Barry HarrisThe method

Chris Parks · Stage 13: Tunes as the curriculum

Don’t Be Bored of the Blues

Episode 91 · 12:52 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris spends the whole lesson on the first two bars of a B flat blues, where Barry’s scales are just Bb7 up and Eb7 up. He runs Bb7 lines smoothly into Eb7, then works through Barry’s bass-line movements and the other harmonies that fit these bars, showing how many ways there are to play one small movement.

Step by step

  1. 0:00Start from Barry’s scales for bars 1 and 2: Bb7 up, then Eb7 up.
  2. 0:35Take everything you know on Bb7 and make it run into Eb7 as one line.
  3. 1:16Use one half step between tonic and 7th, and the important arpeggio on the root, into Eb7.
  4. 1:49Try the important arpeggios on the flat 7th (A flat major) and the fifth (F minor).
  5. 3:02Learn Barry’s bass line B flat, D, E flat, E, F: Bb7, Eb6 or Eb7, E diminished, back to the fifth.
  6. 3:54Learn his second movement: Bb, Bb7, Eb major, Eb minor or Ab7, back to Bb.
  7. 4:36Simplify: B flat major straight to diminished.
  8. 5:58Hear Eb9’s top four notes as B flat minor 6, so play B flat major to B flat minor.
  9. 7:05Try B flat to F7, or the tritone E7 into Eb7.
  10. 8:17For blues that go to the relative minor: B flat major, then F7 down to the third of D, to G minor.

Chords and notes in this video

Tap a time to jump to it in the video.

Line3:02
𝄞♭♭
C4C5DEFB♭E♭
  1. B♭
  2. D
  3. E♭
  4. E
  5. F

Barry’s own words on this

13.1 The blues the Barry way10.2 First progressions to know6.1 Arpeggios on every degree; the three important arpeggios of a dominant scale8.5 The tritone

In the course

The scale every way: up and down, thirds, triads, chordsScale outlinesA half-diminished means the dominant whose third it isThe descending half-step rules for the dominantThe three important arpeggios of a dominantSurroundsThe tritoneI to IV minorThe minor 6 on the fifth: don’t think C9The blues the Barry waySmall things

