Barry HarrisThe method

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

What almost everyone gets wrong about Barry’s harmony

Episode 151 · 18:02 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris corrects two common misreadings: Barry’s four scales of chords are for harmony, not soloing (apart from minor 6 diminished in real minor tunes), and they are not a reharmonisation of the major scale with a diminished after every chord, because each diatonic chord belongs to its own scale. He then shows how G7 and related chords come from B diminished, which explains altered sounds without melodic minor.

Step by step

  1. 0:33The four scales of chords are major 6, minor 6, dominant 7 and dominant 7 flat 5, each with a diminished on the 2nd (Barry said the 7th); in C, D diminished.
  2. 2:49First mistake: Barry did not solo on these eight-note scales, except minor 6 diminished on a real minor tune; they are harmony.
  3. 3:29Second mistake: he did not reharmonise the C major scale by putting a diminished after every chord.
  4. 4:13Each diatonic chord has its own scale: C major 7 in C6 diminished, D minor 7 in F6 diminished, E minor 7 in G6 diminished, F major 7 in F6 diminished.
  5. 5:28A minor 7 is C6, or A minor 6 diminished when it acts as a real minor; B minor 7 flat 5 is D minor 6 diminished.
  6. 7:13G7 comes from Barry’s creation story: chromatic scale, two whole-tone scales, three diminished chords; lower B diminished’s A flat to G and you have G7.
  7. 9:00G7 belongs to the G7 diminished scale: G7 plus A diminished.
  8. 9:35Lower the D of B diminished to D flat for D flat 7, the tritone; the two dominant scales share a diminished.
  9. 11:17Raise a note instead: D up to E flat gives A flat minor 6, the minor 6 on the fifth of D flat 7, so use the whole A flat minor 6 diminished scale over G7.
  10. 13:20Raise A flat to A for B minor 7 flat 5 (a G9), which opens the D minor 6 diminished scale over G7.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

C61:07
𝄞♭
CEGAC6DFBA♭
  1. C
  2. E
  3. G
  4. A
  5. D
  6. F
  7. A♭
  8. B
Cm61:42
𝄞♭♭
CGAC6DFBE♭A♭
  1. C
  2. E♭
  3. G
  4. A
  5. D
  6. F
  7. A♭
  8. B
C7b52:17
𝄞♭♭♭
CEC6DFBG♭B♭A♭
  1. C
  2. E
  3. G♭
  4. B♭
  5. D
  6. F
  7. A♭
  8. B
Bdim8:26
𝄞♭
C3BC4DFA♭
  1. B
  2. D
  3. F
  4. A♭
G79:00
𝄞♭♭
C4GBC5DFACE♭G♭
  1. G
  2. B
  3. D
  4. F
  5. A
  6. C
  7. E♭
  8. G♭

Barry’s own words on this

9.1 Sixth chords rule9.8 The 7th diminished and 7th flat 5 diminished scales8.3 Four dominants from every diminished chord9.7 The important minor and the tritone’s minor (minor 6 dim over a dominant)

In the course

The tritoneThe family of dominantsTwo prongs: the piano class and the horn classSixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6Barry’s four scales of chordsThe minor 6 diminished scaleThe dominant 7 diminished scaleThe dominant 7 flat 5 diminished scaleThe diminished diminished scaleEvery chord belongs to a scale of chordsEach diatonic chord has its own scale of chordsThe minor 6 on the fifth: don’t think C9Not a trick, and not just two chordsTeach Barry’s material accurately

