I suppose it is past timing in a way, but just starting to open up that communication and that relationship. Yes, because part of building up a therapeutic relationship is the easiness of communication. Yeah. Because if there's not complementary communication or complementary transactions, communication could break down, and that may not help the building of a positive therapeutic relationship. We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome to the next episode, episode 75 of The Therapy Show, behind closed doors with myself, Jackie Jones, and the formidable Mr. Bob Cook. I don't know why I said that. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about how to create the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client. What a lovely topic. It is. I like the word formidable. I went to watch Manchester City played Manchester United yesterday, and I felt very formidable there. Oh, I'm presuming you support City then and not United. And at halftime is 4-0. So I felt very formidable indeed. Oh, yes. There's a lot of my friends that aren't very happy about that result, but we'll not talk about that. It was 4-0 at halftime. It ended up 6-3. We sort of switched off in the second half because we'd won it 4-0, but it went to 6-3 in the end. Formidable is a good word, and I've just been running a therapy intensive. So I think formidable will suit me. Well, that's how you feel today, and that's good. And I'm in my conservatory today. I know, and it's looking bright still. We might notice the sun going down as we're doing this podcast. Yeah, 10 past six. Yeah. We'll try and get this podcast before we have to switch the lights on. But yeah, it's bright. Bright in, yeah. Okay, so say what the title was again, Jackie. Creating the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client. Oh, that's a big one. I mean, way back in, when was it? Gosh, 1992 was that really big pivotal research came out. But I think it was North Cross and someone else, which really was very pivotal. It was the beginning of what was called the relational turn. And basically what that means is that most research showed that the relationship is crucial to cure. So on that day, lots of other researchers come out. We're now in 2022. And I think it's automatic for people to think that the relationship is crucial to cure. Whereas, well, you know, you take psychoanalysis and way back up into about 1980, 1990, I think people didn't even, it wasn't considering so much that the relationship was important to therapy to cure. I'm not really surprising to believe. Yeah, you think about it. Think of psychoanalysis. So psychoanalysis, Freud say that he was the sort of godfather of modern psychoanalysis leading up to psycho therapy. Now, if you went to any book shops for 1950, it would be the opposite way round. It would be about how to keep out of the relationship. Because psychoanalysis, for example, was driven on keeping out of the relationship because they would argue there was a contamination there. And therefore, the therapy to cure was by what they called interpretation free association. And as I say, the theory was you keep away from relationship. And it started to change with the birth of psychotherapy 40s, 50s, 60s, then the birth of self psychology and cohorts and people like that. And then this research came out in the late 1980s, 1990s, which we should have sort of pointed the direction to the awareness of the importance of relationship for cure. I'm glad it did. Yeah. Because I know the things that we can do to work on the relationship between the client and the therapist, but there's also that bit of magic dust in there somewhere where it just clicks. And, you know, I've had clients come to me who've had therapy before, and it's not been a pleasant experience for them. And they've stuck with it rather than changing. You know, if the relationship isn't working, then I can understand why cure is not going to happen. You know, but they tend to stick with one through thick and thin, even if the relationship isn't there. So the next question for Jackie or the we're going to talk about is what is meant by the therapeutic relationship, because it's a very different relationship for, say a friendship. Yeah. A romantic relationship or a business relationship, you know, we're talking about a specific kind of relationship when we have the Korean therapeutic relationship. So when I, when we talk about therapeutic relationship. What does that mean for you, Jackie? For me, I think one of the big ones is trust. Yeah, so you can have trust in business relationships, can't you have trust in romantic relationships can have trust in collegial relationships. So what's different about therapeutic relationships. I just think it's a whole different level of trust in a therapeutic relationship. Yeah, it's about being consistent and, you know, having boundaries and, you know, showing up and doing what you say you're going to do when you're going to do it. It's, I think in a business and a relationship, you've got a bit of leeway in it, whereas in a therapeutic relationship, I think it's a bit tighter for me. I think the therapeutic relationship is a different emphasis. Yeah. So if we take the definition that therapy very much is about how the past effects are present. I'm not talking about counseling relationship here, I'm not talking about CBT. I'm talking really about what I would call relational psychotherapy with the idea of the past or psychodynamic therapy. The idea that past affects the present. When therapists will be concentrating on looking at how the past effects are