Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 4: Running scales over tunes

Scales on the blues revisited, with tritones

Episode 100 · 14:42 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

For his 100th episode Chris goes back to Barry’s scale outline for a blues in C, which shows both which notes to draw lines from and how long each scale lasts. He then swaps in tritones (F sharp 7, E flat 7, D flat 7), F major to B flat 7, Barry’s chain of dominants in fourths and the Lady Bird turnaround, and solos over the result.

Step by step

  1. 0:34Bars 1-4 in C: C7 up (tonic to flat 7th), F7 up, C7 up and down, in eighth notes with a metronome
  2. 1:07Bars 5-8: F7 up and down, then C major (with B natural) up and down to C sharp, the third of A7
  3. 1:40Bars 9-12: G7 up and down, C major up, G7 up; play the whole outline to feel how long each bar lasts
  4. 3:00Put the tritone in bars 3-4: C7 up, then F sharp 7 up
  5. 4:44In bars 5-6, play F major to F minor; since a minor 7 is the important minor of a dominant, F minor takes the B flat 7 scale
  6. 6:25For the A7 bar, use its tritone: C major up, then E flat 7 up
  7. 7:06Use G7’s tritone too: G7 up then D flat 7 up, and C major then D flat 7 in the last two bars
  8. 9:00Solo over the outline, trying to bring in every substitution
  9. 10:11Try Barry’s chain from the F7: F7, B flat 7, E flat 7, A flat 7, D flat 7, G flat 7, two beats each, as 1-2-3-5 of each scale
  10. 11:57End with the Lady Bird turnaround: 1-2-3-5 of C, E flat 7, A flat and D flat 7

Barry’s own words on this

4.4 Scale outlines13.1 The blues the Barry way8.5 The tritone8.1 Put the ii chord away

In the course

Think the dominant: put the ii awayScale outlinesA half-diminished means the dominant whose third it is1-2-3-5 on short chordsThe tritoneThe blues the Barry way

