Chris Parks · Stage 6: Line devices

Lines on the III, flat III, II Minor Turnaround

Episode 40 · 9:52 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris builds lines on the turnaround B minor 7, B flat minor 7, A minor 7 to D7 in G, two beats each, a common replacement for 3-6-2-5. Following Barry, he sees each minor 7 as both a minor and a major arpeggio, and mixes directions, inversions and triplets to make phrases.

Step by step

0:00The change in G: B minor 7, B flat minor 7, A minor 7 to D7, two beats each.
1:21See each chord as two arpeggios: B minor or D major, B flat minor or D flat major, A minor or C major.
2:37Start on the fifth of B minor: up one arpeggio, then down the next.
3:14Vary the directions, and add triplets, e.g. between the major seventh and tonic of G.
3:53Do the same with the major arpeggios: D, D flat and C.
5:13Start the arpeggios from the third or the fifth as well as the root.
6:23Make lines by mixing: one chord’s minor arpeggio into the next chord’s major arpeggio.
8:29Feel two beats per chord, then try it with four beats on A minor 7 to D7.

Barry’s own words on this

6.4 Arpeggio inversions and permutations 7.3 Getting through changes 10.1 Be a movement player

In the course

Triplets and the half-step rules A minor 7 is two triads Three, flat three, two

Transcript

0:00Hello and welcome to episode 40 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. Today, in keeping with the idea of looking at movement, I thought we would look at the 3 chord, going to the flat 3 chord, going to the 2 chord, which happens a lot. So for instance, if we take, and for this episode we’ll talk about the key of G, we got the three chord, which is B minor, or B minor 7, going to B flat minor 7, going another half step down, half step down to A minor 7, to D7. So, like...
0:37Now, this happens a lot in almost the end of every song. Instead of saying 1, 1, 6, 2, 5, sometimes they do 3, 6, 2, 5, right? But instead of saying 3, 6, 2, 5, sometimes they do this. So, this is used all the time. Now, two things that Barry talks about with these, with this movement in particular, and for this particular episode, we’re just going to talk about those chords, each of them being two beats. Now, there’s different ones where there are also four beats, but that’s a slightly different thing that you can look at.
1:21Let’s just take these two. So, you got B minor. So, you have to know the two things he likes you to look at sometimes when describing this. And these aren’t the only things to look at, but these are two nice things to look at. This B minor 7, he sees this as two things. He sees it as a B minor arpeggio, but he also sees it as a D major arpeggio. So, he thinks that you should see these, which is the B minor.
1:57I’ll invert. He also thinks you should see these. Because now I’m thinking D major. Now, if you think about that for all three, that’s B minor and D major. And then this one would be B flat minor, D flat major. And this one would be A minor, C major. so think about all those notes and think about how we can trigger coming up with lines for those so sometimes if you say okay well let’s just start on let’s say
2:37the fifth of B minor one two three four all I did was come down go up an arpeggio then down the next one. You could have gone up all of them. You could have gone down all of them.
3:14Or you could have gone down one, up another, down the next one. See, all these different ideas for the same exact thing. Let’s put a triplet between the major 7th and the tonic of the G major. Well, let’s do two different triplets. We’ll do one here. Those are nice phrases. So if you’ve got one, two, three, four.
3:53And that’s just looking at just the B minor. Now the same can be said also for the D major. So let’s do this one. Or we’ll look at... actually I’m sorry not that that was not D major. Let’s look at D major for a second. Let’s do. Which is beautiful. And it’s the same idea of taking the arpeggio, going down one. And this particular time I’m taking the arpeggio, starting from the root,
4:35going down. Coming up the next one. Those are really nice. Now I can go up all of them. I can also go up one down the next one. See, all these little pretty things that in the end of a song or in a quick turnaround, you could be doing all of these little beautiful things.
5:13So where it’s only 2 beats of this, 2 beats of this, 2 beats of this, 2 beats of this, back to one. So really, it’s only two little bars. But think about all the beautiful things you can throw in in two bars. Just really beautiful things that you can do. So now that was just the one from the tonic. I was thinking about the tonic. Let’s think from the third. Or. Any of these.
5:47D, da D, da, those are beautiful. Start from the fifth. So the fifth of the D major would be. So now let’s do the first one up, the second one down. And when you start to hear these, you go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard phrases like that before. At least when Barry started pointing these out to me, I was saying, oh, that’s what that is.
6:23That’s what this sound is. Now, just to get you started, you’re going up one, down another, you’re doing exactly the same thing. But then you start to create lines with them. Not to say that those aren’t lines, those are beautiful lines. but you can also start to put them together where maybe you go down one so that’s just throwing a few different things together so that time I came down the C major one Now I move down here, because now I’m already on Bb minor, but I’m not thinking Bb minor,
7:09I’m thinking Db major arpeggio. And I could have done the next one too. So now I’ll do a, of all those, I’ll take the same idea of using a major arpeggio, or a minor arpeggio, and I’ll try to create a line. So I did this one. Oh wait. Or. See?
7:46Just add different ones together. Put one minor thing into the next one’s major thing. So if I say... That was a nice one. So one, two, three... So that time I came up the B minor. I went down a half a step because now I’m thinking Bb minor, but instead of thinking Bb minor, I’m thinking that Db major. So let’s see.
8:29And I just did a little triplet thing on the D7. I didn’t even mess with the A minor or the C major there. So I said, one, two, three. So these are little tiny things that you start to discover. and you start to feel two beats of this, two beats of this, two beats of this, or two beats, two beats, and then four beats of this full thing, this A minor 7 to D7. Again, this is not the only way you can look at it, but these are nice little ways to start creating your own lines using these
9:09things. So for the B minor, it’s a D major arpeggio and B minor arpeggio. For the B flat minor, it’s D flat major arpeggio and B minor arpeggio. For the A minor, it’s C major arpeggio and A minor arpeggio. Okay, so I hope that’s been helpful. I’m going to try to make a few more. But people were asking me about little turnarounds, and that’s an important turnaround that happens in a lot of songs. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. And yeah, have fun practicing your 3 to flat 3 to 2 movements. Thanks.