Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 9: Sixth chords and the scales of chords

C Minor 6th Diminished (with Thomas Echols’s Floors)

Episode 98 · 12:36 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris borrows Thomas Echols’s idea of ‘floors’ for Barry’s scales of chords: the C minor 6 diminished scale in single notes, then thirds, then triads, before drop voicings. He applies the three floors and contrary motion that climbs through them to a short C minor spot in All the Things You Are, so guitarists can move through the scale instead of defaulting to drop 2.

Step by step

  1. 0:37Meet Thomas Echols’s ‘floors’, and notice that guitarists default to drop 2.
  2. 1:13Build the C minor 6 diminished scale: C, E flat, G, A plus D diminished (D, F, A flat, B).
  3. 2:27Play the second floor, thirds, with C as the top note.
  4. 3:04Play the third floor, triads, through the scale.
  5. 3:43Apply them to the C minor spot in the second A of All the Things You Are, ending on D7.
  6. 4:25Play that spot in single notes, then thirds, then triads.
  7. 5:33Add contrary motion: C, D, E flat going up while C, B, A go down.
  8. 6:05Let the contrary motion move up the floors: single notes, then thirds, then triads.
  9. 7:59Test yourself: start on any note and play the scale, its thirds and its triads.
  10. 10:33Take it in small steps, then do the same with the other three scales of chords.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line1:13
𝄞♭♭
CDFGABC6E♭A♭
  1. C
  2. D
  3. E♭
  4. F
  5. G
  6. A♭
  7. A
  8. B
Cm64:58
𝄢♭
CDC4E♭
  1. C
  2. D
  3. E♭

Barry’s own words on this

9.5 The minor 6th diminished scale and its diminished partner9.4 Playing the scale of chords (block chords up and down the 6th dim scale)10.5 Drop voicings13.3 Standards worked in class

In the course

The minor 6 diminished scaleDrop 2, drop 3 and drop 2 and 4The elevator: Thomas Eccles’ floorsParallel, oblique and contrary motion

