Barry Harris' 6th Diminished: The Basics

Adam Maness explains the basic principals of Barry Harris's 6th Diminished Scale method.

[derrikbosse]

I've struggled with approaching jazz harmony and improv for years and Barry Harris has transformed my playing like no other method. Especially his family of four dominants.

[PopsPiano]

20 years of hacking my way through jazz standards for a living, and now look.... there's the whole soundscape taken care of with two basic chord shapes I use all the time. thanks Adam!

[Gnurklesquimp]

These scales are also very cool in parallel with others like it. Let's say they start on the same note or one starts on the 5th, one ascends while the other descends, stepwise or according to some pattern. You end up with just diads that do so much, mixing the colors and tensions of two scales over the course of the steps through them.

Descending phrygian related stuff tends to be my absolute favorite with this technique

[KassayeGebre]

Great job explaining Mr. Harris's approach. Especially the contrary motions and the minor 6. Glad I watched.

[sammikinsderp]

When you're performing the two note contrary motion starting from C. You can interpret it as borrowing d diminished and f minor, effectively modulating between C Major and C Natural minor. I didn't know what the 6th diminished scale was and you did a great job of explaining the basics of it. I'm learning my music theory so wildly out of order. Thank you for these amazing videos!

[BlikeNave]

The magic of his scale to me is that it gives the major key access to the fully diminished network via the most accessible chromatic note. When you think about it, we were only one note away from a fully diminished chord from our major key anyways, just needed that extra #5 to bring us into the fold.

[louispearson]

finding these solo videos on jazz extremely informative.
As a long time classical teacher trying to grasp at jazz i really appreciate it

[TheSoundConnoisseur]

That instep is fire. Also I’m a pianist but I applied Mr Harris’s 6th diminished to my guitar playing and I’m totally TRANSFORMED

[JohnHorneGuitar]

As a guitarist, I learned some of these ideas - particularly the passing diminished chords - from Wes Montgomery.

[stevenjones]

Just viewed this again. The whole thing is really like "endless puzzle Chinese boxes". That #5/b6 note (G#/Ab in this case), also implies two of my favorite sounds: the minor IV chord and the Blues walkdown. Discovered these in a different way long ago just by being observant and- as a guitarist- listening to piano theory/jazz. So there's that 'pivot note' as I called it (G#/Ab): SHARED BY BOTH DIMINISHED AND AUGMENTED...

[mph]

This is amazing !!! So many great block voicings Mr. Harris was a GENIUS… it feels like It opens up to A minor as soon as you hear it… descending… ii (c, b, a, g) V7 (ab, f, e, d), I (c) maybe ?

[stevenjones]

Sure it makes it an 8 note symmetrical scale. As a guitarist that knows a lot of theory and loves to mess around with unusual shapes and sounds, I found Ab/G# as what I called a "pivot" note that anchors both augmented/whole-tone chord/scales with all 3 diminished chord/scales thus leading to sort of a "master mode" that all 12 keys emerge from. But Barry's 12 divided by 2 (Adam and Eve); divided by 3, etc, really makes sense of his ideas. I suppose it's just chromaticism at the end of the day, but it's fun and useful stuff for us theory geeks...

[richard]

Just landed on your channel and found a pearl of a lesson. Thank you.

[marianlevy]

Adam, brilliant! Thanks for finally explaining this to me- definitely going to work on these 🎶🎹😊❤️

[ts]

A very helpful short explanation. Thanks!

[jazzpianousa]

I like your comment early in the video about more than one way to skin a cat. It's so true and there's no one way to approach playing this great music. The problem with playing in a 'system' is that some players get trapped in following the system rigidly. There's a danger of following rules and just running changes and not allowing the ear to hear the melodies developing in their head. Barry has his harmonic system and it's one of many out there. I started working through his approach the last couple years because I like some of the harmonic colors and types of resolutions/voicings I've heard on some recordings. I do prefer guys who sound a little more adventurous like Monty Alexander and Cedar Walton.

Personally, I still try to learn a song without a sheet/chart and listen to multiple recordings of the same song and transcribe the lyric(if there is one), the melody and harmony. This gives me multiple approaches on how to play a song. It's old school, but it's really rewarding.

[helveticfpv]

wow. you have beautiful eyes and you teached me the 6th diminished i've never heard of. thank you!

[PeterOlschnerMusic]

This was super helpful Adam, thank you!

[jacksonelmore]

I had this epiphany by writing chord voice leading in the midi grid, I realized everything is constantly tonic dominant forever at every level, I’m starting to grasp the rhythmic aspect

[jamesnesbitt]

Woooo !!!! One of Barry Harris students👏👏👏👏👏👏