Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 4: Running scales over tunes

Barry’s scale outline for a C minor blues

Episode 85 · 10:55 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris lays out Barry’s scale outline for a 12-bar C minor blues. The minor chords are minor sixth diminished scales, and each dominant going to a minor becomes a dominant scale coming down to its third (E flat 7 to the third of C, B flat 7 to the third of G). He practises the C and F minor 6 diminished scales in thirds, triads and chords, then tries some line ideas over the first bars.

Step by step

  1. 0:34Build C minor 6 diminished: C minor 6 plus D diminished, eight notes with both a flat 6th and a major 6th
  2. 1:42Practise it as you would any scale: up and down, in thirds, in triads
  3. 2:20Play it in four-note chords: they alternate C minor 6 and diminished inversions
  4. 2:56Bars 1-3 (C minor 7 on the chart): think C minor 6, not minor 7, and play its scale up and down, then up once more
  5. 3:28Bar 4, the C7 going to F minor: play E flat 7 from its flat 7th down to the third of C
  6. 4:01Bars 5-8: F minor 6, then B flat 7 down to the third of G in place of G7, then C minor 6 up and down
  7. 5:00Bars 9-12: A flat 7 up, B flat 7 down to the third of G, C minor 6 up, B flat 7 down to the third of G
  8. 5:58Learn the F minor 6 diminished scale the same ways: up and down, thirds, triads, chords
  9. 7:03Try lines into F minor: triads down with a half step below, or the tritone F sharp 7 in place of E flat 7
  10. 9:31On F minor 6, play the top note of each triad, then come back and grab the rest of the triad

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line0:34
𝄞♭♭
CDFGABC6E♭A♭
  1. C
  2. D
  3. E♭
  4. F
  5. G
  6. A♭
  7. A
  8. B

Barry’s own words on this

4.4 Scale outlines13.1 The blues the Barry way4.3 Minor9.5 The minor 6th diminished scale and its diminished partner

In the course

The scale every way: up and down, thirds, triads, chordsScale outlinesA half-diminished means the dominant whose third it isHalf step belowThe tritoneThe minor 6 diminished scaleMinor ii-V-i as three minor 6 chordsMinor blues

Transcript

  1. 0:00hello and welcome to episode 85 of things i’ve learned from bear harris and today i thought we would discuss the scale outline for a minor blues and in this instance i thought we would use c as the key we played and some people play f c a minor sometimes but c minor so the first thing that you need to know is when barry thinks of things as a pure minor he has a scale he likes to play and that’s his minor sixth diminished scale what that scale is is um
  2. 0:34it consists of a root uh major second minor third perfect fourth perfect fifth flat sixth major sixth major seventh and a root again the tonic so if you notice what’s one thing that stands out right away is that it’s an eight note scale which is different than most scales uh the other nice thing about it is some people on a minor like to play harmonic minor [Music]
  3. 1:09some people like to play melodic minor [Music] and what i like about this scale and the reason why i think this scale is greater than those two scales is that it has both of those scales in it it has the harmonic minor sound with the flat sixth but it also has the melodic minor sound with the major sixth so i love this scale what this scale consists of is two things a c minor six and then a d diminished
  4. 1:42now you get this four notes of the c minor six and the four notes of the d diminished you put them together you have an eight note scale which gives you a c minor six diminished and what’s beautiful about it is when you well the first thing you have to know is when you play when you play the scale you do it the same way you practice it like if you’re practicing a c major scale or a c7 scale so you would say uh let’s play the scale up and down let’s play the scale in thirds [Music] let’s play the scale in triads [Music]
  5. 2:20let’s play the scale in chords now chords is the same thing as a triad except you’re going to skip another note and add the next note above it so use the triad skip the next note on the scale and go up to the next note so you have there’s your c minor six diminished inversion of the c minor six inversion of your diminished again minor six um diminished minor six diminished minor six so this is a really beautiful scale uh the first part of a minor 6
  6. 2:56i’m sorry of a minor blues it’s going to say something like on a chart like c minor 7 for one measure c minor 7 c minor seven so for three measures and then maybe c seven so barry doesn’t like to think of that as a minor seven he thinks bit is a minor six so maybe to cover those three bars barry would just play in a scale outline c minor six up and down and then he would play it up one more time now for that c7 that’s going to an f minor six barry likes to play something different than just
  7. 3:28uh c7 scale down now bird played c7 but barry has this way of playing a minor that’s slightly different he likes to differentiate when we’re going home to a minor so in this case he will play e flat seven scale starting from the flat seventh down to the third of c so if we were going to do that for the first four bars it would be c minor six up and down then c minor six up e flat seven down to the third c down you flat seven down to the third c would
  8. 4:01be the last part so now we got [Music] so for the next part which is the fifth bar we would have something like f minor for two measures and then or yeah or f minor and then a quick g7 which takes you back to c minor so what barry would play there is he likes to look at that f minor as f minor six too and then instead of playing a quick um g7 he likes to do the same thing that he
  9. 4:36did for c7 since it’s going to a minor he’ll play b flat seven down to the third of g and then back to maybe c minor six up and down so that’s the first eight bars let me play the first eight bars that covers the first eight now for the last state it usually says something like a flat seven and then g7 and then maybe c minor the
  10. 5:09rest of the way but barry would probably do a flat seven up and then again instead of that g7 he likes b flat seven down to the 30 g [Music] and then maybe c minor six up and then probably b flat seven down to the third g again so the last four bars would be [Music] that would be his scale outline so let’s see if i can play the whole thing one two three four [Music] so that would be the berries scale
  11. 5:58outline for a 12 bar minor blues now there’s a lot of things in there that we can look at in terms of creating lines but maybe we should just look at the first little part which which is kind of like all c minor six and you know this means all the c minor six stuff that you know how to do so if you haven’t practiced your c minor six diminished scale you need to do that the same way we were doing it earlier but also when we get to f minus six you need to know your f minus six scale up and down f minus six scale thirds
  12. 6:31in triads in um in chords you need to know that for c minor six and f minor six okay so those are the two minors so for the first four bars you think you’re thinking of basically all c minor or c minor six to diminish stuff
  13. 7:03and then a c7 or the e flat seven down to the third of c which gets you to the f minor so anything that you know how to do in in c minor any of the things so i just played the diminish that goes along with the f minor six diminished to get us there i was just doing like [Music] triads down with a half step below do
  14. 8:01[Music] so [Music] i like tritone too so [Music] that was tritone so
  15. 8:52instead of playing e flat seven down to the third of c there i just tried to play f sharp seven [Music] running it into uh f minor six but see like these are all beautiful like i love these for the um oh there was one thing i saw somebody practice it was like let’s see let’s see oh oh this this one it’s like which is really pretty
  16. 9:31which is really pretty it’s like a triad so you play the top note of the triad and come back and grab the rest of the triad we’ll do for f minor six which is really pretty so that’s for the for the middle four bars [Music] so it gives you a little
  17. 10:05glimpse into how barry gets the sounds and you know he plays a bunch of minor stuff like when he played with cannonball he played a bunch of minor stuff those are interesting uh albums to listen to if you haven’t heard them he has a a few recordings with cannonball adelie that are fantastic and he really plays a lot of minor a lot of minor and he plays a great minor six diminished oh it sounds so beautiful but this gives you a little window into his way of uh looking at it and maybe i’ll stay maybe we’ll do minor blues for the next
  18. 10:39couple lessons i think it’s worth discussing um but anyway i hope you enjoyed this short video about barry’s scales um over a minor blues until next time thanks