minor thirs is a nicer way to say that for musicians from there we have our family of dominant chords so if I have a G7 maybe I'll take the shell in the left hand for me at the moment Ruden 7th and I'm just going to put E7 on the top like that great that's a chord now yes some people are going to call that a 13 with a flat nine but for me it's just G7 and E7 there's my G7 there's my E7 by the way that will that reminds me of ay right there's a tune in that it could have been a different note moving down it could have been the D moving down to d flat which gives me d flat 7 if you've noticed by now that new note becomes the root of a dominant right so when I moved the F down to e the E the new note became the root of E7 put it back move down the D becomes the root of d flat 7 so that's another easy way to find these that's G7 with d flat 7 now of course some people are going to say whoa hold on I can see the comments coming below hold on why isn't that G7 with a flat five and a flat 9 sure haven't got a problem with that all with you but let's say I took this I'll begin with the F moved down to e and then I'll put it back but I'll move the D down cuz that's in our family as well isn't it so I end up with this and I'm not repeating everything like this I'm just replacing the E back to F CU I I began with the F moved down to e so I'm going to put it back and lower the D like that but hold everything else that is what Barry showed me is the is the beginning of my r [Music] beautiful when he showed me that I thought that was wonderful so that leads to movement as well or if I was playing a 1625 in that much time I'm not thinking G7 uh G13 flat 9 G13 uh G7 flat 5 flat 9 C major 9 it's just a movement for within this process of finding and knowing Brothers okay so a tip for application I use these a lot when the dominant is going home in other words G7 is going home for me home is down a fifth to C major or C minor minor 6 or minor 7th right and what you do is you can look for the melody note and make sure that stays intact and just move something else so for example in My Romance what we had was we had the shell the first note was e so it makes sense that the F will move down to e in fact this is the pickup in the song there's actually no chord written but sometimes rather than play because the first chord is C we'll put a G7 there cuz G7 leads to C and we were also in this case able to use some brothers to do it right so the melody is e and which brother or brother have e in them well we don't want to move down the a flat because that's just another G7 that's going to make things less interesting not more right B flat isn't going to give us the e in it B flat 7 neither is d flat 7 but E7 in this case will so that's the obvious choice for that first note now for the second note could just move it back to the diminished like that that would have been okay as well nothing wrong with that so we have options options are great however what has has the f in it well G7 does but again we don't want to move back to G7 we already got one we're trying to make things more interesting B flat 7 would be okay let's see yeah let me do that better it's okay the more I play it the more I'm sort of making a deal with what to soften in there and just try and get a better sound fine or the other option is the d flat 7 which I really [Music] like and that's a quick introduction to Brothers incidentally My Romance is a tune taught in detail on Jazz skills so we've got a smart tune that transposes to several Keys you can play with my play or remove mine we've got lessons on how it works and how to get the right hand chord melody in there simple voicings and then more complex Advanced movements Barry Harris style and voicings as well if it's time to level up your play then then consider joining us on Jazz skills where we won't just drown you in a sea of information but we'll focus on your transformation and what to do at different stages in your play how to practice it and support from me and a Vibrant Community as well so hope to see you there thanks for watching and bye for [Music] now

Channel: JazzSkills

Views: 60,604

Keywords: Shan Verma, jazz piano lessons, barry harris, barry harris diminished voicings

Id: e94gp3TAeTg

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023