You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Say "Hello!" to the 6th Chord

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Adam Maness brings you a snippet from his newest course "Bebop Chords for Beginners". Check out it before diving into the full course!Also, check out the course for an amazing $30 off for a limited time HERE!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

What's up, y'all? Adam Manus here for you'll hear it. I am solo today. I'm solo Monday as well. Peter's just finishing up a streak on the road. Actually, I'm just finishing up a streak on the road. Shout out to everybody who made concerts that I played this weekend in Columbia, Missouri, in Nashville, Tennessee. Great to see so many you'll hear it listeners, so many open studio folks. Shout out to Sean specifically. And yeah, it was such a great time playing all these shows with some really, really, great bands and meeting a bunch of you'll hear it folks. So anyway, today and Monday, because Peter's out, I'm taking over and I'm doing what I like to do, which is get nerdy, get super nerdy, specifically on some harmony stuff. So as it happens, today we are launching a brand new course

for me. My first course of 2022, actually, for Open Studio. It's called Bebop Chords for Beginners. If you're already an Open Studio member, that is if you have one of our subscription memberships, It's on your course dashboard right now. It's already waiting for you. It's hot out of the oven. Go check it out. If you're not a member yet, you can certainly become a member or you could purchase the course just as a lifetime purchase.

There is a link, by the way, for you'll hear it listeners only, where you can save $30 bucks on the course upon launch, just from following the link in the description where you can click that and it'll take the $30 right off the price. So it's, I think it's $77. full price. It takes it down to 47 bucks. Click that link and check it out and enjoy. It's bebop chords for beginners

and it's all about what we're talking about today, which is the sixth chord. Now you're like, wait, be bop chords, like there's more chords than just the six chord. Yes, there is more chords than just the sixth chord, but a lot of the shapes that people like Hank Jones and Red Garland and Bud Powell and Whitney Kelly even

and Bill Evans even, and specifically Barry Harris, who teaches this method, taught this method, they make their chords, a lot of chords, out of a six-cord shape. What does that mean? Well, we'll dive right in, and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about here. So we're going to be in the key of B-flat. I've got a little exercise.

And you can play this, by the way, even if you don't play piano, if you have access to a piano, these are easy enough to play that you can easily put them into your, I'm next to a piano, arsenal. I'm going to play something that sounds kind of good. So the first thing that we'll talk about is. the major chord. So if we have a b-flat major chord, we can actually use the shape of an f-major six. And f-major six is f-a-c-c and d. So if we play that in our right hand, F-A-C- and D, and we put a b-flat in our left hand, that's a b-flat major nine. I'm going to take that down

an octave here. So play that in your right hand F, A, C, and D, and then you could put B-flat in your left hand. And you have a octave here. a B-flat major nine chord with this F-6 shape. Isn't that awesome? So also today, I want to be using what we're gonna call the locked hands structure. So we'll do exactly what we just did in our right hand, four notes.

And we take the top note here, the D in this case, and we put it in our left hand down an octave. So we have an octave of D's, and then we have the FAC in the middle. Now, this F-major six shape can be our B-flat major, major nine shape and we want to then take it through all inversions so I take each one of these notes up the next six chord this is left hand F right hand A C D F right just a different inversion of that B flat major nine using that F major six shape of F a cd

the next inversion left hand a right hand c D F and a right how great is that sound the next inversion left hand C right hand D, F, A, C. So you can just start, if you haven't done this work before, start by just practicing these inversions with this locked hands, right? Four notes in your right hand, one note in your left hand. You can drop in the root every once in a while and kind of give your ear or something to latch onto. Go down an octave with it if you want.

But isn't that great? So that's the real meat behind the six-cord concept is you're really, you're superimposing the six chord shape over a different root. And you don't have to do anything else with the chord. It can just be the sixth chord. In fact, it should be so that we stay consistent. So, yeah, so there's our F major six. Now, I want to do a 1625 here in the key of B flat using almost all six chords.

There's one little exception, which we'll get to at the very end. So I'm going to use this F major six for our one chord. For our two chord, we're going to use. another major six chord, but it's not going to be the six from the fifth, like our B-flat major nine, right? That's, by the way, that's what that's called. Barry Harris would call it the six from the fifth, right? So because F is a fifth up from B-flat, it's an F-major six, which is a sixth on the fifth or from the fifth of B-flat, right, F-fith away.

So that's not what we're going to do to get a two-cord. For our C-minor seven, which is the two-core, we're going to use the relative major sixth shape. So that's an E flat major six, E flat, G, B, and C. And we want to, again, take this through all inversions in that locked hand structure. So let's start with E flat as the octave. So my left hand plays E flat. My right hand plays G, B, Fla, C, and E flat. And we can just take that through inversions.

