Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 10: Movement

Six must-know ii-Vs

Episode 158 · 14:08 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris shows six ways to play a ii-V in G by moving as few notes as possible, true to Barry’s dislike of jumping between big chords: treat A minor 7 as C6 and, keeping the C, move one, two or three notes to reach A minor 6, a diminished, D7, A flat 7, D7 flat 5 or E flat minor 6. Each target belongs to its own scale of chords, opening more movement.

Step by step

  1. 1:46In G, A minor 7 is C6; take C6 in drop 2 with E in the bass (E, A, C, G) and keep the C still.
  2. 2:23One note: lower G to F sharp for A minor 6 (fifth in the bass), the minor 6 on the fifth of D7.
  3. 3:34Find the G in every inversion and make the same move.
  4. 4:10Two notes: G to F sharp and E to E flat give a diminished, like D7 flat 9.
  5. 5:19Two notes: G to F sharp and E down to D give a plain D7.
  6. 6:39Three notes: G to F sharp, E to E flat and A to A flat give A flat 7, the tritone.
  7. 7:29Three notes: E to D, A to A flat and G to F sharp give D7 flat 5.
  8. 8:56Lower G and E, but raise A to B flat: E flat minor 6, the tritone’s minor, a flat 9 and raised 5 sound.
  9. 10:50Chain several, one note at a time: A minor 6 to the diminished to D7 flat 5.
  10. 12:38Each chord belongs to its own scale of chords, so borrowing opens many more moves.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

C62:23
𝄞
C3EACG
  1. E
  2. A
  3. C
  4. G

Barry’s own words on this

10.1 Be a movement player9.1 Sixth chords rule9.7 The important minor and the tritone’s minor (minor 6 dim over a dominant)

In the course

The family of dominantsSixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6The dominant 7 diminished scaleThe minor 6 on the fifth: don’t think C9Least movement: find the closest voicingSix must-know ii-Vs