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello and welcome to episode 91 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. And today I thought we would talk about and get involved with the first two bars of a blues in B-flat. So you might say to yourself, wow, just two bars, but there is a lot in two bars that we can accomplish, just in the little two bars. So if we say B-flat 7, if we did Barry’s scales, it would be B-flat 7 up, and then E-flat 7 up. So the first part of the blues is pretty easy.
  2. 0:35It’s just B-flat 7 up, E-flat 7 up. That’s it. So that’s all we have to worry about for the time being. So one of the things that we can look at is, okay, I have to be able to do all the things I know on B-flat 7, which is scale up and down, scale in thirds, scale in triads, scale in chords, half step below all those things, pivots, half step rules, all those things. But then I have to run them nicely into E flat 7 and make them sound like it’s one thing, as opposed to here’s a B flat 7 thing, and then here’s an E flat 7 thing. So that’s the challenge. So you have to work some of these out, obviously,
  3. 1:16beforehand. So let’s say we took a half step, one half step between tonic and 7. That’s nice. One, two, three, four, one. Well, I added two half steps that time, but let’s just do one half step. One, two, three, four. That was B-flat seven running into E-flats. E-flat seven. So you work out a bunch of things like that. How about the important arpeggio on the one of the B-flat, which would be... That’s a nice one.
  4. 1:49one two three four ah or maybe that’s a nice one how about the important arpeggio on the flat seventh which would be a flat a flat major so we’ll say that’s a nice one one two three That’s a nice one going to this E flat 7. How about the important arpeggio on the 5th, which would be that F minor arpeggio.
  5. 2:26So how about... That’s a nice one. So... That’s a nice one. That’s just F minor arpeggio. There’s the F minor. Or... That’s a nice one too. I went up to the fifth of the F minor, I came down the arpeggio. Nice one too. Those are all little pretty ways to run B flat 7 into E flat 7. I’m not thinking about
  6. 3:02much else. Then Barry has these things where he looks at, where he says, this is the bass line you should hear. B-flat, D, E-flat, E, F. And what it is is basically B-flat, B-flat-7 is the D. Then you got E-flat. Now this can be either E-flat-6 or E-flat-7. And then the E is like E-diminished. And then the F is back to the fifth of B-flat. So we have to learn these movements. There we go. There’s the first couple bars. There we go. We can do it from any degree. That was B flat 6 and then I did the same thing for E flat 6 and
  7. 3:54and E diminished. Or I could do it from every degree. So maybe. Well, I went a little far that time, but that’s the idea. So now that’s this change. Then he says, this is another bass line that happens in the same part. And that’s a little different. That’s B flat major, B-flat 7, E-flat major, E-flat minor, or A-flat 7. That’s the flat 7 of A-flat 7. And then back to B-flat again. So now that’s a nice one to say. That’s a pretty phrase.
  8. 4:36that’s four minor or the or the e flat seven or or um a i’m sorry b flat seven into a flat seven which is really nice that’s another change that you could really work out a whole bunch of phrases for this going to this another one is like well we discussed this before this so if i wanted to skip all this, and then I could just play maybe B-flat major, and then go right to diminished. That’s a nice one, so...
  9. 5:17That’s a really pretty one. Those are really, I would never, and to be fair, I would never have thought to just practice B flat to B flat diminished. Not at this part. Ba ba do B, ba ba do A, that’s really pretty. And that implies both things. So let’s see how many phrases we can come up with. I mean, you could go crazy just working on coming off of that idea.
  10. 5:58B-flat major. That’s a pretty one. I would never think to do that. Another one is, like, if we were just thinking this to E-flat 7, obviously, E-flat 7, if we look at the top of it, if we play it like an E-flat 9, which guitar players usually play, we get rid of the E flat, and we just look at those four notes on the top. It’s gonna give us B flat minor six sound. So we can simplify it and make it B flat major
  11. 6:34to B flat minor. So the first part we can think of is B flat major, B flat minor. That was just running up and playing B flat major and then B flat minor. Pretty. Again, first two bars of the blues. All this stuff. Another one that sometimes people play is just B-flat, and then they play F7.
  12. 7:05So it’s almost like a 2-5 in the beginning. So they’ll play. So maybe they’ll just play a basic B-flat major to F7. Very pretty. Sometimes they’ll play B-flat, or sometimes they’ll play B-flat-7’s tritone, which is just E-7. So sometimes you can just play E-7 to E-flat-7. So let’s do that.
  13. 7:39One, two, three. That’s pretty. That’s just one half step, starting on E-7. And then surrounding the fifth of E-flat-7. So one, two, three. That’s nice. So any of these things are going to work. Let’s come down a chord from the second. That’s a nice one. Come down a chord from the second of E flat 7. So 1, 2, 3. That’s a nice one.
  14. 8:17Those are all E7 into E flat 7. So that’s another way that we can think of the first couple of bars. There’s another thing too, like sometimes there’s a blues that goes to the relative minor, which is like blues for Alice. So it’s an F, but if we did it in B-flat, it would be like B-flat major. And then the second bar is like A-half diminished to D-7, which then ends up on G-minor. So we have to learn how to play those also in the first two bars. So that would be like B-flat major, and then F7 down to the third of D.
  15. 8:53So the scales to that would be this. Maybe we could do B-flat 7. But we could also do B-flat major. That’s the scales. That’s F7 down to the third of D. So you have to learn how to play all those. Let’s see. Or maybe, let’s see. So that’s learning how to play B-flat into F7 down to the third D.
  16. 9:34Now these are all, all of these, are the first two bars of a blues. So again, this is what I often say about Barry’s method is, for me, it’s always been like a mirror. So like here’s this thing and it forces you to look at yourself. How many different ways can I play B flat to E flat 7? I have the first two bars of the blues. If I never practiced anything else, if I just practiced the first two bars of the blues, how many different ways can I come up with it playing B flat to E flat? and then it happens in a lot of songs b flat to e flat b flat 7 to e flat 7 or b flat going to e
  17. 10:16flat happens in a million songs so these are all things that you could do for all those all those kind of songs also so but it really makes you if if you really focus on the small things these little small things then you start to realize you can build a very nice foundation for yourself that’s sturdy so that when we keep moving on and keeps learning how to play more movements by movement I just mean this chord moving to this chord then you realize man I can I can really have a nice vocabulary of things but also it makes you aware and you can listen to other people and you can even ask
  18. 10:56yourself hey when I listen to this person and I hear them play the blues have they checked out really checked out B flat going to E flat now I’m gonna really listen. You know, okay, somebody tells me, oh, listen to this person play. So I really listen and they’re playing the blues. And I say, okay, did they really check out this chord going to this chord? And sometimes based on what people sent me, I’m like, no, they haven’t checked it out at all. Zero. They’ve spent zero time on it. It’s just a bunch of quick notes or something like that, that is not really checked out. So that’s the other thing about Barry’s method is it makes you listen
  19. 11:32better. Because when you listen to Bird, or you listen to Bud Powell, or you listen to all the greats, you listen to Barry himself, you’re going to hear beautiful things on the first two bars. There’s no skipping anything, or there’s no filler. It’s going to be beautiful movement from the first two bars, and it’s going to be a lot of different things. It’s not going to be all the same thing. even though like you can just play b flat 7 to e flat 7 every time every chorus that’s fine but now you see all of the different variations of playing just the first two bars all the variations i mean
  20. 12:11i can’t even count we we i must have brought up six or seven of the same exact part so just shows you there’s a lot for us to work on so even though it can be a little overwhelming more important it should tell you that you shouldn’t be bored. So if you’re bored of playing your blues, start to look at it this way and then maybe you won’t be bored anymore. I’m never bored. Okay, well, anyway, I hope you enjoyed that, checking out the first couple of bars of a B-flat blues.
  21. 12:48Until next time, enjoy practicing. Thanks.