Recently I stumbled across this great video where Barry Harris shows some students some ideas on a scale he calls the diminished 6th scale. It contains the same notes as a major bebop scale but he’s approach to is a little different to how most people would generally approach the bebop scale, so it’s kind of fitting.
I’ll try and do a video on this sometime later, as I personally found it fascinating, but I really wanted to do a quick post on it now (even though it really is a quite advanced jazz technique). I’ve also included a quick chart of the scale and also the voicing of the chords that the students were playing in the video.
I just love the voice leading and chord combinations that are created when using this scale. The chords when formed naturally over this scale are so interesting. From the humble C major 7 to altered dominant chords and quartels (think kind of ‘so what’ chords).
Enough from me, I’ll let Barry do the teaching today.
diminished 6th scale
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