In plain words
Barry played with Coleman Hawkins in the 1960s and lived with him near the end of his life. Hawkins told him he did not play chords, he played movements. Barry took this as a principle: a chord is only one part of the music, and the real knowledge is how to go from one place to another. A chord may turn up on the way, but you have to know how to get there. So, he told classes, we have to be movement players and know all the movements.
Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings1:07Be movement players1:09Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York8:57Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶126Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶401
He set this against thinking in chords. You cannot learn to improvise from knowing chords on the piano, he said. He criticised players, and some well-known string writers, who connect everything with ii-Vs: a good song is more than a chain of ii-Vs, and if you just jump from chord to chord you miss what the strings and reeds are really doing. He made the same complaint about horn players who hit one chord, then another, and put a melody on top.
Be movement players0:00Stella by Starlight0:0014:01Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶405Ted Panken, For Barry Harris’ 82nd Birthday ¶24
What the listener hears is the movement. In one class he had a pianist play F in the left hand with D and A above: you may think that is F, he said, but it is G minor 7, and with G in the bass you hear G minor going to C. However many notes you stack, he concluded, the ear hears what moves, so three notes are often enough. In Giant Steps he noted that B has notes in common with D, and every note has something around it.
Passport: teaching a blues by ear13:2313:5714:30Giant Steps in the piano class5:26
This is why he built his scales: the sixth diminished scales are ways of moving through chords rather than sitting on them. Knowing the movements also lets you play a song in any key, because you recognise a movement wherever it returns in a tune instead of transposing symbols one by one. He said the standards, many written by European-trained composers, have correct movements, which is why everyone should learn them.
Movement, not chords: the sixth diminished scales0:00Stella by Starlight7:038:13Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings0:341:07Believe: a talk to musicians33:29
How he said to practise it
Take one chord and see how many ways you can move it: move the top voice, the bottom voice, or the left hand alone, and listen to where each move can go.
Learn the standards and look for their movements: the line that runs through a passage without interruption, and the places where the same movement comes back later in the tune. Then try to play the song in other keys from the movements, not from transposed symbols.
Passing It On10:13Stella by Starlight8:138:47Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings1:07
When a great player uses a few small, simple chords, work out why they are there: Barry set his class the puzzle of some plain chords of Bud Powell’s that seem to step out of B♭ into F.
In Barry’s words
Each one plays from the moment he says it. Every other moment he teaches it is listed below.
When I worked with him, he told me, he said, I don’t play chords, I play movements... See chords is just part of the thing.
So we have to be movement players and we have to... We have to know all the movements.
There has to be more emphasis on movement in music as opposed to people thinking of chords. You’ve got to start thinking of movements, ways to move through chords.
It isn’t chords, it’s movements, and how you go from one place to another. A chord might come in there, but you’ve got to know how to go from one place to another.
Where this comes from
Everything above is drawn from these. Open any one to check it.
Every moment he teaches it12 moments in 10 recordings
Each time opens the transcript there; the video plays when you are online.
Be movement players
Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings
- 1:07
Says the standards are correct and must be learned, then tells the Hawkins story: chords are just part of it.
Movement, not chords: the sixth diminished scales
- 0:00
Opens a workshop: more emphasis on movement than on chords; that is why he made the scales.
Passport: teaching a blues by ear
- 13:57
F with D and A above is really G minor 7; the ear hears the movement, not the note count.
Giant Steps in the piano class
- 5:26
Working through Giant Steps: B has notes in common with D; every note has something around it.
Stella by Starlight
Bud Powell’s sudden change of key
- 0:17
Plays a few simple chords of Bud Powell’s and asks the class to explain the movement.
Chording as a scale
- 0:45
Takes a chord and moves its top, bottom and left hand to show he wants to know every move.
Believe: a talk to musicians
- 22:00
Bass players used to stand by the pianist’s left hand because pianists know movement.
Passing It On
- 10:13
A line should run uninterrupted from one point to another; find those lines in songs.
From the lessons1 lesson, 6 points
Notes taken from Barry’s classes, each tied to the moment it comes from.
Be a movement player
- Idea
When Barry worked with Coleman Hawkins, Hawkins told him he did not play chords, he played movements. Barry drew the lesson that chords are only part of the picture: we have to be movement players and know all the movements, how one chord moves to the next.
Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings1:07Jazz theory, part 2, with score1:20Stella by Starlight14:34Be movement players1:09
- Idea
Barry criticised players, and even some famous arrangers, who are only ii-V thinkers. A song is a beautiful thing that is not merely connected by ii-Vs; if you just go ii-V you miss the real movements the strings and reeds play in a good arrangement. He used Stella By Starlight and Night and Day to show passages that do not simply jump from one chord to the next.
- Idea
In Stella By Starlight, Barry says what is wrong with the A chord is that it does not really take you to the C chord. He hears a C-sharp diminished there instead, and you can still put the A in the bass; that diminished is what gets you there so prettily. He compares it to a spot in Polka Dots and Moonbeams that most people play plainly, while Bud Powell heard it more like the C7 going to the diminished.
- Idea
Barry played a passage of simple, pretty little chords from Bud Powell and asked the class to explain it: why, in the key of B-flat, does Bud suddenly come up with a C chord? His only explanation was that those chords belong to the key of F, as if Bud had switched keys in midstream; a student added that it moves from F toward C. Barry contrasted these small chords with the big, many-note chords most players use, and said understanding what such simple chords mean is what the class had to explore.
- Exercise
Barry had a pianist play F in the left hand with D and A above. You may think that is an F chord, but those three notes are really G minor 7; put G in the bass and you hear G minor going to C. His conclusion: what the ear really hears is movement, the voice that moves, however many notes you stack, so three notes are often all you need.