Transcript

  1. 0:00And welcome to episode 151 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would discuss Barry’s beautiful way and completely unique way of looking at harmony, which is, as far as I know, is completely unique to him, even though he said that this is definitely how classical musicians were looking at it, Bach and Chopin. And I think he’s 100% right about that. I want to look at it and I also just want to correct a couple of things that people always talk about
  2. 0:33Barry in terms of his harmony and in terms of his six diminished scale or minor six diminished or dominant seven diminished and dominant seven five five. So the first thing is when Barry refers to his scales of chords they’re all eight note scales and they consist of whatever the chord is that we’re naming, like major 6, diminished, minor 6, dominant 7, dominant 7 plus 5, and obviously we have the word diminished after it. And the diminished can be found always on either the major 7
  3. 1:07or the 2nd. I always call it from the 2nd, but Barry used to call it from the 7th. So by that I mean if I say C major 6 diminished scale, that’s consistent, two different things. It’s already telling you, C major 6, which is C-E-G-A, and And then the diminished that’s found either on the major 7 or on the 2nd. But let’s just say it’s on the 2nd. So the diminished that’s found on the 2nd would be D F A flat B. So now you have these beautiful C major 6 and D diminished, which makes this beautiful 8 note scale.
  4. 1:42In the same way, if I say C minor 6 diminished, that is 4 notes of a C minor 6 C E flat G A And then the four notes of a D diminished. D, F, A, B, B. Same diminished. So that’s that scale of chords. That’s two. Then we have the third one, which is a C7 diminished. So that’s gonna be the same concept. The four notes of the C7, which is C, E, G, B flat. And then the four notes, again, of D diminished. So now you have this beautiful, that beautiful eight note scale.
  5. 2:17The last one is the trickiest one. It’s the one that he didn’t use as often, there’s some videos and I remember in class he used to put it in pretty spots that would be the c7 flat 5 diminished which is the four notes of c7 flat 5 c e g flat b flat and the four notes of d diminished and then you get this scale that’s another beautiful scale now just this is the first thing that everybody makes a mistake on. These are not
  6. 2:49scales that Barry used to solo with. They are not. The minor 6 diminished he did when he was playing a real minor tune. But the major 6 diminished, the dominant 7 diminished, the dominant 7 flat 5 are not used when he’s teaching soloing, about soloing. This is purely harmony and things that you could do when you’re So that’s the first problem. So let’s get that out of the way. The second issue is a lot of times I’ll see people say, oh well here we have our normal diatonic chords for let’s say the key of C major.
  7. 3:29Since we have a seven-node scale, we have C major 7, D minor 7, E minor 7, F major 7, G7, A minor 7, B minor 7, F5, and then back to C major 7. 7, which is, we all know that. Now, where everybody makes a mistake is they say, oh, Barry adds this one note, and then he re-harmonizes that and makes it into, that’s a C6, the second chord’s a D diminished, the third chord is another C6, and so on, C6 diminished. Now, this is where they’re wrong? Because he’s not re-harmonizing all the chords of C major. Every one of those
  8. 4:13chords of C major belongs to a different scale. So in other words, if I said first chord C major 7, he says that’s a C, that comes from a C major 6 diminished scale. And to be frank, the B is just a note from the diminished. So that’s how Barry sees it. And then that’s for C major. Now the second chord in a C major diatonic normal seven note scale is a D minor seven. That he does not reharmonize with a D diminished, no. This
  9. 4:50has its own scale of chords. This minor seven, because in Barry’s world every minor 7 is a major 6 is F6 diminished so that’s a separate scale entirely so now instead of saying this is C major 7 this one he makes it into a no he does not that’s only for the very first chord a C major 7 belongs to C6 diminished a D minor 7 belongs to F6 diminished and E minor 7 belongs to G6 diminished and F Fmaj7 belongs to F6 diminished.
  10. 5:28A G7 belongs to a bunch of different things. We’re going to talk about that in a second, but it belongs to a bunch of different things. A minor 7 is also C6, but a lot of times when you’re on the 6 chord, it’s turning into like what Barry would refer to as a real minor. So you might even think A minor 6 diminished for the 6 chord, depending on how it’s functioning in a particular tune. The last chord is B minor 7 flat 5. Every minor 7 flat 5 is a minor 6.
  11. 6:03So he would see this B minor 7 flat 5 as a D minor 6. That belongs to a D minor 6 diminished. So really, if you’re going to think in Barry Harris terms in the way that he thinks of harmony, if we’re going to take each chord of the diatonic C major scale, the normal 7-not C major scale, It’s going to have that C major 6 diminished. That’s F major 6 diminished. That’s G major 6 diminished. That’s F6 diminished again. This we’re going to talk about in a second. That’s either C6 again, or sometimes it can be A minor 6 diminished,
