Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 8: Thinking dominant

Playing with the family of dominants on All the Things You Are

Episode 59 · 13:19 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris traces Barry’s family of dominants back to its source: the chromatic scale splits into two whole-tone scales and then three diminished chords, and lowering each note of a diminished gives four related dominants. On the bridge of All the Things You Are he hears each half-diminished as a dominant scale, then runs one family member into another (D7 into A flat 7 or B7 into F7) and always resolves somewhere pretty.

Step by step

  1. 0:00The source: the twelve chromatic notes split into two whole-tone scales, and two notes from each make a diminished, giving three diminished chords
  2. 1:04Lower each note of C diminished in turn to get four dominants, B7, F7, A flat 7 and D7; their roots make B diminished, the origin of what others call the half-whole scale
  3. 2:12On the bridge of All the Things You Are, Barry hears A minor 7 as A minor 7 flat 5 to D7 to G, and F sharp minor 7 flat 5 to B7 to E
  4. 3:16Scales for the bridge: F7 up and down to the third of D, G major up and down, D7 up and down to the third of B, E major up, E flat 7 down to the third of C
  5. 4:57Use everything you know on F7: from the tonic up to the second and back, one half step, down to the third of D starting on beat two, then pivot a diminished into G
  6. 5:32Come down C minor, the important arpeggio on the fifth of F7
  7. 6:07Run F7 into A flat 7, the tritone of D7 and another family member, and resolve to G
  8. 8:22For the second half, D7 down to the third of B7 and up a diminished into E, or swap in B7’s tritone, F7
  9. 10:08C diminished with the roots of its four dominants (B, D, F, A flat) can be played over the whole bridge
  10. 11:50Practice plan: know one dominant scale all over the instrument, play it as a movement, then run it into its family members

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line1:04
𝄞♭♯
CAC6E♭G♭
  1. C
  2. E♭
  3. F#
  4. A

Barry’s own words on this

8.3 Four dominants from every diminished chord8.4 Playing with the family8.6 The diminished scale as diminished chord + four dominant roots8.2 A half-diminished chord means the dominant whose third it is

In the course

Know it everywhere on the guitarScale outlinesA half-diminished means the dominant whose third it isStarting phrases on different beatsThe three important arpeggios of a dominantThe important minorSurroundsThe tritoneBarry’s creation theoryThe family of dominantsThe diminished scale: a diminished plus four tonicsCome up a diminished from the thirdRun one chord into the nextAll the Things You AreSmall things

