Barry HarrisThe method

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

Comping All the Things You Are

Episode 23 · 15:05 · On YouTube · In the lesson player

Chris comps the first eight bars of All the Things You Are by turning Barry’s view of minor 7 chords into sixth chords: F minor 7 becomes A flat 6 and B flat minor 7 becomes D flat 6. Using drop-2 scales of chords, he connects them by the smallest moves, swaps E flat 7 for E minor 6, and borrows notes from the diminished.

Step by step

  1. 0:36Learn the first eight bars: F-7, B flat-7, E flat 7, A flat, D flat, D half-diminished to G7, C.
  2. 1:55See F minor 7 as A flat 6 with the sixth in the bass, and learn the A flat 6 diminished scale of chords.
  3. 2:29Keep to drop 2 voicings on three sets of four adjacent strings.
  4. 3:10Move through the scale of chords over the F minor bar, and also try starting on a diminished chord.
  5. 4:23See B flat minor 7 as D flat 6 diminished: only D flat 6 or E flat diminished chords.
  6. 4:56Connect each A flat 6 to its closest D flat 6; they share two notes, so little moves.
  7. 7:20For E flat 7, play E minor 6, the minor 6 a half step above, which makes E flat 7 flat 9 sharp 5.
  8. 8:58Chain A flat 6, D flat 6, E minor 6, E flat 6, A flat 6 in every inversion.
  9. 11:10Borrow a note from the diminished above or below the sixth chord while comping.
  10. 12:29Drill each move with a metronome, then try other choices like E flat 7 diminished or drop 3 voicings.

Barry’s own words on this

9.1 Sixth chords rule10.3 Moving a chord through its scale into the next chord (6-6-6 instead of ii-V-I)10.4 Borrowing10.5 Drop voicings

In the course

The tritone’s minorSixth chords rule: minor 7 is major 6, half-diminished is minor 6Barry’s four scales of chordsThe major 6 diminished scaleSix on the fifth: two sixth chords for a major chordLeast movement: find the closest voicingBorrowingComping with movementAll the Things You AreWhat Barry’s class was like