  12. 6:40depending on how it’s functioning. This B minor 7 flat 5 is D minor 6 diminished. So we had C major 6 diminished, F major 6 diminished, G major 6 diminished, that’s 3 we do the F major 6 diminished again let’s leave the G7 out for a second the C major 6 or or A minor 6 diminished and then D minor 6 diminished so all of those scales of chords you’d have to know in order to play a C major scale or at least to think of it in terms of
  13. 7:13Barry’s way of thinking about harmony that’s entirely different than saying he re-harmonized the C major scale. That’s just completely wrong. Completely wrong. So let’s stop doing that. Let’s not do that anymore. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, let’s talk about the G7 for a second. This G7, there’s many scales or chords that can be related to this one. Now here’s how we’re going to find a bunch of stuff. I’ll show you. The G7 goes back to Barry’s like creation theory, which is a beautiful theory, which starts off with the 12 notes of the chromatic
  14. 7:53scale, which splits off into the two six-note whole-tone scales, which then you take two notes from one whole-tone scale and two notes from another, and you create a diminished. And since you have two six-note scales, you could do that three times. You get three diminishes. From the three diminishes, this is where we’re going to get a lot of all these little really beautiful things. And By the way, the three diminishes is where we get the four scales of chords from also. I’ll make a video about that too eventually. But this G7 comes from a diminished. The diminished that it comes from is B diminished.
  15. 8:26See, if we take a B diminished, so we have three diminishes. We’ll have B diminished, C diminished, and D flat diminished. Because then once we play D diminished, it’s the same as B diminished. But if we take a B diminished and we lower one note at a time, that’s how we’re going to get four dominants. That’s his family of dominance, right? So we have B diminished. So let’s lower the A flat to G. There’s our G7. So there’s our G7. Now, every one of these comes from a scale. Because remember, Barry doesn’t see things as just a four-note chord.
  16. 9:00He sees it as coming from a scale. So let’s talk about G7. So here’s one of our scales of chords. G7 diminished scale, which would be the four notes of G7 and the four notes of A diminished. So, G, B, D, F, N, A, C, E flat, G flat. So now you have this beautiful scale, which is lovely. I love that scale. Now you have G7 diminished, but that also means if I chose to, let’s say, another thing that people play sometimes,
  17. 9:35that I like to play, is I like to play G7’s tritone, which is D flat 7. But where does D flat 7 come from? That same B diminished. Now if we lower the D to D flat, you’re going to get a D flat 7. That D flat 7 belongs to a scale. It belongs to the D flat 7 diminished scale. And so on. That’s D flat 7 diminished scale coming from that B diminished. So G7 diminished and D flat 7 diminished, that’s family.
  18. 10:08because they come from the same diminished. And interestingly enough, the G7 diminished scale has an A diminished. The Db7 diminished also has an A diminished. It has Eb diminished, which is A diminished. Same thing. So they share a diminished. Also beautiful. Now, let’s talk about some altered things when people say, oh, well, I like to play altered. So I’ll play melodic minor. I’ve heard that many times. Everybody has the answer for that. Everybody seems to know that off the top of their head. But what nobody can tell you is where did that come from.
  19. 10:44See, Barry tells you where everything comes from. A melodic mind, and by saying where does that come from, I don’t mean giving me, listing what all the intervals are compared to G. That’s not telling me where it comes from. That’s just telling me if I overlay this scale on top of this, what does it give me? That’s interesting, and I like it, and I agree that all those sounds have a pretty sound. but where did it come from? Where does it exist from? So Barry’s way of thinking about this diminished, it tells you where it comes from.
  20. 11:17And by that I mean watch. So let’s think about the melodic minor. So some people on G7 will play A-flat melodic minor. Right? They’ll think A-flat melodic minor. So you say, okay, well where does that come from? So here’s our B diminished. when we lowered the d to d flat we got a d flat seven but now if you take each one of these diminished notes and raise one of them a half step instead of lowering one but you raise one a half step that’s where you get these minor sixes so if i take that d and lower it a half step from the b diminished i have the d flat seven but if i take that d and raise it a half step i have what barry