present. So there's a certain focus. Yeah, focus I think is for most people, most therapists is on safety, sense of safety, a boundary to space, a sense of containment. And perhaps I'll say the most important but really important aspect anyway, confidentiality. Yeah. That's that's really important confidentiality. Which to me, all those things linking to trust, you know what I mean, that they need to know that, you know, we're 100% in that ring with them for the time that we're in there. And, you know, the only other person that we're ever going to speak to is a supervisor about anything, which, you know, for some people, having that trust is really difficult. You know, we can say that it's confidential and everything, but it's it's kind of proving that. And one of the ways I think in transactional analysis and, you know, in my training is that we won't see anybody knowingly that are in the same circle as what that person is. Especially the family. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes they don't like to hear that, you know, I've had, you know, a single person come to me that then wants me to see them as a couple, or I've seen them as a couple and one person wants to come to me. And, you know, it's blurring the lines for me. And they don't like being referred on sometimes. You know, that's right. Another aspect of a therapeutic relationship or therapeutic space or trust, confidential is that there's payment. Yeah. There's another difference. Yeah, you're paying for professional services, which means you're paying for accountability, you're paying for a trained qualified psychotherapist. And you're trained for people who will put that hour in your space. What I mean by that is there's a space for a person to come and talk about themselves, containment security, confidentiality, all those things. And I think a therapeutic relationship is very different from any other type of relationship. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, sometimes in the early days, and I don't suppose my friends do it now because a lot of my friends, one, they know what I do and two, half of them are in the same, you know, the job is what I am.  You know, or they'll say, don't do the therapy on me. And it's like, you have no idea how different having a conversation outside the room is to having a conversation inside the room until you've experienced it. Yeah, save a space as confidential things we talked about. And it's, and you're on their side, and it's helping them look at how the past affects their presence in terms of connections and behavioral processes and you see one of the major prerequisites. Well, no, one of the major aspects I think of different type of relationships is often past timing. Yeah. And she's very, which is about what's happening in the present day, like the podcast with you talk about Manchester City and Manchester United and talk about various other things. That's sort of, as much as I like talking about those subjects, it's much more past timing from in TA terms, adult to adult eager state. Yeah. Whereas if we had, if it was a therapy process, we would be looking at certain aspects around change and health and improving mental health and looking at the past effects of present to the coping mechanisms. And we would be miles away from past time. Yeah. And what you say there's a definite plan to it. There's a, you know, there's a process to it. And I know sometimes it veers off, you know, maybe what we had intended to happen in the session. But it's not just killing time. It's not just like you say past timing in that hour. There's a process to it all. That's a good way. There's a process to it all. And the other thing is, of course, all of our therapists have usually been trained for four or five years on how to do therapy in that one hour, if you like. Yeah. There's a focus plan. Yeah. All training to be able to do the job. And it's a very different type of relationship from the other relationships we're talking about. Yeah. So what do you do to build the therapeutic relationship if it's not, if it's not there? Can we build? I suppose I wanted to define therapeutic relationship just to define what we're talking about and the differences between the different relationships. Now, if we just answer that question, which is a really interesting question, because it's an assumption that if somebody comes to see you, you have an idea or a criteria, Jackie, about what's not therapeutic relationship. So, for example, for you to say what happens, how do you build the therapeutic relationship if it's not therapeutic relationship? Then that means in your head somewhere, you must have some ideas of what, of what makes up a non-therapeutic relationship, which I haven't really. So for me, if somebody comes through the door and they've got that motivation. The moment I see them and I take that on and have a treatment contract, then there's a therapeutic relationship. So I suppose I like to know that from you. But while I'm talking, I think probably contracts has a really big contracting has a big part to me. Yeah. That starts the therapeutic relationship. Because if somebody comes in the room, there's a contract, not just an admin contract or a payment contract. But there's an actual, you know, there's going to be a treatment contract. And that is the sort of, if you like, the start of the inadvertence therapy relationship. Is that how you see it? Yes. Yeah, definitely. And working through that contract and, you know, I know I've said it in other ones. I ask for clients, you know, new clients to see me for at least four weeks