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It's been a long time since I've worked on Barry's 6th diminished stuff, and I've never studied it via books/dvds, only Barry's classes in NYC in the early 00s, and even then only in passing, since I went to the horn classes. My understanding of it is very fragmented and rusty, so maybe if I summarize the way I thought about it, y'all will tell me where I'm missing stuff.
- if you play any 6th chord voicing, and take it up a scale but include the diminished and natural 6th, you'll get a sound that ping pongs between diminished and whatever voicing you selected. C G A E -> D Ab B F -> E A C G -> ....
- for ii chords, use the major scale harmonized this way starting on the IV: So for a Cm7 sound, use an Eb6 voicing.
- for V chords, several options including melodic minor off the V: So for C7, you can use a Gm scale. Also could use Dbm but I'm reasonably certain Barry wouldn't have said this.
- For m7b5 chords, can use the melodic minor as if your chord is the vi: So for Em7b5, you could again use Gm
- there are of course a variety of other ways to negotiate harmony, but basically, the rule of thumb is to find a 6th voicing (can include 2 as well) that expresses the harmonic function of what you're after.
As I said, very incomplete, quite possibly some of this is wrong or not directly from Barry, but the above stuff has gotten me a surprising amount of mileage. With all this said, what am I missing and/or what do y'all recommend if I wanted to return to studying this stuff?
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01-12-2018 08:57 PM
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Originally Posted by pcsanwald
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Originally Posted by pcsanwald
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pcsanwald,
No slight on any of the excellent materials now available, but for NYC people with interest, the low priced Tuesday classes
are still happening when he's in town. Who knows how much longer he can keep this up.
There would be no books or DVD's if these folks didn't log many hours hanging with Barry directly.
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
C E G A --> C6
G B D E --> G6
G 6-dim scale gives these diminishes:
F#o7 Ao7 Co7 Ebo7
Which in the key of C, is the second most common set of dim7's you'll find in C major harmony. For instance:
C6/E Ebo7 Dm7 G7 (the bIII diminished)* and
F6 F#o7 C6/G (or G6!)
(What are sometimes called 'the common tone diminished 7th chords' or 'non-leading tone diminished 7th chords' in straight music theory.)
I was wondering how these common movements are handled in Barry's 6-dim system. Thanks for pointing it out.
* Barry makes a point of how C6 F6 (Dm7) is linked with a Ebo7 chord
C E G A
C Eb Gb A
C D F A
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Hey Rob, do you have enough options yet? Lol....
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
When you say use D-flat six for C7 ALT, that squares with number two in my Cheat sheet.
bvi-6 = V7b9#5 (rootless). Db is the bvi6 of F.
I just reference everything against the I or i. For me it’s much easier that way, and it reinforces the fundamental point of tonal music for me: everything moves back and resolves .
Or it’s just another way that Julian Lage expressed the Maxim “blah blah blah blah blah blah one “
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Main chordal relationships (as I see them)
dom7 ---> up a fifth ---> m6 (so C7 ---> Gm6) Important minor (if I've used the right term?)
dom7alt ----> up a semitone ----> m6 (C7alt ---> Gm6) Tritone's minor
major6--->up a fifth ---> major6 The fifth's sixth
minor7 = major 6 up a minor third (Dm7 = F6)
minor7b5 = minor 6 up a minor third (Bm7b5 = Dm6)
So you can get through everything with just major and minor-6 dim scales, which might simplify learning objectives short term....
Also, keep the scale stuff simple, and you can build in more complexity later.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
And keep in mind how dominant and m6 chords are derived from the diminished
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
That's a really good milestone, and low hanging fruit for Rob, when he's got the scales together.
After that the dom7 (and the dom7b5 - no-one ever remembers that one including me!) can be learned and applied. Or the brothers&sisters, contrary motion, borrowed notes, drop3's, split voicings.... *starts to mist over*
The DVD's have a clear road map of course, but there so much info. I don't know about anyone else, but I have to set a realistic goal or I just get overwhelmed or pulled too many ways. Obviously, it's far better to really learn one thing than half learn five.
What happens on JGO is there is so much knowledge and it all gets posted at once, and it's TERRIFYING. I mean, the info on this thread alone could take me a lifetime to fully apply (but then I am quite stupid & slow.)
