Barry Harris Harmony

[BWV]

Maybe this deserves a separate thread?

anyway starting to play around with the chord scale: 6th dim, minor 6th dim and dom 7 dim (may look at the dom 7 b5 later)

So I see how using the 6th dim chord scale, once I get it under my fingers, offers some great options for arranging tunes for fingerstyle (this is the extent of my jazz playing). So if I have, say, a I vi ii V I in C, the C 6th dim, voiced as maj 6 and dim 7 chords can harmonize the tune over I and vi, similarly for the G dom 7 dim for the V - question is what do I do with the ii? For soloing the BH answer would be to treat it like the V, correct? But you cant really do that with harmony - so here you use the F 6th dim, which gives you d-7 and Fmaj7?


second question is in regards to minor - here ii is the minor 6 diminished a third up, so in Cm, use F minor 6th dim, but the G dom 7 diminished lacks the Ab, and adds an F#, so what do do here?

[grahambop]

Yes for a Dm chord just use F6/dim.

For dominants I tend to use the min6 on the 5th, or on a half-step up for dominant altered sounds. So for G7 I use Dm6/dim, or Abmin6/dim. (I find the dom7/dim a bit bland, to be honest.)

Having said that, I don’t always like the effect of the dim chords in those scales, in that dominant context. So for harmonising a tune, I sometimes just use a diminished chord for the G7 (i.e. Fdim and its 3 diminished equivalents).

You can always tweak the top note of any of these chords to get the melody note you want. Barry calls this ‘borrowing’ a note (from either side in the scale), but I just think of it as adjusting the top note however I want to.

As you say, the 6/dim stuff is very useful as a template for quickly putting together ‘chord-melody’ type arrangements, I find it invaluable for this. I always use it as a starting point, although I will then add in any other chord moves I like, e.g. stuff I’ve nicked off Joe Pass, or quartal chord ideas.

[grahambop]

It’s also useful conceptually to see that the 6/dim scales are really just going ‘tonic-dominant-tonic-dominant’ all the way up and down. So in the scales, the 6th chords are tonic, the diminished chords are dominants. This is a lot easier for harmonising a melody line than trying to fit each diatonic chord to each note in the melody.

Of course when the ‘underlying’ chord changes, you usually have to move to another 6/dim scale.

[BWV]

Thanks - symmetrical scales on the dominant would also be within his style, correct?

[grahambop]

I’m not sure what Barry says about that, I am not an expert in his stuff, I’ve just taken what I found useful. Mostly from Alan Kingstone’s book (Barry Harris Harmonic Method for guitar).

[jmgalich]

I stumbled upon this video the other day. The author does a great job providing a high level summary of Barry's approach, and walks through an example using "Every Time I Say Goodbye":

He has other videos covering Barry's teachings, too.

John Galich

[grahambop]

Here's something I did a while back and I've posted before, but might be of interest - applying some BH ideas to a few bars of My Romance.