Barry HarrisThe method

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

Practising and making lines with the E minor 6th diminished scale

Episode 39 · 12:55 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris works through the second of Barry’s four scales, the minor 6th diminished: E minor 6 and the diminished chord a whole step above combined into eight notes. He practises it the way Barry has students practise any scale, in thirds, triads, chords and triplet patterns, then uses its diminished chords over the minor ii-V and shows its drop 2 chords on guitar.

Step by step

  1. 0:04Barry’s four scales: major 6th diminished, minor 6th diminished, dominant 7th diminished and dominant 7th flat 5 diminished
  2. 1:13Build the scale: E minor 6 (E, G, B, C sharp) with F sharp diminished (F sharp, A, C, D sharp) gives E F sharp G A B C C sharp D sharp
  3. 2:56Play it in thirds up and down; the third from the fifth is really a second, but it still skips a note so it counts
  4. 3:33Play triads up the scale, then Barry’s version that repeats the middle note of each triad for a different rhythm
  5. 4:45Play four-note chords up and down the scale: E minor 6 and the diminished alternate
  6. 5:55Pattern: up a note, up another note, then down a chord, all the way up the scale
  7. 6:36Put an eighth-note triplet between the first note of a chord coming down and the scale note above it, then come back up the chord; change fingering instead of staying in one box
  8. 8:25Over F sharp half-diminished to B7 going to E minor, simply play the scale’s diminished
  9. 9:33Start a triad on its top note, then drop down and play the triad
  10. 10:41On guitar, play the scale’s chords as drop 2 voicings and use them in a solo

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line1:49
𝄞♯♯♯
C4EGABCEG♭D♭E♭
  1. E
  2. F#
  3. G
  4. A
  5. B
  6. C
  7. C#
  8. D#
  9. E
E minor 610:41
𝄞♯
C3EBC4GD♭
  1. E
  2. B
  3. C#
  4. G

Barry’s own words on this

9.5 The minor 6th diminished scale and its diminished partner3.1 The raw materials6.9 Triplets in lines (eighth- and sixteenth-note)10.5 Drop voicings

In the course

The scale every way: up and down, thirds, triads, chordsChord up, scale downKnow it everywhere on the guitarA half-diminished means the dominant whose third it isTriplets and the half-step rulesBarry’s four scales of chordsThe minor 6 diminished scaleDrop 2, drop 3 and drop 2 and 4Triads in the sixth diminished scale