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Er...what was all that?
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I was afraid I would be falling in that rabbit hole, so I decided to do three things: learn tunes, focus on Barry Harris, focus on Mike Longo . Which is really two things: focus on tunes, focus on rhythm.
I’m just a schmo who works a lot and comes home and practices and plays, with a few gigs a year. But mainly for my own benefit. I’ve been working with the stuff for a year now and it’s still not even close to being where it should be. But that’s OK, you just got to keep at it and keep at it and keep at it. It takes a long time to internalize the stuff .
Barry gives you a framework, a reference point for playing that works and is grounded on the most important aspects of music focused on the important things. For someone like me who never went to school for music, it’s been really good.
My main project for this year is to have about 25 Beatles songs together that I know them inside and out without thinking. The major minor six diminished system works really well with Beatles melodies.
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Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
It'll be fine - just the maj6 and min6 scales in chords.... It'll all be OK, I promise :-)
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Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
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Originally Posted by NSJ
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Beatles tunes (N=25)
Norwegian Wood
Nowhere Man
Michelle
Yesterday
Tomorrow Never Knows
Fool on the hill
Across the Universe
Strawberry Fields
In my Life
Give Peace a chance
Here Comes the Sun
While my Guitar Gently Weeps
Hey Jude
Happy XMas War is Over
Blackbird
Julia
If I needed someone
You've got to hide your love away
And I love her
Here there and everywhere
Eleanor Rigby
Dear Prudence
For you Blue
I'll Follow the Sun
Hello goodbye
easy to harmonize for example “you’ve got to hide your love away” with F6 and G°.
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Originally Posted by NSJ
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Originally Posted by christianm77
thanks to whoever clarified the altered dominant thing as being "the minor of the tritone". The reason I commented that I was reasonably certain barry wouldn't have said that was because I'm nearly positive I've never heard him use the term "altered" for anything. In my experience he's always coming at those sounds either from a diminished, augment, or relative minor perspective, and tends to explain them that way. So him saying "minor of tritone" makes perfect sense, and sounds like something he'd say.
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By chance I just came across this blog article by John Hall who I think posts here occasionally. It’s about creating movement on the changes of All Of Me using BH ideas. There’s a PDF at the end of the article.
John Hall | Music for Guitar | Blog : All of Me - Filling Harmonic Space
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Watching Jimmy Bruno's daily videos on YT, reminds me what he said, there's not a million different songs, you can get anywhere if you know how to play turnarounds and have different ways of playing turnarounds.
My way of getting to a minor6 chord:
Cm6-Cdim-Gm6
or
Eb7-D7-Gm6
Practicing Drop 2 versions of this on the top stringset (1-4) and inner stringset (2-5) offers plenty of options and variety.
Staying on the G-6 for a few bars ? alternate the dim chord between inversions of the G-6, which creates MOVEMENT.
Basic, simple, digestible concepts and ideas that create movement and variety.
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Cm6 = Am75
Co7 = D7b9 (no root)
Legit voice-leading. I use it a lot.
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One thing I do a lot it instead of playing a simple dim7 chord, I go through the inversions but add a note borrowed from the 6 or -6 etc chord.
You can get the C6 dim scale, but harmonised just on the o7 chord.
So, in C6-dim
I play (bottom to top)
D Ab B F
D Ab B G
F B D Ab
F B D A
Ab D F B
Ab D F C
C F Ab D
C F Ab E
etc
Of course you could do this very simply with the W-H scale, and sometimes that sounds good too (esp for non-leading tone diminished chords like bIIIo7) I think we can call this scale the dim7-dim? :-)
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I was testing out my new Shure MV 51 iOS microphone and decided to use F6 and G diminished for this Beatles melody “ you’ve got to hide your love away“
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Rob, you may have already gone through this process but I found it useful to treat diminished chords as a 4-way interchange for major 6th chords (and their relative minor chords) placed a min 3rd from each other. Once you're comfortable with these, try playing all the minor 6th chords in the same fashion.
Here they are in the most common drop 2 & 3 voicings from the 4th, 5th and 6th strings covering all the keys:
NGD and a Mystery - Epiphone Content
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