and then reassess it after that to see, you know, how, how they're doing with it. So I'm still interested in this bit about a non-therapeutic relationship and what you meant by it. Well, I was thinking more about things that can possibly get in the way of the therapeutic relationship. Like triggers, you know, I don't know when the client comes in through the door. They're past other than what they've chosen to tell me. But whether I could potentially be a trigger for them, being a female of a certain age, you know, if it's a younger client that I might represent a parental figure to them. Those sort of things, you know, that potentially can in the early days get in the way of that therapeutic relationship. Oh, yes. So I think that's different from my head anyway, because that's about what I want to talk about building up a therapeutic relationship. I think that once somebody comes in and we have perhaps two or three sessions or whatever way we look at it, and we agree on a treatment for change or a focus, say, let's make something up. They want to be relaxed and more content in the depressed. Could be a contract. Yeah. And once they've agreed that, then we'll start the work. And so I see it from the beginning. Perhaps a good way to look at is is developmentally. There's a there's a relationship. Now is it therapeutic from the beginning? Probably because I believe in transfers from the beginning. Yeah. But I think what you're talking about is building up a positive therapeutic relationship. Yeah, quite possibly. Yeah. Which means then you've got ideas about a negative therapeutic relationship, which is another interesting thing. But I think I'll go with what I think you aim me at, which is what can you do to enhance and really clarify a strong therapeutic relationship where a person is motivated to come. They have a design passion to change. And they can utilize your services the best possible outcome. Yeah. So that's that's a good question. I think one of them, of course, is from the beginning to spell out what the contract is, but spell out the therapy is, and I suppose I see it very much like a process, not an event. So, for me, it's about say getting the admin content of the treatment contract and then actually learning about their own histories, their script, what's brought them to therapy. And in that process, they're getting to know you at one level as well as you're getting to know them. And they're building up a, I won't say trust, but they're building up a certain therapeutic rapport with you. Yeah. Now, in a way, because it's a process, not an event. As you're doing the script analysis, as you're doing the treatment planning, as you're doing the whole process about add as a therapy back to the present, you're allowing or encouraging that relationship to ferment and grow. Yeah. So, if people listen, this can move away from the idea that suddenly, or they may not have this anyway, by the way, I suppose I'm assuming something. Certainly the person walks in the room and you got therapeutic relationship. Then that doesn't work that way. I think it's a whole process where you're doing the things I've just talked about to allow trust to build to allow what I call the testing period. Yeah. In the client and the therapist where they're usually testing out the therapist in some ways, according to their script to all that to happen. They will build up a safe space. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that you mentioned the testing out because they do test out sometimes. Oh, in many ways. Smaller than others. Some clients do it for quite a while. It's odd if they wouldn't. Yeah, yes.  So how does a person know if you can be trusted, if you could be trusted to be there, if you could be trusted to share their vulnerabilities, you could be trusted to share their intimate, I would say, secrets, but their intimate moments. How can they ever get to that place without being a process and not an event? Yeah.  Oh, I think you're really, really important because we're talking about building up a therapy relationship with this practice of things. Absolutely. A sense of curiosity. A sense of taking account of the person and practical terms remembering their names. Yeah. Remembering things that they've shared from one session to another session. Yeah. Remembering to be there the same time every week. Yeah. Remembering to stop the session at the time that you're supposed to stop it, which may be 50 minutes or might be an hour or 55 minutes. And all those practical things which provide continuity, stability, safety, yeah, security, all those relational needs which are very necessary, and building up the type of therapeutic relationship we're talking about. Which, you know, for me, I think that's one of the reasons why I never took on too many clients. You know, it's a lot to hold in here when, you know, if you're seeing 20 plus clients in a week, that level of intimacy in the relationship and remembering, you know, the partner's name and the kids' names and all those sorts of things. It's a lot of information that you're holding. You are. And I remember, I don't know, it was a two podcast back, I think now. And we were talking about note taking. Yeah. I think it might have been the one where we talk about effective habits. I'm not quite sure. Yeah. And you said that you kept notes and I was saying that. But we both came home to the same thing really about taking notes after the session rather than in the session. Yeah. It's an important one if it aids memory. Yeah. So if you've got lots and lots of clients, you might need, for example, to make