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 158 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And before we get started, I just wanted to announce that back by popular demand, I’m going to start another seven day free trial over at my school. And for those of you that don’t know about it, I’m going to leave a link in the description and in the comment section. It’s a school that I started, Chris Parks, Things I Learned from Barry Harris, which is this great space where all of us get together and we’re going to be able to get together. We talk about all the stuff that we’re practicing.
  2. 0:31And we have, I give mini lessons. And we have a couple of Zoom classes through the month. Plus, we have one Zoom class with Thomas Eccles every month. We are having a blast there. So anyway, I had been running this seven-day free trial, which I ended. And then I started getting a bunch of emails asking when I’m going to do it again. So I figured I would start it again, starting today. And it’s going to run through June 1st. So if you wanted an opportunity to just come and check out what’s going on over at the school, it’s perfect time to try. So you come, try out for your seven-day free trial.
  3. 1:10And if you don’t like what’s happening, you can always leave after the seven days. It doesn’t cost you anything. So that’s going to be starting today. Now, getting into the class, today I thought we would talk about six possible ways to play two fives. that wait until you see how small the movement is. You can’t even believe that you haven’t been doing these. And this all comes from Barry’s world of his scales of chords. And not only that, it comes from thinking about moving the least amount possible, which is always what he was about.
  4. 1:46He didn’t like going from one big chord to another big chord, which as guitar players, we generally do. But I’ll show you what I mean. So we’re going to start off with, we’ll say 2-5 in the key of G. right now as Barry people we know a two chord is a minor seven the five chord is D7 okay there’s a lot of ways to play that to make it sound pretty first thing is every minor seven is a major six so we know that a minor seven is actually major six in Barry’s world so that’s a C major six okay that’s fine now what’s cool about this is we say okay we’re gonna play a C6 I’m gonna start with
  5. 2:23this one with the E as the drop 2. So here’s our C6 with the E as the drop 2. Now here’s what’s really interesting. The C6, watch what happens when every note moves but the C. So watch what I mean, watch. So we got this C6 which happens to be E, A, C, and G. Now watch, let’s move one note to create a pretty 2-5. Now watch what this one note is. I’m going I’m gonna lower the G to F sharp. Now this gives me what looks like an A minor six,
  6. 3:01which it is, it’s an A minor six with the fifth and the bass. But isn’t that nice? Now that’s a pretty move. You see that? So I said, that’s a perfect move. So that’s C six to the first one that we’re thinking of where you just move one note is A minor six. So that’s the first one. C6 to A-6. Now, with all of these, what’s hip is you try to do every inversion of that. So here’s the inversion with E in the bass. Now here’s the inversion with G in the bass. There’s your C6.
  7. 3:34Now you’re going to lower G to F sharp every time. So now it’s in the bass. Probably most of us know, have seen this before, this move. We do that all the time. And we didn’t even realize that that’s really what we’re doing. Now here’s the next C6, starting with A in the bass. We have to find where the G is. The G is on the B string. So there’s the move. Now here’s the C6 again with the root and the bass, which is pretty. And the G is on the D string this time, or the G string this time. See how pretty that is? See how pretty those are?
  8. 4:10So here’s all of them. And I’m just ending on G6. So next one. Next one. And the last one. All those are great. Now that’s moving one note. Now if I choose to now move two notes, let’s move two notes. Now here’s the most common one that you’re going to hear. This is going to give you a diminished sound. Watch. If I move not only the G to F sharp, but if I also move the E to E flat, you’re going to get a diminished, which is pretty,
  9. 4:43which is kind of like D7 with a flat 9. That’s moving two notes. See? So again, that’s moving the G a half step and the E a half step. So let’s find the G and the E and do it. Every inversion. You find the G and the E and you move the other half step. Every single one. They all sound great, you see? So that’s the second one. That’s moving two notes. Let’s move two notes again. And let’s say, okay, let’s move. This time, instead of moving, we’re going to move the G to F sharp,
  10. 5:19but we’ll also move the E to D. And now we just get a plain D7. Isn’t that pretty? That’s just a normal one, right? Now we’ve got, here’s the next C6. Move the two notes again. The E a whole step this time, and you get the same thing. You’re going to get it every time. So what’s interesting is you have to find those notes in that particular voicing wherever you are. Obviously, they’re in different spots every time. But see how pretty this one is? Watch. Awesome. See? Now, what’s great about these are some of them feel great on the hands in certain
  11. 5:57inversions and some of them don’t. So the ones that you don’t love, how it feels on the hand, don’t use those in that particular spot. But some of these are great. Look at this. And that’s just a plain D7. By the way, we can play a plain D7 once in a while. We don’t have to be all fancy all the time anyway so now we got that’s three okay now let’s do the same thing but now we’re gonna move let’s see uh now let’s move three notes now let’s move three notes so now we’re gonna move the g to f sharp but we’re also gonna move the e to e flat and we’re gonna move
  12. 6:39the A to A flat, which is pretty. That gives us the tritone, A flat 7. So listen how pretty this is. Now this is three notes moving. See how pretty that is? So the G moved to half step, the E moved to half step, and the A moved to half step. So you see that? And look at this. This inversion happens to fit perfect in your hand. Now we have to be able to do that every time. So all the notes move except for the C. Now here it comes. Isn’t that great? That one’s a good one. Let’s do the next one. Last one. All those are great. Okay, so let’s do the
  13. 7:29next one. So now we’re moving three notes. We’re going to continue to move three notes, but this time we’re going to move the E to D. We’re going to move the A to A-flat, and we’re going to move the G to F-sharp. So now you’re going to get this. Now it’s going to give you a D7b5, which is pretty, or Ab7b5, whichever one you prefer. So that’s still moving three notes, but this time the E is going to move down a whole step. See, that’s a pretty
  14. 8:13one. So, that’s a good one. The next one. And the last one would be... Those are great two fives. See, just a little movement. Not a big deal. You’re not jumping around a lot. Some of these are so easy to play. See, so even if you’re playing a fast tempo thing, you could say... That’s great. Those work great.
  15. 8:56so that’s still moving three notes now let’s move three notes again but let’s say in this instance we’re going to move the we’re always going to move the G down a half step we’re going to move the E down a half step but we’re also going to move the A up a half step And now you get this beautiful C6 going to E flat minor 6, which for those of you that don’t know, that’s the minor 6 on the fifth of the triton.
  16. 9:33So that’s E flat minor 6, which makes the chord like D7 with a flat 9 and raise 5. Isn’t that pretty? So now you got this. And remember, two notes lower and the A raise is a half step. So you have to be able to do that from every inversion. See? This one. probably most of you have seen this one and this one this one those are great, you see?
  17. 10:12so now we had the first one was just lower one note you get the minor 6 on the 5th of the D7 which is A minor 6 we had lower two notes and you get the diminished now that diminished happens to be what all these other things come from all these minor sixes and all these dominants and dominant seven plus five that’s the second one then we had lower two notes and you get uh the normal dominant the d7 then we said lower three notes and you get the tritone a flat seven we said lower three notes and you get the tritone with a flat 5.
  18. 10:50I’m sorry, you get D7 with a flat 5 or A flat 7 with a flat 5. So that’s five of them. And then the last one that we looked at was the E flat minor 6, which would give you a flat 9 and raise 5. Or as some people like to think of it, it’s the altered sound. So there’s your 6, you see? So now, not only should you know how to do any 1 at any time, but also sometimes you’ll hear like Barry will play between a couple of them so he might do like I’m going to lower the G to F sharp but then I might lower
  19. 11:25I might make the last thing into a bunch of them I might go from the minor 6 on the 5th the D7 to the diminished to the dominant 7-5-5 see watch if I said that’s a pretty move Listen to that. So if I said watch. That’s a great move. And all I’m doing is moving one little note at a time to another little note. Those are spectacular.
  20. 11:59You’ve got to have all those little things in your hand. But I would say first start off with getting those six. Now, those aren’t the only six. There are other ones you could do too. like sometimes I like to do the this to the raise five which is pretty that’s a pretty one but I stuck with just those six because all six of those have in common that they all also come from scales of chords see in Barry’s world all these things come from scales of chords right so you got c6 which is the two chord all comes from c6 the minuscule right okay we know that already but now
  21. 12:38Now, each one that I move to belongs to a scale of chords. For instance, that’s C6. That’s A minor 6. A minor 6 belongs to a scale of chords. A minor 6 diminished scale. See? This diminished scale belongs to the diminished scale. This D7 belongs to the D7 diminished scale. So just think of all the possibilities. This Ab7 belongs to the Ab7 diminished scale. You see how many things you could do if you start to think about borrowing and all these other things?
  22. 13:14So these six bring you into all of, branch you out into all of these other scales of chords. So then you start to see, wow, my 2-5 is not just this. It’s a lot of things. It could be an infinite amount of things. And the great part is it’s infinite amount of things with the least amount of movement as possible. To me, that’s what’s special. That’s the special thing about it. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed that little 2-5 idea.
  23. 13:50And please, if you think of it, come join me over at my school. So that’s school, Chris Parks, things I learned from Bear Harris. And check it out and see if you like it. Until next time.