Transcript

  1. 0:00hello and welcome to episode 59 of things i learned from barry harris today i thought we would discuss uh barry’s family or playing with family family of dominance where it comes from and a song that we can use it in that it’s very uh applicable so first things first let’s take a look at where the family of dominance comes from barry has a theory that starts off with 12 notes of the chromatic scale which breaks apart into
  2. 0:31two whole tone scales still equals the 12 notes then you take two notes from one whole tone scale two notes from another whole tone scale and you have it diminished you do that two more times so you have three diminishes all coming from that original 12 notes so now in order to find out what his family is or what’s connected what we do is we’ll take a diminished like we’ll take c diminished [Music] and then to find out what four dominants are connected to that all you do is lower one note at the diminished which would be
  3. 1:04c diminished if you lower the c it’s b7 if you load the f sharp to f it’s f7 if you load the a to a flat or g sharp it’s it’s a flat seven if you load the d sharp to d it’s d7 so now that gives you four uh dominance so the c diminished which is c e flat um f sharp or g flat a then gives you four dominants which happen to also make up its diminished it gives you b7
  4. 1:36it gives you d7 it gives you f7 and it gives you a flat seven so now you have c diminished and b diminished and that’s where you get your what barry hates when it’s called a half step whole step diminished scale he hates that because it doesn’t it doesn’t explain where it comes from but that’s where you get that scale from you put those two together that’s where they come from now also
  5. 2:12important to that is the four dominance that now we know are family so that’s b7 d7 f7 and a flip 7. so let’s discuss that for a second and we’ll do it through a song we’ll say um all the things you are and particularly the bridge so the bridge for all the things you are um the sheet music or the real book has an a minor seven for a measure d7 for a measure g measure for g major for two measures but barry doesn’t like that chord and
  6. 2:44then it has f sharp minor seven to b seven going to e major same amount of time too f sharp minor for measure b7 for a measure e major barry likes to say instead of a minor seven barry says a minor seven flat five [Music] going to g major and the same thing for f sharp minor going to be seven to e major and then some kind of c augmented or
  7. 3:16something to get back to f but so let’s just take apart that little bit so when you have a half diminished to d7 barry likes to think of that the scales for that being f7 up and down to the third d and for the f sharp minor seven five five into b seven he likes thinking of that as d7 up and down to the third of b so if we were going to play the scales for the bridge of all the things you are it would be f7 up and down to the third of d g major up and down
  8. 3:51[Music] then d7 up and down to the third of b e major up and then probably e flat seven down to the third of c so let’s do the holes all the scales one two three four [Music] so that’s the scales for the for the
  9. 4:26bridge now how do we figure out how to play between those here’s where playing with family starts to come in so let’s take the first chord which is a half diminished d7 and as i said before barry likes to think of that as um f7 scale so all the things you know for f7 scale which means scale up and down scaling thirds scaling triads scaling chords the half step rules the important arpeggios which are found on the root the fifth and the flat seventh
  10. 4:57everything that’s included in that so let’s say um we started on uh let’s start on tonic and we’ll put one half step but but let’s start on tonic we’ll run up to second then go back down to tonic and we’ll put one half step so it’s going to sound like this [Music] so and we’ll put it uh down to the third of d and we’ll start it on let’s see the second beat one two three four then we’ll pivot to diminish to g major
  11. 5:32so one two three four so that was just one little idea maybe we’ll start on f7 and we’ll start on the tonic and we’ll put a half step in between tonic and second and then we’ll come down uh the important arpeggio on the fifth of um f7 would be c minor so maybe we’ll come down that important
  12. 6:07arpeggio from the fifth so we’ll say let’s do that one two three four that’s really beautiful um now let’s do f7 that’s f7 into d7 now let’s do f7 into d7’s tritone which is a flat 7 which is also a family member so let’s say um let’s say
  13. 6:41let’s do the same thing [Music] yeah let’s do this let’s see uh and now we’ll now we’re on the um let’s see we’re on the sixth of the f7 but we’re also a half step away from a flat so maybe we’ll do this now we’re on the tonic of a flat seven now one of the things you could do is put one half step and then maybe we’ll surround the fifth
  14. 7:16of um g and come down uh four three so let me just see what that sounds like [Music] pretty you know not the greatest phrase in the world but let me just try something different [Music] that time i did the same half step again between tonic and and second but are they flat seven so you see how many ways you start to get involved and the important thing is that you resolve
  15. 7:47nicely that’s the whole thing is you resolve either from d7 to g major or you resolve pretty from a flat seven to g major or something but don’t just leave it make sure you resolve something pretty so now that’s f7 into d7 f7 into a flat seven now let’s take the second set of chord changes which is f sharp um minor seven flat five to b7 which we said before was d7 going to um down to the third of b so let’s take that
  16. 8:22which is pretty i just did started on the d and i put one half step down to the third of um b7 and maybe we can come up a diminished which is pretty because now we’re resolving to e major or we could have done half step now i’m going to do b7’s tritone which is uh f7 so let’s see what we could do that’s pretty too so when i got to the
  17. 9:02let’s see that that would be prettier so we said one half step between d7 between the d and the c [Music] and then i got to the second of f7 and i just came down a chord [Music] let’s see [Music] that was really pretty so i just came down a second from the second of the f7 which is the tri-tone of b7 but this goes back to the importance of
  18. 9:36understanding how to play with family barry always says when you grow up you play with family first play brothers and sisters and that’s what he equates running d7 into a flat seven or running d7 into f7 or running d7 into b7 and how many different times you use it now what’s interesting is the first that this first um octatonic um this first octatonic thing that we were doing that could be used over the whole over
  19. 10:08the whole bridge so now you got oh wait sorry if you did so the octatonic scale or the the uh what barry likes to call um the uh it’s the family of dominance and then the um it’s i’m sorry it’s the c diminishing then the tonic of the dominance which would be uh b d f
  20. 10:42and a flat you can play that over the whole bridge [Music] let’s start at the same spot but maybe we’ll start here it just shows you that and something i’m discovering too for myself is that um being able to talk about barry’s theory and recitis
  21. 11:17theory is great and the understanding part is first but really understanding it and seeing it on your instrument is much more important so for instance like i think i’ve known about these family of dominance for i mean i heard about it first probably like the first couple of times i was in his class in 1993. so flash forward ahead still this stuff just now is starting to really make sense to me and i’m starting to really see it on a grander scale and using all the things that i know for
  22. 11:50each dominant scale so my suggestion to practicing this kind of stuff would be start by saying okay let me just practice one dominant skill a d7 scale okay i’m going to really practice that d7 scale and i want to know it every place on my instrument so i want to know it here i want to know it here i want to know it’s starting on every on different fingers then after that you say okay now i’m going to try to play a movement with it so d7 going to g major okay that’s pretty but maybe i might want to do d7 running it into b7 running it into e
  23. 12:22major where would we use that well the bridge of all things you are so when you start to see one of the family members play with the other family member you start to hear many more beautiful sounds you also start to see your fretboard much better or you you can i’m i’m sure you’ve in a way you’re visualizing your horn or the piano or whatever and you’re seeing it better and then it starts to make more sense both physically and to your ear it’s going to make more sense but um and that’s one of the main reasons why i continue making these
  24. 12:56videos is because it’s not like this is old stuff and i have it together i’m still discovering i mean i’m scratching the surface on it the same way most people are so anyway i hope this was helpful to understanding how to play barry’s family of dominance until next time thanks