In the key of c, what I'll call Barry Harris's sixth-diminished scale has the following notes: c, d, e, f, g, g#, a, and b. I've thought of this as "the be-bop scale" and used it for single-note soloing concepts on guitar, but I've never thought of what would happen when you harmonize the scale by starting on any one of the eight notes and picking every other note to build a chord. if you do that, you get an alternating sequence of inversions of the same major sixth chord and diminished chord. in the key of c you get the following: "c, e, g, a" (root position of a c sixth chord), "d, f, g#, b" (root position of a d diminished chord), "e, g, a, c" (first inversion of a c sixth chord), "f, g#, b, d" (first inversion of a d diminished chord), and so on alternating through all four inversions of a major sixth chord and a diminished chord a whole step above that! if I play it on piano or guitar (or any other instrument) I immediately hear movement from a I chord to a V chord and back to a I chord with every chord change.
To get this scale harmonization on the c-6 neck with "standard" copedent, do the following:
1. Play strings 7 through 4 with no pedals (root position of a sixth chord in whatever key you're in.)
2. Engage pedals 5 and 6, move the bar two frets up, and play strings 7 through 4. (root position of a diminished chord starting on the second scale tone of whatever key you're in)
3. Release pedals, move the bar back to your original position (two frets back from the previous step) and play strings 6 through 3. (First inversion of a major sixth chord starting on the major third of whatever key you're in.)
4. Engage pedals 5 and 6, move the bar two frets up, and play strings 6 through 3. (second inversion of a diminished chord starting on the fourth degree of whatever key you're in)
5. Repeat for string group 5 through 2.
6. For the third inversion of the major sixth chord you'll have to engage pedal 7 and move the bar five frets up from your major sixth root position. When you do this you won't need to move the bar to play the next diminished chord in the sequence, just release pedal 7 and engage pedals 5 and 6 in stead in the same bar position.
7. Combine this with the fact that diminished chords repeat every three frets and pretend like you're playing chord melodies in a dark 1950's jazz club!
The beauty of this in my mind is that you can get a lot of cool notes and harmony with very minimal bar movement. have I discovered a pocket? If i have I'll be staying in it for a while.
Doing this in a minor key is probably another writeup, especially since I haven't wrapped my head around the theory, but if I understand things correctly Barry has players substitute a minor sixth chord (which I confess I still think of as a minor 7 flat 5 / half-diminished chord) for the major sixth chords above. You can do this on pedal steel by engaging just pedal 5 or just pedal 6 when playing the odd steps in my process above, which will give you a harmonized jazz minor scale if I'm not mistaken. I confess I'm having a little trouble mapping out what key I'm in when playing m7b5s, especially since in practice (to my ear anyway) both sound good in whatever key I'm working in.
As I said at the beginning of this post, it has really opened up my playing to think this way. Last night when I sat down to play after all the chores were done, a chord melody arrangement of "Besame mucho" just sort of fell out of my hands! It's also very easy to play the "b-section" of the James Bond Theme (where the guitar stops and the horns / orchestra come in) using this scale. I now look forward to playing over long static chords because this kind of thinking encourages a lot of movement over them. I'm working on this type of playing with dropped 2 and 3 voicings on what I believe steel players refer to as "armpit guitar", but it's SO much easier and more fun on the C6 neck with pedals!
If there is interest I can definitely figure out how to post some audio examples of what I am talking about. Here is some further viewing on Youtube:
A great overview of Barry's harmonized scale with armpit guitar players in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7reOAaveCi0
Barry explaining it on piano to a workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jO-sIrjTqg
I've been a long time lurker here and would like to reiterate what others have said about this forum being a true wealth of knowledge and experience! I can't imagine what it must have been like to learn pedal steel from scratch before the steel guitar forum. hopefully this first contribution of mine will be interesting to someone. thank you for reading.
