Barry Harris concepts on C6 (C6=Am7=Fmaj9) (Cm6=Am7b5=F9)

[Joseph Carlson]

I've been working on transitioning my Barry Harris stuff from guitar to C6 pedal steel and came up with this chart trying to show the locations and relationships across the neck. Are there any other pedal combinations I'm missing?

[Joseph Carlson]

Side note: It is crazy how well some of these concepts lay across the C6 neck, like it was designed for this concept almost. The ease of adding diminished chords between inversions with the P5 and P6 combo is pretty intuitive compared to the guitar.

[Jared Ruari]

This is great stuff, thanks!

[Kyle Van Koevering]

This is great. I love Things I Learned From Barry Harris and Labyrinth of Limitations on youtube. I’ve been meaning to start applying the Barry Harris concepts. Thanks for sharing.

[Daniel Morris]

Excellent work, Joseph!
Thank you!

[scott murray]

great stuff indeed.

I've worked up around 50 Thelonious Monk tunes on C6. it started as a novelty til I realized how his stuff seems almost written for pedal steel most of the time. it's all in there, I blame Buddy Emmons for the perfect tuning

[J D Sauser]

C6th/Am7th/FMaj9th goes deeper on the PSG tuning:
it's also Dm11th (just like A to C, it's the relative minor to F) and then, if you'd tune your bottom string from C to D (where in my opinion it should be), it would also be the M3rd to BbM9th (same lineup as off the F-string) which again like F to C, is the IV.

Having D on the bottom, also further opens the paired thread of the diminished arpeggio weaving across the strings in minor-3rd string pairs... which is important when you come out of BH's "school" of thinking with the idea of the family of 4 chords stemming from the Dim and also his DimMaj6th and relative Dim-min6th scale and chord system.

... J-D.

[Joseph Carlson]

I found a few more options using split tuning on pedal 7 and raising the C lever or lowering the A lever while using P7:

[Steven Golding]

Thanks for posting this.

I really wish the Barry Harris method was part of 'general" music pedagogy. It probably would have made learning jazz music more accessible back when I was in college. I only started learning about it a few years ago when I also started my PSG journey, and I applied it to regular guitar pretty quickly. In short, it has really demystified jazz harmony for me and made learning tunes very easy since, right out of the gate, you can easily see what alternate chords work over any given melody. My only complaint about the system is that it emphasizes consonant sounds (lowering 7s to 6s), which get pretty dull and predictable on guitar once you get all the positions down. My solution for this is to use Major 7 on occasion instead of Major 6 and to throw in some voicing I picked up from the Mickey Baker book.


Anyway, I've wondered how it would apply to a C6 neck for some time now. Perhaps Barry's approach can unlock the neck for me.

Thanks again,

[Tim Toberer]

Here is an enlightening little video touching on Barry Harris approach to functional harmony. Apparently he didn't even know what the modes were! (which I find hard to believe). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jii-DIizjis

The modal approach is something everyone should learn, but I don't think it is usually taught in a way that is helpful. The way I understand it, they can function as a standalone scale, but they are really scales within a scale. Without some knowledge of functional harmony, you are just lost in space. For classic jazz, it makes things much more confusing than they need to be.

I think Barry Harris was really good at explaining these things in a way people could understand, but I think his approach was similar to most of the greats.

[Kyle Van Koevering]

Here is an enlightening little video touching on Barry Harris approach to functional harmony. Apparently he didn't even know what the modes were! (which I find hard to believe). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jii-DIizjis

The modal approach is something everyone should learn, but I don't think it is usually taught in a way that is helpful. The way I understand it, they can function as a standalone scale, but they are really scales within a scale. Without some knowledge of functional harmony, you are just lost in space. For classic jazz, it makes things much more confusing than they need to be.

I think Barry Harris was really good at explaining these things in a way people could understand, but I think his approach was similar to most of the greats.

Thanks for sharing the JazzSkills channel, Tim. I'd never seen it before and am finding lots of useful stuff on it!

[Tim Toberer]

Thanks for sharing the JazzSkills channel, Tim. I'd never seen it before and am finding lots of useful stuff on it!

