Barry’s chromatic scale (chromatic runs with chord tones on the beat)

Barry’s chromatic scale is a way of running chromatically that stays in time with the scale. It fills each whole step with the chromatic note in between, so scale notes land on the beats and added notes on the ‘ands’. Between the third and fourth, and the seventh and eighth, there is nothing to fill, so the scale note above goes in. His call in a 1998 workshop: C up to G in C major, C, D♭, D, E♭, E, G, F, F♯, G.

The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit19:4320:31Frédéric Galliano, Notes on the Method of Barry Harris ¶2123 Reddit users (handles kept per comment), Reddit: first-hand recollections of Barry Harris’s classes ¶139jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), How do you use Barry Harris’s Dom. 7th dim and Dom 7th b5 scales? ¶217jazzguitar.be members (usernames kept per post), How do you use Barry Harris’s Dom. 7th dim and Dom 7th b5 scales? ¶219

Barry made the same choice coming down. Running down C major with one extra note between the tonic and the major seventh, he used the second: C, D, B. He pointed out that the added ‘half step’ can really be any note: usually it is a half step, but between the third and fourth and between the seventh and the tonic something else has to go in.

The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit1:422:142:54

Barry taught it in a 1998 class on breaking habits, as practice by rule: pick a scale and do it from every degree. After playing the run he said it had broken a habit of his, and that whatever breaks a habit means he is doing something right; rules, he added, upset all prepared phrases. Drilling them teaches many ways to play the same thing, and the player who knows the most ways, he said, will be the best.

The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit19:1019:4324:1625:3326:3333:38

Chris Parks, who studied with Barry from 1993, remembers it as something Barry came up with later in life, after the scales, thirds, triads, chords, pivots and half-step rules; it was already in Barry’s 1998 workshop. It is a different thing from the chromatic scale at the root of Barry’s ‘theory of evolution’, the twelve notes from which he derived the whole-tone scales and diminished chords.

My Chat With Chris Parks From Things I Learned From Barry Harris2:5122:08The 1998 workshop, part 2: breaking the habit20:31Jazz theory, part 1: key families a minor third apart9:09Howard Rees, Evolutionary Voicings, Part I: Barry Harris Keeps Things Movin’ ¶9