some sort of practical notes after the session, so that you can remember not only the person's names and everything else, but also what they talk about. Yeah. Yeah. So just, you know, dropping that information in the conversation again for me is, you know, safety and security that we do remember, you know, the information that they're giving us. It's not like each session is a separate thing that, you know, there's a line running through everything. One of the things I do in the early days is to do a timeline as well. Can you explain that? Just to get an overarching view of the whole picture, quite early on, you know, anything that sticks out for them and, you know, have they got a birth story? Do you remember your first day at school and what that was like? Just pinpointing certain things, you know, in their life. Again, I suppose it is past timing in a way, but just starting to open up that communication and that relationship. That's because part of building up a therapeutic relationship is the easiness of communication. Yeah. Because if it's not complementary communication or complementary transactions, communication could break down and that's may not help the building of a positive therapeutic relationship. And particularly for me in the early days, you know, when I'm seeing a new client that they feel comfortable that, you know, they're talking about their life, their memories, you know, all those sort of things, rather than going in, tattling the topic straight on the first session, if that makes sense. So it's just getting a background feel. They get to know me a bit more and I get to know them. And on our on the back of this might have come up with the light on a minute in this room, but on the back of this is is an important one when we talk about therapeutic relationships. It's the whole idea of transference. In other words, you know, a transferential relationship, or the repeated relationship or the needed relationship. So if you think about relationships and transferential or psychedelic terms, then we might be seeing a positive therapeutic relationship in helping them and knocked out a different experience. Yeah. Or might encourage idealized transference where the relationship is what they didn't have as a child. Yeah. So, you know, it's an interesting question. When we say what, you know, building up a positive therapeutic relationship. Psychodynamic therapist think about transfers and for them, a positive psychotherapy relationship is going to be one, I think, which provides a relationship they didn't have, you know, in a healing sense all those years ago. Yeah. I think that's why, but for me, it is important to be seen and heard and things like that. It's not necessarily reparenting, but it's, you know, kind of demonstrating a different way that it can be done. And then allowing them to move on with that, if that makes sense. I think that can be quite parental, actually, in the therapy room. As I'm saying that I do think I am. I am quite parental. Well, again, we're, we're really narrowing the whole realm of a transferential relationship. So for example, I think most therapeutic issues people come with is often placed back to the source of difficulties and challenges with their important significant figures themselves. And usually, again, in psychodynamic therapy and transactionalised therapy, if you're talking about transferential positive therapeutic relationship, it's the to allow them to have an environment or space to project onto the therapist, you or me or whichever you like to a parental object which is different. Yeah. In experience from their histories which are so toxic. Yeah. It's a wonderful job that we do, Paul. Yeah, but that's what I think you see that's why I started off what do we call the therapeutic relationship, because I think a psychodynamic relationship and the way that I'm talking about, we'll talk about a positive therapeutic relationship where the transference has actually been realised. Right, whereas a CBT therapist, for example, if you call CBT therapist therapist, if you know what I mean. Yeah. Then transference isn't in isn't in their heads. The past is not really in their heads. It's all about thought change and thinking distortions and therefore their idea of a positive relationship will be utterly different from the idea of a psychodynamic therapist who believes in what I'm just talking about in terms of transference. Yeah. Yeah, because transference in the room can be quite useful. It can be used in the room. It's very useful. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And I find it interesting when we compare and talk about CBT because in my eyes, transference will be going on in that room. Yes, but yeah, you and I think the same. And if the therapist is, say, CBT trained and doesn't really know about transference or use transference, then or even if they do know about transference, they won't use it. Yeah. They're going to keep to, I'm going to use TA language. I know they're going to keep to adult to adult conversations and transactions rather than think in the way of transference or parental projections or child deficits. They won't go that direction. Yeah, which is understandable because they're not trained in it. You know, it sees a completely different modality, but yeah, it's interesting. I've never had CBT, so I don't know what it's like in a room with a CBT. You write, transference will always be there, parental projections will always be there, transference will always be there for my framework. And as the therapist hasn't been trained in any of that, they may inadvertently enact our transference possibilities. However, the focus will be adult, well, it'll be a solution focused. Yeah. Be around behavioural change and thinking distortions. It won't be around anything to do with the history or child deficits. Yeah. Which is for psychodynamic therapist or transactionalist or gestalt psych therapist. That focus will tend to be there more. Yeah. Because that's the past effect in the present. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you've got a transference relationship, which is the formulation that they think about. And that's what I think they would define a positive therapeutic relationship. When that's being actioned. Yeah. So it's an interesting discussion on what constitutes a positive therapeutic relationship. Now, if you come from a transferential place and you think that way by an action of the past onto the present and all things I'm talking about, then you will do things maybe to encourage the transference. In other words, act out like the parent or not act out like the parent. You may do things which encourage that transference relationship, which then they might argue is a positive therapeutic relationship. Yeah. Like you, I think transference happens anyway. It's whether the therapist is trained, not only to understand transference, but to use it for me. Personally, I think you can have a therapeutic relationship without using the transference and you can even call it positive and you may do things like we've just talked about accounting for the safe place and all these sorts of other things. And that would build up trust and containment and continuity and stability and all those things we're talking about. However, for me again, if I want to really use the positive therapeutic relationship, I would be thinking about transference and how to action it. Yeah. Which builds a stronger relationship on a deeper level.  No, no, not at all. That's right. It's from a different place. Yeah. Now, how interestingly, I'm going to, well, I agree about many things you say, Jack, if I'm going to go into another one. Those CBT therapists might not think this way. And that's fine by the way around transference. I think transference will already occur. And another debate and maybe this way from the podcast is will CBT therapy be more effective if there's a positive transference, even if they don't think that way. That's an interesting one, isn't it? Yeah. I sometimes wish or think that it would be good to experience from a, you know, a client's point of view, different therapies to see what they're like, because you know an awful lot about lots of different therapies. I don't really know that much about how it differs from transactional analysis, because that's all I've been training. Apart from person centred, I did a bit of person centred counselling that for me personally was a bit wishy-washy. Well, it's a completely different focus. Yeah. So, so I think it is important, I think to talk, when you're talking about building a therapeutic relationship, to think about what we mean by the therapeutic relationship. Plus, I think that we framed from our training and how we see the use of the relationship in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, being that safe, confined space, it allows the client to test that out to be a different way in a relationship, in a safe environment. A word we haven't used, by the way, in all this is non-judgmental. Yeah. See, I think that's really important. Yeah. Building up the template or the ground for good psychotherapy. Yeah. I think if you talk to most people, what they really want in the therapeutic relationship, let's say confidentiality. They say non-judgmental attitude. Yeah. They say continuity. They think about stability. They think about safety. They think about the environment being in a place where it's not going to be invaded.  They talk about those early relational needs as a template for the nurturing of the relationship with regards to the therapist and the client. Yeah. The next question will be, how do we think about what is a positive therapeutic relationship?  Is it going to, you know, we could go on. And that is framed by how you're trained. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting topic. Hmm. You know, I suppose it's something that we don't always necessarily break down what it means. And, you know, Well, another thing we haven't mentioned the more I go on, I think what we haven't mentioned is potency. Yeah. And again, what builds up a positive therapy to release you in the sense what we're talking about is that the client experiences, not only that the person takes account of them as curious and all the things we just talked about, but they're potent. Yeah. That they are involved with the therapeutic process. They have a sense of really being on the side of the client. The client feels really held and contained. They're the sort of prerequisites, I think, for the template of a positive therapeutic relationship. Yeah. What to do with it is another question. And how you see it is another question. Well, that, that, that's a question and a half because, you know, one of the things that I became aware of in the early days, you know, is that I am in that room as well and my, my baggage is in that room. Sometimes I explain it to the clients that there's probably half a dozen people in this room with us because you've got your parents in here and I've got my parents in here and you're in here and I'm in here. So there's a lot of people in this room. Very interesting Bob. Yeah, enjoy talking about it. Thank you for wanting me to talk about this and break it down. Yeah. You say, unless you're talking about it as a topic, it's very rarely that we do look at what actually constitutes a positive, you know, therapeutic relationship. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think it's vitally important because then you will know what isn't a therapy positive therapeutic relationship. Yeah, they go together. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that Bob. I've really enjoyed that. Great. What's the next one going to be on then? The next one is the understanding of unconscious defences, which I think kind of follows on quite well from building the therapeutic relationship because you're battling through the defences a lot of the time. 100% correct. So I look forward to talking about that. Okie dokie. See you on the next one. Yeah. Bye bye. You've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


Coming up on the Sporting Chef. Welcome to the Sporting Chef show today, I'm cooking grouper. But that's not all, also on the show today. I've got Susie Jimenez, Stacy Harris, Brad Fenson, C-Dubb, and Buddy. My side of the country, we don't see a lot of grouper. I spent a lot of time in the southeastern US and grouper is a big deal there. It's semi-firm, white, really, really mild fish. It's really versatile. You can grill it, poach it, don't care, you can do anything with grouper. The grouper I got today is from Catalina Offshore Products. I get this from Tommy Gomes. Tommy Gomes is a regular on the show. He is by far America's best fishmonger. If there's a better one out there, I haven't met him yet. Tommy knows everything about fish. He sent me this pink Bacchetta grouper which comes out of the Sea of Cortez. Now, this was about an eight to 10-pound fish that I filleted both sides of, a big, cool fish. And the thing about grouper is you've got the Goliath grouper that can be four, 500 pounds. I just read on the news somewhere where a Goliath grouper ate a shark. So they call them the garbage disposals of the sea because they can eat it all. The smaller groupers, eight to 10-pound like this, like the pink Bacchetta grouper, great eating size. I'm gonna start off with making Fred's Fish Sandwich. And you can find this recipe on the SportingChef.com website. This comes to me from Fred Contoury. Contouy rhymes with Maui. Fred and I used to fish a lot. Fred, I don't know what happened to you. You did the FLW thing and now I see you on Facebook. Very, very simple. I've got some flour and I've got some... You can either use garlic, pepper and salt or use the High Mountain Garlic Pepper Rub. And I mix that liberally with this flour and just give it a good mix in there because a lot of the seasoning falls off. So if you're worried about putting, say, too much salt in your flour when you're dusting it, I'm gonna heat this up. Let's see, so I've got grouper behind me here. This is that pink paquetta grouper. Just gonna dust it in here. And the first thing I'm gonna make is this really good sandwich. It's got tomato or take a chili, all sorts of cool stuff. Cheese melted on top. But first, I want you to check out my good buddy, Susie Jimenez. So some of the biggest things that I try to show you guys is how to make one paper mules, right? You don't have to clean anything up. So we're gonna do a little thing called the Fish in the Back. The parchment paper is all you need for this. And we're gonna layer with whatever you have in that fridge. And I'm sure you can open it up. You'll have leftover rice, maybe some potatoes, whatever you have, we're gonna use. So I have a little bit of Spanish rice left over from last night. I'm gonna put that right at the bottom. Some bell peppers, zucchini, and then some awesome halibut. The halibut's just gonna be cut nice and thin and you're gonna put it right on top. This is not gonna take that long. So when you're ready to put this in the oven, remember that within 10 minutes, this is ready to go. You can do it the night before as well. You need a little tang. So we're gonna do a little lime. You guys can do lemon, oranges, but I'm gonna do lime. And then rosemary. Again, with herbs, you can use parsley, basil, thyme, anything you want. Now the biggest trick to this is to make sure that it all steams. The last part to this Fish in the Back is to add a little olive oil, but you can also do butter. So we're gonna fold the parchment paper in half, seal one end, and then just start folding it over. So we're gonna put the parchment right on a sheet pan and I'm gonna go pop this in the oven. And I'm gonna do it at 400 degrees because I want this to zap really quick. So the vegetables are still adente. The halibut cooks really fast. You can incorporate all the good flavors super quick. I'll be right back. So once you guys pull this out of the oven, so you're gonna go ahead and open it right in front of your gas and they can get that aromatic flavor. Oh my God, you're gonna love it. You can sprinkle a little chili flake on there, a little more lemon juice, but guess what guys, I'm gonna be able to do dishes after this. So you guys create your own Fish in the Back. We'll see you guys next time. You know, the person you see on TV, the Susie Jimenez you see on TV is exactly the same person that you see in person. She's funny. She's really, really talented in the kitchen. And if you're in the Aspen, Carbondale, Colorado area, you need to look her up cause she does a lot of personal chef and catering stuff there also. Okay, one of the things that I like to do is I'm going to season the fish as well as the flour because as I mentioned, most