BorrowingDiminished notes in place of chord tones

Diminished notes are restless, Barry says: they ask to be moved somewhere, and in practice they do move, to the neighbouring scale note. Even a major seventh chord, which we think of as complete, is really a sixth chord with one diminished note in it, the major seventh, and that note wants to move. If you borrow two diminished notes, both move. To handle all this you need to know your scale every possible way.

Introducing the sixth diminished scale20:1520:4921:25

Barry played a figure in which a diminished note resolves home to the chord, and said most players would not realise that is what it is. He then showed the same move with two diminished notes, and then with the whole chord, all going home. Knowing that these are diminished notes moving to chord notes lets you extend one small move into a bigger one.

Believe: a talk to musicians56:35

Barry called himself an unknowing teacher who does things unknowingly and takes chances other players would not. Because he knows which diminished goes with most chords, he puts funny notes in: so as not to play the same sound, he takes a chance, puts some diminished notes in there, and makes them go back.

Stella by Starlight18:3119:05

Play an A minor seven chord. For the G, borrow G-sharp, the diminished note: play the chord with it, then let it go back to G. Barry later extended the rule: for the E, borrow the diminished note above it, and so on, so each chord note can lean on the diminished note just above it before returning. He also thought a borrowed note could be sent onward instead, for example G-sharp up to A, and that it would probably sound good too.

Introducing the sixth diminished scale10:4611:2012:2916:45

Why does borrowing sound right? Barry called the pianists over to look at a chord a student had made by borrowing: it contained an A-flat triad and a B triad. He asked for the related dominants, D7, F7, A-flat7 and B7, and pointed to those triads in the chord: that is why it sounds all right, because they are family.

Introducing the sixth diminished scale13:0413:41

When a student moved to F major, Barry pointed out that they had borrowed a diminished note, the C-sharp, and that the E could have been borrowed as well, or the whole thing. Judge such sounds by ear: some of these combinations sound funny.

Jazz theory, part 3: four dominants from one diminished10:4811:19

Barry played All the Things You Are while experimenting with diminished notes, borrowing them into the chords and lines as he went. To do this you have to know the sixth diminished scale and really practise it. He also had a student try putting the diminished note in the bass.

Borrowed diminished notes on All the Things You Are0:000:492:28

Borrowing also works on a diminished chord voiced in drop 2 (the alto dropped an octave). Starting from that voicing, Barry changes notes by borrowing to produce chords he says people have never played before. To work out what such chords look like, he suggests starting from the triads.

Jazz theory, part 6: every major sixth is a minor seventh4:045:216:157:41

Barry wrote a whole piece on borrowing: instead of playing the notes of the sixth chord, you borrow the diminished notes. A blind student in his class at the Jazz Cultural Theatre suggested calling it Borrowing. Listeners say it sounds like Chopin, but Barry made it up; he saw it as a continuation of the classical tradition.

Jazz theory, part 4: borrowing diminished notes0:000:33

Barry believed the classical musicians knew the scales better than many great jazz players. What we label leading tones or appoggiaturas, he says, are really borrowed notes. His example is a strange chord in Chopin’s first Ballade, which he describes as an E-flat chord made with a diminished note.

The C7♭5 scale in drop 2, and a tritone trick2:333:163:49