You can do that now if you want. By the way, all of this stuff is in the course, Bop Chords for Beginners, and I practice it with you in all 12 keys. in a few different tempos and there's playalongs available. So you can practice in all 12 keys with two fives and rhythm changes and all together. It's pretty comprehensive for just getting this stuff in your hands, you know. So there's our two chord, right, the E flat major six. You can think of it as the relative major six.

For our five chord, the F7, we're going to go back and we're going to do the six from the fifth again. Right. So just like on B flat major nine, we use the six from the fifth, the F major six. On the F seven, we are going to use the six from the fifth. the fifth, right? Except for an F dominant seven, right, the six chord is not C major six with an E natural. No, no, no, no, we're still in the key of B flat here. And an Fxillidian scale, which is what an F dominant is based off of, the C would have an E flat. It would be a C minor six. This is key. This gets you this beautiful F9 sound, right? So in my right hand, I'll have my C minor six chord. C,

E flat, G, and A. And you could put an F in the base there, right? And again, well, let's go down here to E flats on our locked hands position. E flat in the left hand. Our right hand is G, A, C, and E flat. Get through all inversions. Very French sounding. Adding some extra notes there, but on the outside.

But that's how you get that sound. So now we have all the makings for a 2-5, right? For the C minor, we have the E-flat major 6. for the F7, we have the C minor six. For the B-flat major-nine, we have that F-major-9. Awesome, right? So that's three different six chords superimposed over our 251. Now, we want a, we want the six of this chord progression of the 2516, right?

Not the six core, but the six of the progression. So the G7 is what I'm saying. Now, for this we're going to do something special. We're going to use not a six-shape. We're going to use a diminished seven shape. specifically the b diminished seven shape b d f and a flat if we put a g in the base that gives us a g7 flat 9 b d f and a flat right that's the third five seven and flat nine of a g7 now we're cooking again we want to do it in locked hands so i'm going to take the a

flat and put it in my left hand and then we can go through all the inversions it's so easy with the diminished seventh. And Monday, I'm going to show you a really cool thing you can do with diminished sevens and even maybe just regular dominant sevens to get even more options on this. This old thing. But for now, let's just stick with just a regular diminished seven shape.

So if I start here, I have F in my left hand and then in my right hand, A, flat, B inversions. Now, we can take it through the 1625, and we can do a little exercise going down. I am going to start with my B-flat, Major 9, and I'm going to have A as our quote-unquote melody note. I say melody note because remember, this is an octave delivery device. It has an octave on the outside, which is a very strong tone.

You can really hear how this makes melodies. Right? It's like it's so easy to just be very clear about what the melody is because it's an octave right here. So we're going to start with our B-flat major 9 with our F-6 shape with the A is on the outside. And then check it out. Here's where it gets good. Well, it's already great, but now we're going to start connecting this stuff. So B-flat to G7, flat-9.

So now we have our B diminished with A-flats on the outside to our two chord, our C-minor 7. This is our E-flat major six shape with the G's on the outside, G, B, flat, C, E-flat-G, right, to our F-7, which is a C-mine-6 shape, again, the G's just stay the same. So this first progression, right, then from here we can do, starting on B-flat, we'll just go back, and now the next inversion down. F-6 shape, F-major-6, left-hand, F, right-hand, A, C, D, G-7 shape, We just turn it into that B diminished. Outside notes stay the same.

C minor 7, that's an E flat major 6, with E flats on the outside. F7 is a C minor 6, just one note moves. By the way, one note moves always between C minor 7 and F9, right? Just the B flat becomes an A. Easy way to think about it. So again, this second progression, and then we can do another inversion here,

D's on the outside for our F major 6. D's on the outside for the B diminished, right? Just different inversions of the same thing. C's on the outside for the 25. And then we'll end on. Beautiful, B-flat major 9 chord with the C's on the outside. The whole thing sounds like this.

How gorgeous is that? It's just a way to practice these in different inversions. It's such a common cadence 1625 in various combinations. So that's it. it. Check out the course if you want to go on a much, much deeper dive. Follow the link below to get bebop chords for beginners. It launched today, and our you'll hear our listeners get 30 bucks off by following that link. So check that out. And I'll be back on Monday for a little bit deeper dive on the dominant thing with a diminished. There's a very cool trick where we can move

those outside notes and create like loads of Hank Jones-ish tension. So I almost said tension. Until then.