Barry Harris whole tone ideas

Hi everyone, today I thought I would share a really easy, quick and very modern little move based on a full

tone

scale that can be used as a technical exercise to really get your balance back and really get your hands back. you get comfortable with the white and black keys on the keyboard and it's also a great little touch that you can use every time you come up with a seventh chord that has an augmented fifth or a nine with one of those chords that you already know. comes from the

whole

tonal scale now you might ask what do you mean by that and for that I'll refer you to my video on diminished genealogy which we'll be linked to in the description and basically we're going to uh uh dive into it um according to the bible according to

barry

harris

first there were 12 who were god, that is 12. from here to listen 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. now uh god made man and woman and man and woman were the two full

tone

scales starting on c d e f sharp g sharp and d flat and d flat e flat fa b uh f g a b right and those two full tone scales are like adam and eve okay and um and then we.

I'm going to focus on this part, but over and over again, if you watch the video, I get really deep into it, uh, uh, you know, they got together and they had all these uh kids, these three diminished seventh chords, uh, so that's the next one. right generation and then from those diminished seventh chords that we got, they had little grandchildren and then those are the dominant seven, the minors, the major seven, two, uh, major six, I mean, a minor six, um and the major 7 with a flat 5. Now this one is actually kind of a cool animal because it also comes from the entire tonal scale, well, so, actually, um, and

barry

says this in class, which two chords actually come from the entire tonal scale, so the The answer is that one is the dominant seven with a flat. five to the right and the other and this is the one that you're going to see a lot is the dominant seven with the sharp five.

For those of us in the music school industrial complex, they also refer to it as a flat 13 to the right. Anyway, um, these are the types of chords that you'll be using this lick on, uh, so let's get right to this lick, uh, where does it come from? I think Barry took it from bud powell's tempus fujit, um, you know, and then the bridge goes now during the solo there's a solo part in this dc kinda weird d7 with the flat five it's kind of a

whole

tone and he says you know, you know or maybe I could go, I don't know what he does exactly, but it's something like this, okay, and probably someone knows exactly Bud Powell better than me.

You could tell me what note it starts with, but anyway, I'm not really trying to break down exactly what it does, but Powell, I'm trying to show you the principle and the idea behind it and the idea is that you take this major third which is part of the scale, you put a chromatic and then you have the next third of the scale and then so on. third oops major third to the right, so it's actually a full tone scale on C or a D or an E, they're all the same scale, right, um, so let's look at it on C because it's easy to visualize, so? what we have?

We have the do. and the e then the B flat and the D the A flat and the C the G flat and the B flat the E the D and the C and I put a chromatic between each one and uh bud powell actually does a little rhythmic thing he says oh, sorry, you can go in the reverse direction, obviously, that's what he does, so you can do the third one that goes up or the third one that goes down and you throw another extra one in there and that changes the rhythm, very good, one two. three four one I think you get something really cool and it's really easy to do so now we said we could do it with the third going down, we could do it with the third going up and you can do four notes or three notes now. some really interesting stuff what does the left hand do well? you can do the same thing in a mirror image here are my c and my right and I can do them in a mirror image and then that's my four note version, the three note version would be and then there would be the harmonic version, the way you would play the third together and of course in reverse directions you see, so now this is a great technical exercise if you know you can CNC two octaves apart and then just try to get a little bit higher on the keyboard, feel it from your shoulders, feel it from your body, there's this whole body glove idea and then you do it half a step up, it's a little more challenging, but you see what we're going to do now is get the fingers comfortable with white and black keys alike.

That's the goal, how else can we vary this? Let's go back to c. I don't have to do c and c. I can do anything. one of the notes that are on the scale to the right, I can do a C against a B flat, a C, a major third and a B flat, a major third, I could do a C and an E against an A flat and a do, it actually ends in unison here, come on try this one that might overlap now, oh boy, they overlap every time that happens, my brain explodes, my brain just exploded, but you know, this is really cool to do that kind of hand-to-hand stuff if you know if you give it a little bit of time and Maybe I'll also practice a little bit of what I preach, but yeah, it's a great just technical exercise and the beauty of it as well is that you can do this even without a piano, you can find a keyboard, turn the volume down and watch TV and do it all day and just get your fingers right on the keyboard now, how would we use it in a song? um, so there are a lot of songs that have this unique sounding seventh chord that you can include this in, um, I imagine that's a good option.

The song to start with could be a song that's good for the time and place where I am in the fall in New York and um so let's take a look at what's going on so um and this is the perfect place to do it. It's a c7 sharp five and a nine, which is our full tone scale of c7, all of those notes are in that full scale. Now I'll do the same move, but I'll keep the D on top because that's the melody and I'll see how easily it puts you back into lead lead back to F major so pretty I don't know if it makes a diminished dominant or six , this is a good place to add your um G minor six diminished is actually a B flat diminished sixth B flat six diminished start on the diminished note and actually, I'm going to continue with this thought, you know, I'll do a little bit more, but I'm going to talk a little bit about combining things in this song and other songs, um. but I will put another video for my patreon, I will put it on my patreon page for my patreon members, which, by the way, if this is useful to you and you don't mind, click on it. my Patreon page and then you can get access to all kinds of bonus videos and stuff like that so I'm going to continue with this idea but anyway back to the whole tone thing so here it is and here it is my here it is again here it is again Sorry, now here set up the A minor 7 flat 5 so beautifully I play a C minor 6 in my left hand take advantage of the diminished note there's another good place to do it here's another place to do it um same movement here's a good place to do it look, don't do it again, I'm not trying to show you this throughout the whole song, it's just that there are so many places in the song to do it right and then, there's another great place to do it on this d7, OK? here's a good place to put our little uh um our shape from last week sorry, I'm doing an e e my e flat I mean um, so where's that?

Oh God, I missed my train, I thought, oh okay, so there's a lot to do. Do lots of ways to combine these

ideas

, so one last note on overusing things, you know, there's so many, let's say we find four or five places in the song where it fits perfectly, are you going to do it all in the first chorus, no, Let's say? When you do a song well, you'll play four courses, maybe play the head, then improvise, then maybe compete for the bassist, then for 16 bars, then come back and play the head. Well, if there are four or five places, you can choose one place for your first chorus, another place for the second course.

I mean, this probably seems obvious, but to me that's like the difference between overuse and thematic continuity. You want something that the listener can latch on to uh, but at the same time you don't want to be too repetitive, so it's food for thought anyway, so all about that nice little whole tone and how to use it and what to do with it and So if you want to keep an eye out for the extra thing, where I'm going to combine things and you know other

ideas

, then that will be on my patreon a little bit later, okay, thanks so much for watching, I hope you do.

I enjoyed it again, there's my patreon, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and, uh, and tell all your friends, and you know, I thank you all for your wonderful comments and suggestions, uh, it's a real inspiration and I love reaching everyone. and having conversations about this wonderful material um and uh yeah, stay safe out there keep swinging until the next one