Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Talks, news and answers

The Six-Note Scale Idea

Episode 78 · 9:35 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris shows a sound Barry plays on a dominant: the dominant’s major triad combined with the major triad a half step above, giving a six-note scale (on G7: G, A flat, B, C, D, E flat). He breaks it into many patterns, applies it to the G7 going to C minor in There Will Never Be Another You, and notes it can also work going to major.

Step by step

  1. 0:00On G7, take the G major triad and the A flat major triad a half step above it.
  2. 0:39Put them in order (G, A flat, B, C, D, E flat) and play the scale and its inversions.
  3. 1:13Know where Barry uses it: mostly on a dominant going to minor, like F7 to B flat minor in Round Midnight.
  4. 1:54Break it apart: run it down, or play an A flat triad note and drop a half step to the G triad note each time.
  5. 2:33Mix the order: skip notes, or move from the A flat triad up to the next G triad note.
  6. 3:39Play the A flat triad up and resolve to the note a half step above the last note, through each inversion.
  7. 4:02Use it on the G7 to C minor in There Will Never Be Another You.
  8. 6:59Try Barry’s fast runs of it through several octaves.
  9. 8:07Experiment with it on a dominant going to major as well.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

G70:00
𝄞♭♭
C4GBCDA♭E♭
  1. G
  2. A♭
  3. B
  4. C
  5. D
  6. E♭

In the course

A half-diminished means the dominant whose third it isBarry’s arpeggio and its inversionsThe six-note scaleThe same few notes across several octaves

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello, and welcome to episode 78 of Things I Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would discuss this little cool thing that Barry does on a dominant scale, where he takes the triad of that dominant and he plays another triad, a half step above it, a major triad. So in this case we’ll think G7. So if we think G7 we got G major triad and we have also the triad that’s half step above it which is A flat major triad. This is what he’s doing. So he’ll take G major triad and he’ll take A flat major triad. Now if you put those two things together in consecutive order you have G, A
  2. 0:39flat, B, C, D, E flat. So if you go there’s your scale, six note scale. So now So if we invert it, now we start from the third. Invert. And then we’re back to the first one. So if we play the whole thing, we would have. Really beautiful. And he does this run, he uses this primarily
  3. 1:13if we’re going home to a minor. So for instance, he has this really great, he does a bunch of great ones, but especially on F7 going to B-flat minor in Round Midnight, he plays a beautiful run on that. But that’s the first time I became worried about it. He does it in other spots too. But what he does too, he comes up with all different ways to play it like Barry usually does, which is what makes it really fun. So if you take this six notes. and let’s figure out ways to break it apart. So, like, we could just go up it, which is what we did.
  4. 1:54Right? We could go down, which is also pretty. Now, sometimes Barry does a thing where he plays one of the notes of the A flat triad and then right away to the note of the G triad. So he goes down a half step each time. Which is pretty too. Really beautiful. Sometimes you could play the first one, skip the second one, and go right to the third one. Also pretty.
  5. 2:33Sometimes you could play the first one, go from G to A-flat, and the second one you go so now you’re going to do the first from the G triad to the A flat triad but then when you get to the third you’re going to go from the A flat triad to the D so let’s see what that sounds like and then you could also do where you start on the G triad go up to A flat and then play another A flat
  6. 3:06but skip the third go right to the fifth So you got, that’s nice. So then you start from the third, from the fifth, sorry, from the root. Let’s see what those are. Wow, those are pretty too. So you see how many ways that you can mess around with this one idea and come up with a million different things.
  7. 3:39What if we just did the A flat triad up and then just resolved on the note a half step higher from the last note of the triad, whichever note you land on. So if we say, then we’ll invert, invert, invert, invert. I love it. I love all of them. But now the question is, okay, how are we going to use it in a song? So we’ll take something like, well, G7, the first song that I thought that comes to mind is There Will Never Be Another U, where it starts in E flat major, does E flat major for
  8. 4:17about two measures, then D minor 7 flat 5 for a measure to G7 for a measure going to C minor. Right there, that G7, so we can start to do it. So we’ll say, duh, E. There it was. So, let’s try another one. That was just, I just played the scale down. So maybe I’ll try to do one of the other little patterns.
  9. 4:53Let me try that A-flat thing. Let me try. I like that one. Let me try that. Yeah, I like that one too. How about if we play... Oh, Barry does a nice one.
  10. 5:26Wait. Yeah, let me try that one. Let me try that one. So let’s say Yeah, those work really beautifully. So, I love that sound.
  11. 6:10Let me try that one. Wow. So it’s just the thing to show you how Barry will take a little, a little tiny thing of two triads and he’ll come up with all these beautiful runs. Now he does these like fantastic lush runs
  12. 6:59of just like doing them a bunch of octaves. Like I think I’ve heard Pasquale do a bunch of them too, where he just does them like really fast up. So you do them like a bunch of octaves up. Something like that, or whatever, even down. If I can do it fast. But once again, that’s like a little tiny thing that you then use. Besides G7, you know, like most people on D half diminished, G7 is Barry people. We think Bb7 down to the third of G.
  13. 7:34That’s one thing you can think of. You could think of, when you play D half diminished, you could think of Bb7 down to the third of G7’s tritone, which is Db7. It’s a nice one, too. You could think of the whole tone scale. You could think of, I mean, a lot of things. but that’s another little nice sound. That’s another just beautiful sound that you can get in your arsenal.
  14. 8:07So, you know, it’s not like Barry came up with that, but it’s just something that I heard him play, and I thought it’s interesting. It’s just the six-note scale and all the different things you could do with the six-note scale, and how, after you learn it, you could be musical with it. and I mean really you could probably do it on it let’s say what if we were going to C major so let’s say we were playing we could probably do something in there I mean you could use it going to a major it’s nice too
  15. 8:53I mean, it’s pretty going to a major too. I was only bringing up that Barry uses it primarily for minor because that’s where I’ve heard him use it. But it shows you, you take one of the little ideas that maybe he shows you in class and you really try to do everything you can with it. That’s what makes it so much fun. So I hope you enjoyed this short lesson in this little six-note scale that consists of the two major triads half-step above or half-step away from each other. Okay, until next time, thanks again.