Transcript

  1. 0:04hello and welcome to episode 39 of things I’ve learned from bar Harris today I thought we would uh focus on practicing one of Barry’s four important scales that he brings up all the time the first scale is Major 6 diminish scale second scale is minor 6 diminish scale the third scale is dominant 7 diminish scale and the fourth scale is dominant 7 flat 5 diminish scale today I thought we would just focus on the minor six diminish scale where you can use it and all the cool things you can practice
  2. 0:38on it um to get it into your fingers for guitar players primarily but for any instrument any instrument is really important scale to learn so let’s take it first E minor 6 diminish we’ll do the key of we’ll do the key of E minor and we’ll say the scale is this it’s a regular I guess how how could we refer to it as we could say it’s an IM minor 6 and it’s a
  3. 1:13diminished you take those two things and you put them together so instead yeah let’s say it’s E minor 6 and it’s FP diminished so the notes for E minor 6 would be e g b and I guess we’ll call this uh let’s call it uh let’s call it d flat so there’s our there’s our four notes of minor 6 now here we got F diminish we got f a
  4. 1:49c uh D Shar there’s our four notes of the F diminished so when you put those notes together you have an eight note scale which gives you the this E minor 6 diminished and here’s the notes E FSH g a b c csharp dsharp back to e again so it’s an eight note scale very nice scale uses those two things an E
  5. 2:24minor 6 and a diminished now for purposes of this exerc or these exercises today uh you should probably know how to play at two [Music] octaves two [Music] octaves um let’s talk about things that you can practice on it to get comfortable with playing that scale let’s do the scale up and down like we always
  6. 2:56do we’ll just go up to the major six okay now we’ll do thirds and thirds are play a note skip a note play a note and we’ll do that up the [Music] scale now what’s interesting about that is you start a note skip a note play a note skip a note play a note when you do that um this one the one from the fifth is actually not a third at all it’s a
  7. 3:33second the interval is a second but we still put it in when we’re playing thirds because you’re still skipping a note in the middle of that so that still connects to our thirds uh then we’ll be able to do uh and we could do any variations of these up and down but let’s now do Triads which would be play a note skip a note play a note skip a note play a note there’s our Triad three note Triad and what Barry likes to do on that one is he likes to play the second note again to make it rhythmically kind of
  8. 4:07different or cooler so the second one is play a note again skip a note play a note skip a note play a note so it’s this so the first one’s this second one’s this so for the notes it would be e g b next one FP a C and so on and we’re going to repeat the middle note of those so we’ll say all the way up the scale with [Music]
  9. 4:45sound now if we did it coming down it would be pretty [Music] next one would be chords so start a note skip a note play another note skip a note play another note skip another note play another note so now you can clearly see there’s your E minor 6 the next one start a note skip a note play a note
  10. 5:17skip a note play a note skip a note play a note there’s your diminished so now you got this not diminished and keep going up the scale like that [Music] we’ll do it coming [Music] down uh
  11. 5:55sorry what I like to do and what Barry does sometimes is he goes up one [Music] then go up to the next scale note and come down that diminished so now you’re going to go up go up a note and then come down another chord do the same thing go up a note go up another note and come down a chord so it would be this [Music] pretty though those are really pretty
  12. 6:36things to practice um something that Barry likes to do is instead of playing chords [Music] Down he will put a triplet between the first note of the chord down and whatever the scale note is above it he’ll do an eighth note triplet and then maybe come back up that same chord so it would be [Music] this now here’s where if you’re a guitar player
  13. 7:10fingering is or these little boxes that we get ourselves into are useless because if I decided to do that and now I want to put a a an eighth note triplet before this note how do I do that if my pinkie playing that note it’s impossible so I have to either go to here or change fingering to here which I think I’ll do so we’ll say say this that’s a six here comes a diminished and we’ll do um a whole step another whole step here comes another [Music]
  14. 7:42six half step because now we’re doing a diminished here comes another minor 6 diminished whole step [Music] half step let me see if I can do that in [Music] Tempo I messed up this one should have
  15. 8:25been just a half step those sound good [Music] fast those sound good I have to practice those but see how great those sound now the idea behind it is if we’re doing something in E Minor and we’re going to F minor 7 flat 5 to B7 which is its 25 going into minor
  16. 9:01now we’ve talked about different things in previous episodes about what to play on that but I could just think of for the F minor 7 flat 5 to the B7 I could just think of that diminished so maybe for this one I’ll say watch one 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 2 3 4 I [Music] say see so I did the diminished but I probably should have done the half
  17. 9:33step another nice thing that Barry plays sometimes is he will start a Triad on the top note first and then come down and grab the Triad so here’s the Triad he diminished di uh minor 6 so here’s the first one but what he likes to do is he hits the top note first and then you get this sound [Music] the second one which would be this he likes hit the top note first so now you got
  18. 10:08[Music] this really [Music] pretty uh [Music] really pretty again things to practice so obviously if you can practice those things on your minor 6 diminished you should also be practicing them on major
  19. 10:41six diminished and so on now I think there’s a previous episode where I talked about um the voicings on guitar from minus 6 diminish which is really important um so if you haven’t watched that you should go back and look at that episode um because if you do you can also C for instance for guitar these notes make up the first chord which would be E B the D flat and um the um the um G on top there’s our first
  20. 11:17thing so you can also play those if you’re [Music] soloing I’ll try this one that’s the next inversion these are all drop two inversions and as a saxophone player you should probably know [Music] these which are really pretty to play really pretty to just throw that in
  21. 11:57[Music] see [Music] see that’s nice [Music] too it’s nice to end on the six but anyway those little pretty things to practice and to think about um for minor 6 diminish and I don’t think we’ve done anything in E Minor 6 I really appreciate by the way all of these suggestions for future
  22. 12:30videos and I promise I’m going to really try to get to all of those there’s actually been um great suggestions that I have to get to I just have to have the time to to uh think about how approach it but anyway I hope you enjoyed this episode it’s a quick episode on practicing uh E minor 6 diminished thanks again till next time