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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
You really need to roll your own capacitors from aluminum foil and waxed paper rather than buying caps from the man. Do homemade cookies taste the same as the stuff in the supermarket?
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Fender Jaguar with humbuckers
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