of the stuff on the flour falls off. So you season the fish, then you just give it a light dusting. This is not a real heavily breaded piece of fish here. I'll do a couple of them while I'm here. Pan fried, deep fried and stir fried grouper, all ahead. Plus Stacy Harris, Brad Fenson, C-Dub and Buddy, right here. Welcome back to the Sporting Chef Show. I'm Scott Laysath and today I'm cooking grouper from Catalina Offshore Products, specifically a pink baquetta grouper. Dusted the fish. I'm going to put it skin side down. I want to get that skin crispy and I like to leave the skin on my fish, whether it's fried or not fried. Cause I like the texture. I like that crispy skin. This is just going to take a couple of minutes. The mayo part is going to be, oddly enough, mayonnaise, lemon juice, a little Tabasco. My bun is toasting right now. The fish is done. Pad it dry on some paper towels, skin side down, red onion, tomato, roasted anaheim, you can just use the Ortega type. Some kind of cheese, pepper jack or whatever. This is going to go into the oven just long enough to melt the cheese. All right, so after a couple of minutes, the cheese is melted. I've got my spicy mayo on the bun with a little lettuce. Dish number one, Fred's fried fish, kind of fried fish sandwich. That's pan fried. I've also got deep fried and stir fried coming up. But first I want you to check out Stacey Harris. Who, by the way, I have a couple of notable friends who say we'd sure like to see a lot more of Stacey Harris and a lot less of you. I'm making bacon jam today and it is one of those southern staples that you just have to have. The power has gone off today and we've had a little trouble, but so my kitchen may look a little bit different and it normally does. We're running off of all batteries. It's pretty interesting. I have a propane stove, so we're coming right along. But anyway, what I've done is I have rendered the bacon fat from several pieces of bacon. I had this recipe on my website at StaceyLynHarris.com. So I cut my bacon into tiny little pieces and now I am just sauteing the onions in the bacon grease. So I've let this go and it's gotten all caramelized. All these onions are crazy caramelized. I can taste the sugars in them now and what I'm gonna do is add more sugar to the onions. So I'm adding some brown sugar, whole grain mustard. You can add vodka or bourbon, this is bourbon. So I'm adding a little bourbon to the mix. Okay, I'm gonna let that evaporate out just a little and apple cider vinegar. So I'm putting that right down in here and then I'm gonna add the bacon right back to the mix. I'm gonna let this simmer for about 20 minutes and you can keep it in the refrigerator for up to three weeks if you put it in little jars or you can let it simmer and simmer and make boar burgers. Next up is Grupper Timpura. It's gonna have, it's kind of a wet batter as opposed to a dry batter. First thing you do is you take the dry ingredients and mix them together. I've got all-purpose flour, cornstarch and that's kind of equal parts there. I've got some baking powder, I've got some baking soda. I've got a little sugar and just a pinch of salt and you mix that up. Then you get an egg, lightly beaten and you add cold ice, ice cold water. Mix that with the dry stuff. On the fish, I'm gonna season it with some of the high mountain salmon rub. I've got a hot Weston fryer over here into the hot oil. I've also got some vegetables, I've got cauliflower. We've got some heirloom carrots here. I'm gonna make a little sauce to go with it. This is a honey mustard sauce. All right, honey mayonnaise yellow mustard, just plain old yellow mustard. I've got a little kosher salt, fresh cracked black pepper, a little Worcestershire, give that a stir. Honey mustard sauce. Take them out, let them drain for a minute or two while you clean up your mess. Let's take a look. I wanna just dry them off on some paper towels. Here's a little cauliflower, some carrot and a green onion. Dish number two, Tim Porra fried grouper, honey mustard dipping sauce. And now here's Brad Fenson. Hello, today we're gonna bring you some whitetail bits and pieces. We're here in beer camp in Montana, hunting with overly outfitting. And we had a beautiful young whitetail dough that we've used as camp meat. And of course we've eaten all the prime cuts, the back straps, the tenderloins, the nice steaks and all the rest of it.  And what we're gonna do is we're gonna braise it down and make it super tender and delicious. And this is actually gonna be one of our best whitetail meals of the week. The only thing that I deboned was the back shanks. And the only reason I did that is because we have a camp chef Dutch oven and I wouldn't have enough room for it all if I left the bones in. But you have a look at this meat when it's nicely browned up like this. It adds an incredible amount of flavor when you braise these down and put them in a cast iron pot. And when it's browned, we're just gonna put them right in our Dutch oven. Look at that, beautiful. We're gonna take these out right away but we're just gonna add some vegetables for flavor mid-layer here. We've got some red onion, pearl onions work well, some celery, some whole garlic. We're just gonna get those in here. We'll see if some to the top nicely browned up. Perfect. And what we're gonna do is right away while our pan's hot, we're gonna deglaze it with some red wine. And there we have the start of our braising liquid. Now we're gonna put this right over the top of our meat. I have the rest of our vegetables, a can of diced tomatoes here. The acid in the tomatoes