  21. 12:02refers to as the minor six on the fifth of every dominant. So the fifth of D flat is A flat, which gives us A flat minor six. So now if I have A flat minor six over G7, yes, that gives you these pretty sounds with the flat nine and the raise five. Correct. But more important than it just being this one chord, it belongs to this scale. See, it belongs to that scale. So now I’m free to do anything I want within that A flat minor 6 diminished scale over a G7. It sounds beautiful. Sounds really beautiful. Anything I know how to do, look. Now if I
  22. 12:48said here’s D minor 7, that’s just some pretty things that I know how to do on the A-flat-minor-six scale that I’m inserting over the G7. Now, don’t ask me what all those notes are like. Oh, that’s, if I started telling you what each one of these notes is compared to G7, exactly what I’m doing, that’s not the point. The point is I’m doing a movement in A-flat-minor-six because I know how to move around because it’s a scale.
  23. 13:20It’s not a stagnant chord. So you see? So that’s another scale that you could play, the A-flat-minor-six diminished scale. How did we get that? we took that diminished and we raised one note. In the same way, if we take that beat diminished and lower the A-flat to G, we get the G7, right? We already said G7 diminished, which is pretty. But if we raise that A-flat, we get this B-minor 7-flat 5, which most of you would say, oh, that’s G9. Correct, that’s a G9.
  24. 13:52But more important, it’s D-minor 6-diminished scale. You see? So now I can move around and do all the things I know how to do on D minor 6 diminished scale. It’s just, it gives me limitless ways of playing. So Barry’s whole concept is you don’t see chords anymore. You see scales. Each chord can belong to one or more of his scales or chords. Now, I just happened to do four scales of chords for the G7, but there’s more.
  25. 14:29I could have done G7 flat 5 or D flat 7 flat 5. We could have looked at what sometimes he used to call the diminished scale, which is pretty, which is two diminishes in a row, which is kind of like his, almost like his fifth scale of chords, really. It’s like a diminished, diminished. But anyway, that’s just something that I, it was really, it was actually kind of bugging me a little bit. watching a lot of people and I know you know it’s it’s easy to talk about Barry Harris Now, because you get a click on your video, but the thing is, as long as the information is correct, we shouldn’t just say, let’s make a video about something I’m one page ahead on. We shouldn’t do that. We should just say, if I know something or if I discover something, let’s talk about it, but let’s not say it.
  26. 15:19like you know like we have to you know we have a tendency especially on youtube that if people see us as a teacher like sometimes people see me as a teacher they they it’s it’s almost as if i have to act like i know everything that’s not true that’s not true at all i think the thing is we’re supposed to be honest about this stuff and my whole point in starting the channel was not like oh i know everything about barry harris no it’s the furthest thing from that I’m just scratching the surface of what he was talking about. He was a genius. I’m not a genius.
  27. 15:55So I just hung out with him and was studying with him for a long time. And these are the things that I kind of gathered from being around him. But I do know one thing. If I repeat it on this channel or if I say something, that’s because I believe it 100% in my heart. 100%. It’s not a question of trying to get a click or trying to make it out to be something that it’s not. It’s 100% what I basically got from him, from being in the room with him and from watching him use these things. And that’s why, you know, so the two things I hope everybody gets from this video.
  28. 16:31The first thing, his scales of chords, his four scales of chords, is completely separate, for the most part, from his soloing. Completely separate. He has a million beautiful things to look at soloing, but those are primarily, for soloing, Barry uses seven-note scales. He doesn’t use eight-note scales. He talks about seven-note scales. And most of them are major scale and dominant scale. Now, he does throw in diminished, the diminished scale, and he does throw in whole-tone scale. And for minors, he does play the minor six diminished scale.
  29. 17:09That’s one that he does play. But for the most part, it’s just major and dominant. the most part and that covers a lot but when you’re talking about harmony this is a completely unique way to look at harmony completely unique and it’s not a trick it’s not something like okay i’m gonna play a bunch of chords and now oh here’s this thing i’m gonna do this barry harris trick where he puts in a diminished after every chord it’s not that at all that’s the furthest thing that’s the furthest thing so let’s not do that anymore but anyway uh i hope this explanation cleared up some things and uh yeah let’s let’s let’s keep working on our four scales of chords because the eventuality is
  30. 17:51it gives you total freedom over any harmony that you’re playing and that’s the whole point in our music you know freedom so until next time