Transcript

  1. 0:00Hello, and welcome to episode 23 of Things I’ve Learned from Barry Harris. I thought we would talk about comping for the standard All the Things You Are, which was played a lot by Bird and Dizzy and Bud Powell and, of course, by Barry. So the way I thought we would dissect it is maybe take a look at the first four or maybe even the first eight. We’ll see how far we go. First four bars are first eight bars.
  2. 0:36So let’s just talk about it. The first measure is an F minor 7. And the second measure is B flat minor 7. The next measure is E flat 7. the next measure is Ab major and maybe a quick Ab7 then a Db major then we got D half diminished to G7 going to C major
  3. 1:09for 2 bars so again, it’s F minus 7 2, 3, 4, Bb minus 7 1, 2, 3, 4, E flat 7, 2, 3, 4, A flat, A flat 7, D flat, 2, 3, 4, D half to minus G7, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so there’s the first eight. Now, if we take Barry’s understanding of his scale of chords, we should try to look at it in the way that he looks at it, which is he doesn’t think of things in terms of minor 7s. He thinks of them as the 6 chord.
  4. 1:55So for the first chord, F minor 7, he wouldn’t call that F minor 7. He would say that’s A flat 6 with 6 in the bass. So it’s this chord, or A flat 6. So you have to know the Ab6 diminished scale in chords. And if you aren’t familiar with that, I talk about his four important scale chords in a previous episode that you could look at, but just really fast. It’s Ab. That’s the scale.
  5. 2:29So it’s basically an Ab major scale, but with an extra note, which is that Ab6. And when you do that, what it comes up with is now you just have a 6 chord and a diminished. And then just inversions of those two things. Another 6, another diminished, 6, diminished, 6, diminished, back to 6 again. Now for this lesson, for the point of this lesson, maybe we’ll just look at drop 2s. And drop 2s again for guitar is just basically four consecutive strings. So we’ll use either the 6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd together, the 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd together,
  6. 3:10or the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st together. So now let’s take a look at the first part where you have a full measure of F minor 7. So you can play. Here’s your scale of chords. That’s a nice little movement. So we’ll try it. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, and... went to B-flat-minus 7. But, we can do that, or we can maybe, another idea might be to start on a diminished. So here’s the diminished, here’s the diminished above it,
  7. 3:47here’s the diminished below it, so let’s start on a diminished, and let’s listen to what that sounds like. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, so let’s try that again. Using a diminished. One, two. One, two, three, four. Okay, so let’s get into what the next little change is.
  8. 4:23Because I keep calling it Bbm7. So again, the first part is Ab6, diminished. The second part, Bbm7, Barry doesn’t see it as a Bb7. D-flip-minor 7, he sees it as D-flat-6-diminished. So that scale would be... Which is like a D-flat-major scale, except with a flat-6 added, which gives you either a D-flat-6-inversion, or diminished. So it’s either D-flat-6 or E-flat-diminished the whole way.
  9. 4:56That’s all it’s gonna be. So, now we have to learn how to run F minor, A flat 6 into D flat 6, which we’ve kind of done before, but let’s just take a look at all the different places where it connects. Let’s take a look at the first F minor 7. The closest D flat 6 to this A flat 6 is this one. So let’s see what that sounds like. 1, 2, 3, 4.
  10. 5:31There we go. F minor 7 into B flat. Let’s try a different one. Let’s say... That time I used a diminished in between. I used a different diminished to get in between. Because as you can see, A flat 6 to D flat 6 has these two notes in common and the only thing that moves so that’s a nice little movement that you can even play in there
  11. 6:03so let’s try that again 1, 2, 3, 4 But anyway, that’s the idea behind it. Let’s take a look at F, or I’m sorry, A flat 6 into D flat 6 again.
  12. 6:36All the different places you could do it. So we did it here, we did it here. Here’s another A flat 6. So there’s the closest D flat 6. So let’s see how we do that, how we work that one out. So we’ll say Okay, so now let’s take a look at even a different thing, which is once we play the Db6 for the Bbm7, the next chord is Eb7. Now, we can play as a tritone substitute of the Eb7.
  13. 7:20We can play the minor 6, which is a half-step above the dominant chord. So in this case, instead of E flat 7, we can play E minor 6 diminished. So now we have to think of quick ways to get to D flat 6 into E minor 6. and obviously when you do E-6 it’s basically making the E-b7
  14. 7:53a b9 with a raised 5 so it works nicely anyway, so let’s try that now let’s try F-7 or A-b6 the closest D-b6 to the closest E minor 6 and then back to Abb6. Or even because we know for Abb6
  15. 8:26you can play two 6s. You can either play Abb6 or Abb6. So that’s a nice one to do. Here’s Abb6 and then here’s Abb6 and then here’s Abb6. So again, let’s try Abb6 to E minor 6 going to A flat 6 or E flat 6 for the A flat major. So if we put those together we’ll say A flat 6
  16. 8:58to D flat 6 to E minor 6 to E flat 6 to A flat 6 which is really pretty and it’s not a lot of movement. So you should try to see those in every possible inversion. So here’s the first one again. Here’s A-flat-six. Here’s D-flat-six. Here’s E-minor-six. And here’s E-flat-six. And there’s A-flat-six. Let’s do the next one.
  17. 9:34Here’s A-flat-six. D-flat-six. E minor 6 and then here’s those are the two sixes the E flat 6 and the A flat 6 that go with that now, these are all the little inversions or here, let’s see this last one here’s here’s A flat 6 and here’s D flat 6 here’s E minor 6
  18. 10:07and then here is that E flat 6 and then there’s the A flat 6 again so you see all these little things that you should be able to do from one chord to the next that you have to be able to see just in the first part and I didn’t even mess with when it goes to A flat sometimes there’s a quick A flat 7 in which case you can also use like an A minor 6 to get to D flat 6 again when it goes to the 4th chord there so let’s just practice a few little things on like I said but sometimes you could start right on the diminished. So let’s do that. One, two, three. And it goes to C minor. But anyway, so now I’m just
  19. 11:10looking at purely those scales and how all little different ways to practice those pretty things. Another thing you can do just for instance is we had a lesson on borrowing notes so the concept behind borrowing notes is here’s your A flood six, here’s your diminished above, I’m sorry below, here’s your diminished above, at any time you can borrow a note. So for instance if I want to borrow this note, For this, I can. And I’m just borrowing a note that was part of the diminished before it.
  20. 11:46So I might even want to do something like that. Or maybe I can start the song out with, let’s see, I’ll borrow a few different notes. I’ll borrow them a few times. Let’s try it. One, two, one, two, three. So that’s another thing you can think of while you’re comping. And again, these are just things to practice.
  21. 12:29You can put your metronome on and say, let me see if I know all my Ab6 running into Db6. Let me see if I know all my Db6 running into Em6. And there are other variations too, like we could have done Db6 into just a regular Eb7 diminished, or an Eb7b5, which is another one of his scalar chords that you can practice too, that you have to learn how to be able to do things with. So like I said, it’s endless. And, if you think about it this way, we’ve only scratched the surface and just looking at all the possibilities with just drop two.
  22. 13:08We haven’t even done drop three or drop two, drop four. So again, drop three would be play a note, skip a string, play three notes. Drop two, drop four would be play two strings, skip a note, skip a string, I’m sorry, and play two more strings. It’s endless. It’s just endless. So again, in the comment section, if you want to, let me know what you’ve been working on Because, you know, the one thing that I want to try to make this channel is feel more like a community where we’re just going to use my channel to share ideas about these different systems. And, I mean, some people have already talked about it, which I love.
  23. 13:49But I want to turn it into that, like it’s us all practicing together. Because really, when you go to Barry’s class, that’s always the way I feel about it. When Barry starts to show us something, and then you feel like you’re a part of something, and everybody’s working on similar things, but everybody has their individual ideas, and he’s so free and easy about it, and he’s so willing to listen to everybody’s ideas about it, that it makes it really feel like we’re a community, and we’re all looking at the same purpose, which is to try to become better musicians.
  24. 14:23Because that’s really all it is. And the one thing I feel about Barry is the reason that he is such a master is because he’s constantly searching for new ways. Constantly searching for new ways. Still, to this day, he’s still searching for new ways. So anyway, it’s something to keep in mind. I appreciate you supporting me and this channel, and enjoy practicing your chords for all the things you are. I think the next video we’ll start looking at maybe soloing for it. But anyway, until then, see you in episode 24.
  25. 14:59Take care. The