Transcript

  1. 0:00hello and welcome to episode 100 of things i’ve learned from barry harris and since it’s the 100th episode i thought we would talk about um we’d go back to the very first episode which was uh the scale outline for the blues so barry has these really great scale outlines for songs which really help you to not only hear what are the appropriate notes so to speak but the length of time that they go for so the length of time in in this instance we’ll do it in the key of c but like how long a c7 goes for how
  2. 0:34long an f7 goes for and when you’re playing the scale in eighth notes you get to really feel what that time feels like how much does a bar feel like how much does two bars feel like it’s really interesting so and i haven’t heard anybody else do it so we’ll do uh the blues and c which starts off with a c7 which as barry people we know we only go up to the flat 7. so we’ll go up c7 then up f7 then we’ll do c7 up and down that’s the first four bars
  3. 1:07then we’ll play f7 up and down then we’ll play c major seven so we’ll change the last note of the c we’ll make it uh the normal uh uh b natural and when we come down we’re going to end on the third of a which is a c sharp the reason being at that point in the blues and the jazz blues at least it’s going to be an a7 chord so he likes to go down to the third of a7 which would be c sharp so that’s so the last four bars is going to be uh or the middle four bars are
  4. 1:40going to be f7 up and down c major up and down to the third of a which is c sharp the next four bars is going to be g7 up and down then c major 7 up g7 up so it’s going to be g7 up and down c major up g7 so if we were going to do that together it would sound like this all together one two three four [Music] so that’s the scale outline
  5. 2:27so that gives you several things it gives you the notes from which to draw these lines from and also gives you how long it goes for so the feeling of how long a bar is or how long two bars is or how long you have to do the c major before you get down to the third of a or how long the g7 goes for it’s really it’s such a brilliant method to really work and you do this with every tune you can do these with all songs so i think i’ve done it with how high the moon with cherokee with rhythm changes a bunch of tunes
  6. 3:00but now i thought since we’re at episode 100 let’s look a little deeper into how else we can apply this so for instance i’ve made previous videos on like the first four bars of the blues die taking a look at all the different angles that we could attack it so we could do that with the scales too so let’s say for instance we we take the first four bars which was c7 up f7 up c7 up and down and let’s say we use the tritone for the second two bars so we’ll say c7 up
  7. 3:32[Music] f7 up and instead of just c7 up and down [Music] maybe we’ll use c7 tritone and by a tritone i mean if you start on c you go three whole steps above it and you get to an f sharp so instead of just playing c7 up and down we’ll play c7 up f sharp seven up so let’s see what that sounds like first four bars one two three four [Music] sounds pretty and you know we play this
  8. 4:11as as guitar players or as piano players people play this all the time [Music] there it is we do it all the time so now we know we can use those scales to solo c7 f7 and then we’ll do c7 into f sharp seven or sometimes you could just play straight f sharp seven the whole time but let’s see what else we have but we can do so now we’ll do let’s go to the next four bars which is just f7 up and down and that’s true for
  9. 4:44normal blues but sometimes people on that second four bars will play instead of f7 they’ll play f major to f minor which is really pretty too but that f minor seven takes b flat seventh scale because every minor seven is just the important minor on the fifth of a dominant so barry would say that would be b flood seven f7 then let’s say we’ll do c7 let’s do the f sharp seven
  10. 5:18and then we’ll play f7 we want oh let’s do f major and then we’ll do b-flat seven which is really pretty so like if we were playing the blues like that it would be like um [Music] see f major [Music] f major [Music] to f minor or f major to b flat seven
  11. 5:53that’s that sound and you’re going to hear that a lot in bird blues and a lot of people’s blues so that’s another way to do it so let’s play the that again c7 f7 c7 f sharp seven f major b flat seven really pretty now let’s go to the that’s one way we could do it or we could just play plane f7 up and down that’s fine um now let’s tackle the c major down to the third of a7 so we can say
  12. 6:25[Music] which is pretty because that’s implying now it’s going to a7 but what’s interesting is a7 let’s use its tritone so let’s say what’s a7’s tritone e flat seven so why don’t we play c major up and then e flat seven up which is beautiful so now our blues will sound like if i stay on f7 for that middle four bars let’s say so c let’s see one two three four [Music]
  13. 7:06perfect now the next part is just g7 up and down but what if we use g7’s tritone which would be d flat seven so we’ll say g7 up and then we’ll play d flat seven up so now let’s play that whole thing exactly the way we have it one two three four [Music] and then the last part we got c major up
  14. 7:48and then we got g7 why don’t we use g7’s tritone so we won’t even play g7 we’ll play d flat seven so the last part will play c major d flat seven [Music] okay so now let’s try to do that with the scales one two whole way one two three four [Music] so [Music]
  15. 8:26really pretty pretty stuff now let’s do that where we did the f major to f minor or f major b flat seven let’s try that one one two three four [Music] i mean there’s a lot there and i probably wouldn’t suggest playing everything outside like using tritone
  16. 9:00but what happens if i try to put i’m gonna try to solo i’m gonna try to use all those let me see if i can make it if i can make it a sound right one two one two three [Music] let’s try again one two three [Music] so [Music] so i used all of them the first part was
  17. 9:38a little bit messed up but trying to use all let’s try again [Music] [Applause] [Music] well that wasn’t quite yeah that was good [Music] yep i was trying to use tritone every time it’s really something that like because you have all these pre-planned things that you’ve worked out but then to try to think of changes in exactly that way
  18. 10:11is interesting way to look at it so it just shows you another nice thing that barry does sometimes is he’ll place he’ll play uh c7 now once you get to the f7 he starts doing this he plays f7 b flat seven e flood seven a flat seven d flat seven g flat seven which takes you back to f7 so it’s kind of nice when you start on the f7 you just start going in fourths so you say f7 b flat e flat b flat
  19. 10:47so if we’re going to play the scales to that since we don’t have a lot of time because it’s going to be one two three four and only two beats of each one two three so we would do is we would play gary likes to play one two three five of each thing so the scales then would be [Music] so let’s try to do those in the scales
  20. 11:23let’s see so we’ll just put that in instead of the f7 for a full instead of the c7 to the f-sharp seven we’re going to do that so let’s see and then if i can work it out to the f7 right after one two three four [Music] works perfectly and i like this one too sometimes barry will use the ladybird turnaround which
  21. 11:57in the key of c would be like c major to e flat seven to uh a flat major to d flat seven so he’ll do the one two three five of all those we’ll do one two three five of c one two three five of e flat one two three five of a flat one two three five of d flat so let’s do that for the scale outline with that other little dominant thing one two three four [Music]
  22. 12:47i mean there’s so many things that you can do but that’s what i love about the scale outline the scale outline is so brilliant it’s it’s really it’s such a brilliant way to to um to think about starting point for soloing and you could take any one of those examples and create little lines from those things and now you have a basic outline of everything you’re going to use everything so even if you just practice just the first one which is the which is the uh c [Music]
  23. 13:22then c back to f sharp you gotta work out little lines that do that that little movement [Music] so the c to the f sharp [Music] or uh let’s see [Music] i mean these little lines [Music] d flat seven
  24. 14:03[Music] so you’re going to use all these trust me anyway i thought this was a um a nice way of putting kind of like uh bookends on episode 1 and episode 100 and hopefully there’s another 100 which with barry’s method there could be another 10 000. you know that’s it’s just limitless so hope you enjoyed it have fun practicing your scales for the blues
  25. 14:36including all those substitutions until next time thanks