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 98 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And actually we could call this Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris and Things I’ve Learned from Thomas Eccles. because the ideas that I’m talking about, I learned specifically from his way. Tom Seckles, who is the brilliant guitar player who has his own YouTube page called Labyrinth of Limitations, I highly recommend it. I’ll leave a link in the description for it. He had this beautiful way of looking at the six diminished, and Barry’s actually four scales of chords,
  2. 0:37and breaking them apart into what he called floors. And he goes through this really, you know, in a beautiful way on his YouTube page. But I just want to show you some things that I got from it. The first thing is, let’s take, for example, C minor 6. Now there’s our C minor 6. Now the first thing that we, as guitar players, always go to is a drop 2. And for those of you that don’t know, a drop 2, the way I like to look at it is just 4 consecutive strings.
  3. 1:13That’s a drop 2. And that’s the first thing that we usually do. And it’s 4 consecutive strings of 4 different notes. But we’ve got to learn a bunch of other things before we learn that. For instance, we have to learn just the scale. And for those of you that don’t know, the C minor 6 diminished scale is 4 notes of a C minor 6. C, E-flat, G, and A, and four notes of a D diminished. D, F, A-flat, and B, and you put them together.
  4. 1:49And then you have a D-minor-six diminished scale. So here’s your C-minor-six, C, E-flat, G, A, and here’s your D diminished, D, F, A-flat, B. And when you put those notes together, you have this beautiful eighth note scale, that goes back and forth between a C minor 6, I’m sorry, and a D diminished. Really wonderful. Anyway, so here’s the scale up and down in single notes. Now, you also have to know that scale in what Thomas refers to as the second floor,
  5. 2:27which would be thirds. So I’m still going to take the same thing, except now I’m going to do thirds with it. and starting with the C is going to be the highest note of the third. So we’ll do the first one. So that’s thirds. That’s the second thing we have to know. The third thing we should know are triads. So triads, and again, I’m going to keep the C starting as the highest note. So the first triad is kind of tough.
  6. 3:04Then after that, it gets a little easier. There’s C minor 6 in triads. And the last one. Oops. Maybe this one. So that’s in triads. So let’s just take those three, which would be single notes, then what he would call the second floor which would be thirds, then what he would call the third floor which would be triads. So let’s just take those three and let’s see how to use them.
  7. 3:43So we’re using C minor six and I thought something to show as an example. There’s a part of all the things you are in the second A that starts on C minor. Here comes where it says... Okay, so this little thing. This is C minor 6, and the last note I make D7. So if we just did this, now we’re going to have to learn how to do those just single notes.
  8. 4:25So we’ll say... That’s beautiful. But now what if we wanted to make those thirds? So if we said... That was in thirds. Now maybe we’ll do triads. So those are the three.
  9. 4:58So now we did it in single notes. Or we did it in thirds. Or we did it in triads, which is a little bit harder. Which is all pretty. All those three are beautiful. But now, the brilliance of this is, a lot of times, Barry, when he talks about contrary motion, he talks about, which just basically means one note moving in one direction, and the same note then moving in a different direction.
  10. 5:33So you get them splitting this way. So if I were to play C, D, E flat, I would also want to play C, and then move it down to B, and then to A. So that would be our scale. So it would be... Which is pretty. That’s nice if I did contrary motion. So let’s try that. That’s really nice.
  11. 6:05But the brilliance of knowing your floors is saying, well, if I know the first floor, if I go contrary motion, the first floor is single notes. The second floor is thirds. So now I know I’m going to do thirds. The next floor is going to be triads. So I know the next note is going to be a triad. So now I have this. Which is really brilliant and super helpful. So now I have this little spot on all the things you are,
  12. 6:40which is a little, what some people might consider, like this little nothing spot. But look at how rich and beautiful you can make it. This single notes. Then here’s thirds. Now here’s triads. Now that’s just three floors. There’s nine floors altogether, but we’ll just focus on the three. Then you start to do some contrary motion stuff. And now you have a limitless amount of ways that you can play that same little spot, that
  13. 7:22same little thing. So it’s just super important for us as guitar players. This is what I’ve learned within the last year or so. Us as guitar players, we can’t just be drop two people all the time. We can’t just make that our default. we have to be we have to see the movement within Barry’s four scales of chords. You can’t just be doing drop twos and drop threes. Well drop threes are just playing if we start from the lowest notes, playing a note, skip a string, playing three notes. Those are drop threes, those are important and those come later in the
  14. 7:59floors but we’re just focused on those three or just those three floors and you have to say to yourself, okay, if I work on one or more various scales of chords in this particular episode we’re talking about, just C minor 6. So say, okay, a good question for yourself is, do I know the first three fours? Can I just start on any note? Can I start on any note? Can I start on any note and play the scale up and down? Any note. So that’s as any note. Likewise, can I start on any note and go up thirds? Anyplace. Anyplace. Can I go up
  15. 8:47thirds? Anyplace. Can I go up triads? Can I just see them? See, can I see triads? So you have to see all that. Now, granted, that’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of practice. It’s a lot of memorizing of certain grips, but what it allows you to do is really see the scale, and even more importantly, see all the little movement that Barry is constantly talking about when he’s talking about, he doesn’t play chords, he plays movement. This is what he’s talking about.
  16. 9:22I think what Coleman Hawkins was talking about as well, in a slightly different meaning, but this is the brilliance of, like I said, I hadn’t thought of this myself. I had done a couple of things with just, you know, contrary motion, but then I could never really get it right. I was always thinking to myself, like, I had all this, all these drop two things, and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, I’m going to do this contrary motion thing with just two notes, and it would sound really, well, for me, at least, it sounded really contrived. It didn’t sound like it was a
  17. 9:57part of what I was playing. It’s like, here’s this little trick I knew how to do, and I kind of jammed it into this spot. So this, though, with the idea of the floors, I see how the brilliance of it right away, and what I have to work on. And also, it makes you aware of things that you don’t know. Like if you can’t do C minor 6 diminished in triads, you can’t kid yourself with that. It’s Either you know how to do it or you don’t know how to do it. And you start playing triads and you realize where you’re lost, on which string set you get lost.
  18. 10:33Some of them are a little harder to do than others, but they’re really wonderful. So that’s just three floors. See, there’s nine floors. We already know a bunch of floors because a lot of us know drop twos and drop threes. And actually the drop two, drop four is another floor. A lot of us know that, but some of us don’t. But that’s a great way to get to learn the scale. say okay I’m just going to practice my scale in just thirds do I know my scale in thirds do I know it in thirds thoroughly enough am I able to do that am I able to do it in triads though but am I able to do just single notes because even
  19. 11:13if we said if we got to this point I mean, that’s the scale. Do I know how to do that? That’s just thirds. So it’s really something special. I highly recommend checking it out because it has made a huge difference for me. and I think it would help you immensely too if you check out his channel and just follow along in
  20. 11:54these little these little tiny steps. I really took baby steps with it and that’s what I suggest take baby steps. So start off with single notes then maybe thirds then maybe triads and see how far you can go with it and that’s for all the scales of chords. His minor six diminished his major six diminished his dominant seven diminished and his dominant seven flat five diminished which all four of his scales of chords. So, okay, well, hope you enjoyed this episode of things I’ve learned from Barry Harris and Thomas Eccles, and until next time, enjoy practicing your floors,
  21. 12:33at least the first three.