Absolutely! Two other former students have great channels as well.
https://www.youtube.com/@JoshWalshMusic
https://www.youtube.com/@thingsivelearnedfrombarryh2616

I love this stuff and` try to absorb a video or 2 with my morning coffee. I can't say I am putting in the work to really learn it, but I am trying to familiarize myself with it for future study. I am still pretty new to steel guitar and I use my own made up copedant, so I can't really offer anything in terms to how this relates to C6. I will say this this system translates to my diminished copedant in a really beautiful way. My copedant is based on the Barry Harris (others) diminished family of dominants concept using the fully Dim 7 chord to access all the inversions of the 4 basic chord families.

[Dale Rottacker]

Joseph, I don't mean to sound "thick", but that may be unavoidable ... without a legend I'm having a little trouble tying to read between the lines and how to actually read your beautiful charts. Pretty sure it's Me, not you. Could you please help clear my confusion?

[Joseph Carlson]

It is still very much a work in progress, I need to find a better way to indicate which strings are which notes/intervals for each of the chord types, but that would complicate the chart exponentially.

There is a lot to the Barry Harris method, two completely different concepts, one for harmony and one for solo improvisation. This is more from the harmony side of things. Unfortunately the C6 tuning doesn't lend itself as well to the chromatic concepts of the Barry Harris method, it requires a lot of bar movement to create chromatic lines when a tuning is a stack of thirds.

One foundational concept is the idea that a C6 = Am7 = FM9.

So C6 is C E G A (1 3 5 6)

Am7 is A C E G (1 b3 5 b7)

FM9 is F A C E G (1 3 5 7 9)

Notice they all contain the same notes (FM9 would be a rootless voicing).

By changing one note you get a Cm6 = Am7b5 = F9

Cm6 C Eb G A (1 b3 5 6)

Am7b5 is A C Eb G (1 b3 b5 b7)

F9 is F A C Eb G (1 3 5 b7 9)

What the chart is showing is the fret number and pedal combinations to get the notes needed for the different chords.

For example the first line of the second chart shows:

C6.png

So at fret 0 and 12 you can find the notes C E G A (and F), so you can get a C6, Am7, or FM9 at that location.

At the 3rd fret with pedal 5 and the lever that raises your C strings to C# you can also find these notes and so on.

So if a song goes Am7 - D7 - Gmaj you can find the location of the chords using the chart.

Am7 might be fret 12 with no pedals, for the D7 you can stay at the same fret and hit pedal 5. For the G, you can use G6 or Gmaj9, so maybe pedal 7 also at the 12th fret or pedal 7 at the 7th fret, etc.

The next step is connecting all of these locations and inversions together with diminished chords, something I am still working on. It creates a sound similar to big band chord arrangements or that Wes Montgomery thing where he plays block chords.

The best thing about Barry Harris is that you are not just grabbing grips, you are creating movement, it isn't static.

[Lee Gauthier]

If yer on a mac a built a spreadsheet that you can set two chords and it'll show you where all the notes lay on the board + you can turn pedal changes on and off. This is an example from my D13.

[Dale Rottacker]

Thank you Joseph ... I seem to have such a disconnect its almost like being on the 12 fret knowing I'm playing C6th and then needing an Am7 or F9 and looking ALL over the neck for them. Not quite that bad, but not far off, and throw in "Depends what the Bass is playing" and I'm TOAST ... The said the more I "Hear" this stuff the better connected I'm becoming. So THANK YOU!!!

[Fred Treece]

One more
Cm6 = B7b9#5 (no root)

C - Eb - G - A
b9 - 3 - #5 - 7

Sliding from any inversion of that into an Emaj7 is like buttah.

[Daniel Baston]

...My only complaint about the system is that it emphasizes consonant sounds (lowering 7s to 6s), which get pretty dull and predictable on guitar once you get all the positions down. My solution for this is to use Major 7 on occasion instead of Major 6 and to throw in some voicing I picked up from the Mickey Baker book.
Thanks again,

My two cents: I would disagree here. BH does not emphasize any particular chord type. The alternating 6th and diminished chords are a starting point or reference point. The idea is to simplify knowing where the notes are. Playing full diminished and 6th chords in sequence is playing in "parallel". If you listen to Barry Harris play, he does not sound at all dull. He is 'borrowing' diminished notes at least as much or more than he is playing straight diminished voicings. If you watch some of those videos on YT of his classes, he mentions more than once that he plays things all the time that he has never played before. Granted that is mostly indicative of how skilled he is. But he demonstrates how those notes relate to his system.

This is an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1siDXQ ... kgaGFycmlz

In BH land, a Major 7 is simply 'borrowing' one diminished note.

