Little Labyrinth 49: Family Roles (the Ugliest Duckling and Barry Harris's Minor 6 Diminished Scale)

[@jn7457]

Definitely worth a few watches/listens. I liked hearing that non-traditional tri-tone resolution, that’s a great flavor! Also, I have to confess, Thomas’ “junky” playing is pretty close to my “committed” playing.

[@fabriziocolonna73]

You make the world a better place, really

[@TheLabyrinthofLimitations]

🙏

[@Web4Panama]

Phenomenal. It's going to take me a while to grasp this but I'll keep on revisiting this video.

[@MC-mi4ck]

Brilliant. I’m checking out Barry’s Once in a While.

[@dsg_studio]

Thanks for this. Been wondering how we can get around the fact that the "ugliest duckling" has the major 7th in it against the five chord when you just play the dominant scale.

[@fretlevelmidnight6635]

ROMANTICO!!!!! The best of the Cinco Piezas

[@annonymeandfish]

So, basically, the way I understand it is this way: For a dominant sound, you can build a m6 chord on each tone of the diminished chord associated with the target tonality. So , I you want to go to Cmaj6, you can build a m6 chord on D (minor6/5) F (minor 4) Ab (tritone's minor) and B (ugliest) . D F Ab B is Cmajor's diminished chord. Am I getting this right? Sounds good anyways!

[@annonymeandfish]

i've been practicing going from Em6 to Bm6/E going up , switching between inversions. (it sounds a bit like a A7 diminished scale) So , with open E string, drop 2 : Em6/fifth Bm6/fund. Em6/6th Bm6/third etc. all that over E. Sounds great to me! I see it as switching from m6/V to m6/II of A. its a bit as if the Bm6 functions as a borrowing of the off chord Bdimninished. Can also lead to a beautiful cadence to Bmaj6 or major 6/V of Emajor6 (bmaj6/E).

[@annonymeandfish]

Furthermore, Looking at Borrowing Up from sopprano voice on majorChord. ( maj7), the second degree is the m4 , and the degree behind (m7/5 )is an inversion of the m6/V. So in Cmaj7, Second degree is Dm7/5 (Fm6) and the degree behind is Bm7/5 (Dm6)

[@JosephElsherbini]

Do you think the diminshed scales of chords and the world view of diminished harmony have any implications for how to compose chord progressions? Or is it only about how to add movement to a chord, and it doesn't help much with deciding what chord to move to next in a progression you are composing?

[@TheLabyrinthofLimitations]

Studying this stuff over tunes they way we do is a fantastic way to learn about harmonic progressions. I use this stuff in my compositional practice all the time. Of course, I believe we need to learn a lot of things (including classical theory) and this channel is focused on sharing certain things that are less discussed (Barry's teachings). We all gotta keep learning forever:)

[@jonathanrieske7]

Hello Thomas, I'm still wrapping my head around all of this but I want to share something I've discovered today after watching your video. I think you can explain the 7b5 chords exactly the same way: the pretty ducklings, D7b5 and F#7b5 resolve nicely to G because they both have that diatonic tritone. The first ugly duckling, F7b5 has that minor 4 tritone, so it still sounds beautiful resolving to G. The ugliest duckling, A7b5 also has that weird C#. But treating it as A7b5 resolving to Bb6/Gm7 you can see that it is the same as playing F#7b5 to G6.

[@TheLabyrinthofLimitations]

Hi Jonathan! I love the exploration but you are conflating some important things. First off, make sure to check out the episode I did called "the extended family". I link to it below. It discusses the dominant 7b5 as a kind of bridge or portal, if you will, into more distant relationships. The "extended family" is what I call the major 3rd relationships discussed in that video. In your comment, you have two chords that have a minor 3rd relationship (D and F natural), then you have F#7b5, which is a major 3rd relationship to D, then you have A7b5, which is a Major 3rd relationship to F7. Also, I wasn't saying that the tritone found within the Cmin6 was the justication for why the minor 4 resolves nicely to G. I was just pointing out that that tritone is there and can resolve in a pretty, although not in a "functional harmonic progression" way. Using that tritone as a justification for F7b5 moving to G does not work for me. F7b5 (aka B7b5) is actually one of the "extended family" chords for G7, so any resolution to that I would find satisfying to G maj 6 would REALLY lay into the fact that G maj 6 is C major 9 (aka it is the major 6 on the 5 for C). Similarly, the logic for A7b5 doesn't work for me as you described. A7b5 is part of the extended family for F7, and resolves nicely to Bflat. If you think about it, as soon as we encounter the dom7b5 chord, the family relationships transform and, to a degree, dissolve. This is because there is not a family of 4 dominant 7b5 chords, courtesy of its "second order symmetry" making the tritone transposition non-existent (its the same chord). There are far-reaching implications out of this that make it a kind of portal to other relationships, sitting half-way between the traditional family and the extended family. It's powerful stuff! The episode that I have had on the chopping block for quite some time is a full "Family" episode with an accompanying pdf. These concepts go deep, and I think it is REALLY empowering to learn to parse them correctly. It's helped my playing immensely. Parsing it and recognizing the hierarchies allows me treat delicate situations in a satisfying way without slowing down the improvisational momentum. I'll post the extended family below! There's a pdf, too:)

[@TheLabyrinthofLimitations]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4G4hqGAf9-pq68

[@DannyVDub]

@@TheLabyrinthofLimitations I was just exploring this relationship on the tonnetz! 7b5 chords form parallelograms on the tonnetz. I noticed that they can be narrow or wide, so the 7b5 can surround a single family or two families. Collapsing the 7b5 into any chords it surrounds results in very satisfying resolutions. Well, not so much resolution as much as it is propelled movement into potentially distant chords. Anyhow, love this thread, thought it was great seeing it explained another way and have the logic remain consistent in both ways of seeing 7b5 chords.

[@TheLabyrinthofLimitations]

@@DannyVDub Have you looked at Tymoczko's geometries? There's much more than just the tesseract, and I find them to be really productive with this sort of exploration. He also has some thoughtful critique of the tonnetz in one of the appendices of his book

[@DannyVDub]

@@TheLabyrinthofLimitations I know of his book. I need to take a deeper dive. I don’t necessarily mind the 3D limitations of the tonnetz. It makes finding all the transformations really easy. Min6 and Maj7#11 chords aren’t too bad to look at on the grid either. I can see how visualizing the tesseract on the tonnetz would be a little clunky though. I am very curious to see what other visual representations Tymoczko uses. Anyhow, longtime viewer of your channel. You’ve really opened some new doors for me over the past year.

[@pierrejonker4967]

so we have 4 flavors: minor, tritones minor , moll dur and tritones moll dur.

[@TheLabyrinthofLimitations]

Hi Pierre! I don’t really know “moll dur”. Is that major/minor? I like to stick to my descriptions on this channel, as it represents my effort to share my approach:) so I’ll stick with “6 on the 5”, tritone’s minor, and the two ugly ducklings. The first UG is the minor 4. The second UG is the “ugliest duckling” and can be viewed as the tritone’s minor that goes to the relative major. Essentially, family is just about efficient voiceleading and that’s it, but it’s fun and productive to see these situations where each one can “have its day” and move to g minor in the least jarring of ways:) just my thoughts