- Idea
Barry spoke about a line being uninterrupted: going from one point to another is just a line, and other notes simply come in around it. You have to find the lines in the songs you play.
Passing It On10:13
In writing6 notes
What his interviews, his students’ class notes and other teachers’ articles add.
When Ted Panken suggested the idea was really about melody, Barry agreed and named the little moves: knowing how to reach the relative minor or come back from IV to I, which he felt young players no longer knew.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶403Ted Panken, For Barry Harris’ 82nd Birthday ¶24
Learn movement first: once you know it you can step away from it, but you cannot step away from something you never knew. Writers who skip it end up fitting melodies to chords instead of harmonising melodies.
Barry Harris on WKCR-FM ¶405Ted Panken, For Barry Harris’ 82nd Birthday ¶24
Barry linked Hawkins’ talk of movement to his love of classical music, and said he himself kept taking classical lessons partly because those composers knew about movement.
Howard Rees opens his account of Barry’s harmony with Hawkins’ remark, and presents the major and minor sixth diminished scales as tools for keeping simple voicings on the move, so they build and release tension instead of standing still.
Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶5Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶6
A student’s account: for Barry, movement means connecting chords instead of just playing them, and one way to do it is to borrow notes from the diminished chord of the sixth diminished scale.
A report from Barry’s workshop sets his approach against matching a scale to each chord: students work from how the original song moves, in melody and harmony, and one says Barry talks about moving chords through scales.
How other teachers explain it5 videos, 57 series episodes
Barry’s students, and their students, teaching it their way. A second opinion, not Barry.
- The Barry Harris Book For Guitar and the Idea of Movement
The Barry Harris guitar book and the idea of movement.
33 min On YouTube
- The 5 Pillars of Barry Harris Chordal Movement Beyond the Shapes
Barry Harris chordal movement beyond the shapes.
13 min On YouTube
- Horizontal Movement - Barry Harris Harmony
Horizontal movement in Barry Harris harmony.
23 min On YouTube
- Music Is Movement: Moving Through Scales
Music is movement: moving through scales.
4 min On YouTube
- Music Is Movement: Smooth Voicing of Chords
Music is movement: smooth voicing of chords.
4 min On YouTube
In the teaching series
Episodes on this idea in the long series by other teachers. Each name opens that whole series in order.
Mike Hayes Guitar
- Barry Harris chord movement on guitar YouTube
- Dominant seventh chord movement with diminished chords YouTube
- Chord movement on Blue Moon YouTube
- Workshop: chords and movement on Summertime YouTube
- Misty with dominant seventh chord movement YouTube
- Chord concepts on Autumn Leaves YouTube
- Chord concepts on All the Things You Are YouTube
- Chords on There Will Never Be Another You YouTube
- My Funny Valentine: guide-tone lines and arrangement YouTube
- My Funny Valentine (Miles Davis version) YouTube
- My Funny Valentine (Chet Baker version) YouTube
- Moving chords on the Autumn Leaves bridge YouTube
- Why Real Book chords sound vanilla, and how movement fixes them YouTube
- Sixth-chord substitution on Blue Moon YouTube
- Making chords flow on Body and Soul with guide tones YouTube
The Labyrinth of Limitations
- Deep Dive: the movement to the mediant YouTube
- Stop learning music theory YouTube
- Study movement with Foundations 4 YouTube
- A beautiful movement YouTube
- Episode 13.2: the “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” arrangement explained YouTube
- Episode 16: the elevator sequence YouTube
- Garden of Forking Paths 2: practising movement YouTube
- Foundations 4: the study of movement YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 15: a movement exercise through the family YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 30: a movement from Blue in Green YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 37: modulation with movement YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 46: moving through major 7th chords YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 56: getting out of a rut with Barry’s concepts YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 64: chromatic movement through the family YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 65: practising All the Things You Are YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 69: practising meta-scales on Round Midnight YouTube
- Little Labyrinth 70: a classic chord movement seen in new ways YouTube
Things I’ve Learned From Barry Harris
- Episode 7: movements for the first four bars of the blues YouTube
- Episode 34: movement from major to relative minor YouTube
- Episode 35: movement from major to the sixth dominant; creating lines YouTube
- Episode 41: movement from I to the flat-III diminished YouTube
- Episode 122: scales in thirds, more than an exercise YouTube
- Episode 124: movement you’ve never played on a blues YouTube
- Episode 135: think small, not big: F6 to B diminished YouTube
- Episode 153: Barry’s secret to playing through changes YouTube
- Episode 158: six must-know ii-V movements YouTube
- Episode 159: must-know minor ii-V movements YouTube
Read further3 links
These open on the web.
Books and paid courses
- Howard Rees, ‘Evolutionary Voicings Part 1: Barry Harris keeps things movin’’, Keyboard Magazine Oct 1998 (chromatic scale -> whole tone -> 3 diminished -> 12 dominants; 6th dim scales)
student (Howard Rees) — Howard Rees’ free article opens with Hawkins’ line and shows how Barry keeps voicings moving.
- Inside Barry’s World, Howard Rees YouTube series (from Jan 2026): four scales for chording, voicings, movement, harmonisation, solo development
student (Howard Rees) — Howard Rees’ free video series includes chord movement among its topics.
- Alan Kingstone, The Barry Harris Harmonic Method for Guitar (2006), 121 pp + CD
student (Alan Kingstone) — Alan Kingstone’s book (paid) puts Barry’s chord movements on the guitar.