Btw what you are doing, playing what you want to hear is the goal no matter what 'system' you are using. BH would probably approve?

[Fred Treece]

Right on, Daniel.

Learn the concept by practicing with strict adherence, then add it to the rest of your arsenal.

[Joseph Carlson]

Related to the major 7 vs. 6, Barry has a concept about playing a 6 chord on the 5 of the major chord.

So for F maj you would play C6 movements getting an Fmaj9 sound rather than a vanilla C6 chord.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdD9s4EGPvk

[Lee Gauthier]

I still conceptualize maj7 more as borrowed from the diminished. In C if I want a Cmaj7 sound, the borrowing any of the notes from the E°7 sounds more familiar than thinking of G6 and borrowing non-chord degrees from A°7. Definitely territory to explore for more out there sonorities. Maybe it works better over IVmaj7 than Imaj7.

[Joseph Carlson]

The notes of an E diminished seventh chord are E, G, Bb, and Db.

To get the B natural for a major 7 in C you would need to borrow from D diminished (aka D, F, A♭(G#), and C♭(B) diminished)

D = 9th of C
F = 11th or sus4
Ab(G#) = #5 (augmented sound)
Cb(B) = maj 7

So Cmaj7 has one borrowed tone, the B

Cmaj9 has two borrowed tones - the B and the D

Cmaj7#5 has 2, the B and the G#

Etc.

[Lee Gauthier]

For sure, but unless I'm misunderstanding Barry, when thinking 6 on the 5 for Cmaj9 your notes would be from the G diminished construction.

G6 - G, B, D, E (5, Δ7, 9, 3)
A°7 - A, C, E♭, G♭ (6, 1, ♭3, ♭5/♯4)

This works pretty naturally over ⅣΔ7, but the ♭3 is a pretty strong rub I'm not used to. Probably is also over ⅠΔ7 if you want a "bluesy" sound.

[Tim Toberer]

There is a lot to the Barry Harris method, two completely different concepts, one for harmony and one for solo improvisation. This is more from the harmony side of things. Unfortunately the C6 tuning doesn't lend itself as well to the chromatic concepts of the Barry Harris method, it requires a lot of bar movement to create chromatic lines when a tuning is a stack of thirds.

This is something I am realizing. I have spent enough time with the harmonic side that it has completely changed the way I play and think about music. Playing in 6th type tunings really seems to lead to this type of thinking anyway since you are using the same bar positions for these different chords.

You make a good point about the difficulty of incorporating chromaticism into steel guitar playing. Honestly just playing scales and melodies at all seems pretty difficult! I am mostly a chord melody player. This would be an interesting follow up thread. I know some of the great jazz players have figured out some tricks I would love to learn about. Here is one observation. Pedals aren't really that helpful when playing fast melodic lines, so much of this seems like it must be pulled from the basic tuning. Most people starting pedal steel might not even realize that people like Buddy Emmons were genius level non pedal players before they ever played a pedal guitar. I have been looking to some of the folks over on the non-pedal side for guidance in this area. Mike Neer and Rich Arnold to be specific. These guys make me question whether we need pedals at all.

[Joseph Carlson]

Yes, definitely a fair point about the b3 against a major chord. I guess the idea is that you don't hang out there or hit that sound on a strong beat. It is more of a passing tone between consonant sounds. Essentially it comes down to creating and resolving tension in your playing. As long as you resolve something correctly you can get away with a lot of dissonance.

If you think about it, a lot of steel playing is sliding from a half step below into the chord*. This would essentially be a b3 resolving to a major 3, as well as a b5, and so on.

*Same with regular guitar. It is easy and inherent to the instrument compared to a piano player who has to change every note, we just slide into the chord.

As far as the chromaticism, I think the no pedals for single notes idea is true of many of the greats. The addition of the D on top helps a lot with chromaticism as well.

Paul Franklin said something on here recently about wasting a lot of time on scales instead of embracing the strengths and idiomatic aspects of the pedal steel. I think he is 100% right, the steel can do things no piano player or sax player could ever do, we should embrace that aspect of the instrument. Same thing with regular guitar, a lot of jazz guitar players run away from bending strings or using ringing, open strings in their chords, but those are aspects that make the instrument so cool.

Just my humble 2 cents, I still have much to learn, but I feel like I am making progress every day after being on a plateau for a long time.