The important minor and the tritone’s minor (minor 6 dim over a dominant)

Barry compared a jazz performance to classical music: it is a whole, not a bar-by-bar affair. You can’t think of it as one measure of C minor 7 to F7; sometimes the B-flat major comes in early, or the F7 does. He said he didn’t believe in ii chords at all and that they should all be put away.

Interview: Detroit, Bud Powell and the shuffle18:4719:20

Barry said the important minor chord is always found on the fifth of the dominant. F-sharp minor 6 is found on the fifth of B, which tells you the F-sharp minor belongs to the B7. That is why, he said, you can’t really practise F-sharp minor 7 to B7: if it is B7, you practise B7. He felt this was taught wrongly and wished he could hold a big session with all the teachers.

Jazz theory, part 7: Monk and Stella by Starlight12:3113:07

Barry admitted he used to say there was no such thing as a half-diminished chord, until someone corrected him. He passed on Monk’s view: Monk never called it half-diminished or minor 7 flat 5, but a minor chord with its sixth in the bass. D half-diminished, for example, is just F minor with D, its sixth, in the bass. So the progression is not II-V but minor IV to V to I. In the same way, D minor 7 is really the major IV going to V to I.

The C minor seventh in All the Things You Are6:006:347:10

Why play E-flat 7 in bars where the sheet says G half-diminished to C7? Because G half-diminished is the chord built on the third of E-flat 7. So Barry played the E-flat 7 scale there, not a G minor idea, and then changed to C. His rule: when you see a half-diminished chord, play the seventh chord whose third is its root. He quizzed his class on other half-diminished chords this way, and said that if he believes in sevenths he has to find a way to play everything with sevenths.

Scales on Indiana in A-flat, part 13:003:334:415:13

A run Barry said he likes when playing over what the caption suggests is a G half-diminished: take E-flat 7, start on the root, put one half step between the root and the seventh, and run down to the third of C. He wanted the E-flat itself in the line, not just the D-flat.

The 1998 workshop, part 30:001:13

Barry calls this probably the first progression a pianist should know: starting on C, a minor sixth going down to the diminished, then down to the dominant the diminished comes from. He stresses that this makes sense because the music is moving.

Eyes of the Masters: the first progression0:020:37

Another one Barry counts among the first progressions to know: put B in the bass, play the chord over it, then move a note down, and you arrive at E major.

Jazz theory, part 4: borrowing diminished notes3:58

Barry worked through a chain of dominants with a student: where you need A7, he says to play E minor 6; for G7, D minor 6; and for F, C minor 6 (he first said B-flat minor 6, then corrected himself). Notice that each minor sixth sits on the fifth of the chord being aimed for.

Jazz theory, part 4: borrowing diminished notes5:436:18

Working on a blues, Barry had the pianist take the F7 and change it to an F-sharp diminished chord, which moves right to C major, with the fifth on top or something similar. Learning to make small chord changes like this is, he says, the kind of thing you should be doing.

Passport: teaching a blues by ear12:1312:49

In the tune Barry was studying, the I goes to the IV, but not to a IV dominant seventh: it goes to the IV major seventh and then to the IV minor. Barry says that sometimes, to get back to the I, he plays the IV minor. In A-flat he offered a line for this: a D-flat minor arpeggio played downward, landing on the fifth of A-flat.

The 1998 workshop, part 38:098:419:20

Jazz players should know the same movements classical pianists know: how to get to the II, how to get to the IV, how to make a deceptive cadence. Barry says the knowledge is almost exactly the same in both musics.

Rhythm before notes0:000:37