really works well to help break all of this down. Some fresh rosemary always goes well but we're in deer camp so we have dried rosemary. We've got some mushrooms as well and put it in with the liquid. You watch the liquid levels, you wanna have this almost swimming about two thirds or three quarters of the way up. I'm gonna add a little bit more red wine. And the other thing I often add to bring up the moisture level is just some beef broth. Of course we have the lid we're gonna put on here. It seals nice and tight. And this is going out to the stove. Look at that. We're gonna bring it up to a simmer and then just turn it down and let it start to cook real low and slow for the afternoon while we're out finding another big buck. One more grouper recipe. Seed up and buddy are on deck. Remain seated unless you're thinking about getting a glass of freak show. I'll be right back. Welcome back to Sporting Chef I'm Scott Leiseth cooking some pink Bacchetta grouper from Kathleen Offshore Products. They got it from the Sea of Cortez. Stir fry. So we've got the pan fried, the deep fried. Now the stir-fried I've got honey, soy sauce, rice vinegar, cornstarch, orange zest, and lime juice. And I'm going to mix that up. This is one of my favorite olive oil. This is from the Lodge in Glen Allen. Got some olive oil in here. I'm gonna season it with garlic and fresh ginger. This is fresh ginger, don't be confused and think that it's okay to use powdered ginger. That doesn't work. All right, before I burn everything here I'm gonna add the fish. And I put the fish in kind of big chunks as it does tend to break up as you cook it. Snow peas, red bell pepper, and keep it moving. The whole concept here with the stir fry is of course to stir fry it, keep it moving the whole time. You wanna make sure that you have all your ingredients ready to go. I'm gonna add a little bit more oil in here. So you notice I haven't salted the fish. I've got the soy sauce in the sauce here in that little marinade that I'm gonna add that's gonna finish in the pan here. I've got some green onions, some hot peppers. I'm using a serrano pepper. You can use jalapeno, habanero, whatever your digestive tract can handle. That's good for now. I'm gonna keep this moving. And while this will continue to cook I want you to check out C-Dub, my buddy from Idy Ho. Just about everybody I know likes chicken fried steak.  And then to get my cube steak to fry fairly quick I then when I hit it with the meat mallet just a little bit I want it to thin out so my meat gets cooked all the way through. Okay, we just wanna season our meat. And this is about the best way to eat eye of round off an elk. Just chicken fry. I mean of course we could make some gravy. Okay, in the first step our meat goes into the flour and then we're gonna go into our sourdough batter into a hot skillet. And as thin as I've got my meat they're gonna cook fairly quickly. Great for breakfast or dinner. We're just gonna drain these on a paper towel. One of my favorite things to do with this old wood cook stove is to cook for family and friends. So this afternoon we made up a batch of chicken fried elk steak with our sourdough batter. Call them sourdough chicken fried elk steaks. All right, since this is an orange honey stir fried fish first of all I'm gonna put some more of that sauce back in there that'll help thicken it up. A little more soy sauce. Here is some bean sprouts and some udon noodles. Give this a stir. A little more sauce. Some noodles. Fish. Snow peas. More fish. I've got some orange segments here. I'm gonna pretty it up with. I'll clean up this mess a little bit and while I do that let's see what buddy's cooking. We know for sure it's not something you probably cook yourself. I was walking with a wife in a grocery store. We saw some of this hatch green chili enchilada sauce. We was at the fish camp and I started putting chicken in there and fish and what not now. We have some Mexican squash called colobasa. And you can use zucchini if you want. I also cut up some celery and yellow bell pepper. I'm gonna put this catfish in there. What you wanna do is make sure you, whatever kind of fish you use that you squeeze all the water out of it real good. I'm gonna cook this on the stove top for a while. You always got busted up chips for your dip. Well I'm gonna end up putting those chips on top of this and baking it. She's baked to perfection. The only thing that I added to that canned sauce was some lime juice and now I put some of this high mountain seasoning, chili seasoning on top of it. You serve this with some avocado and tomato or whatever you want. Scott is brand new. I don't think anybody ever done it before. So I'm naming it after you. In just a minute or two I'm gonna show you how to make these dishes look good on a plate and I'll drink some wine. Welcome back to Sporting Chef. This is what this food looks like when it's on a plate. I've got over here the tempura style grouper. Little vegetables in there also. Fred Contawi's fish sandwich with the cheese and the ortega chili. Here's my stir fry. You know if you don't happen to have any group around this works great with halibut. Special thanks today for all the people that helped me on the show starting with Susie Jimenez. Then there's Stacey Harris show cookbook, Stacey Harris. Of course there was C-dub. C-dub's got cookbooks too. Brad Fenson is a prolific writer. We've got Buddy as always. I've got a glass of wine and we can't be here without our sponsors. Especially Camp Chef. We weren't able to show off a lot of Camp Chef today other than their cast iron cookware. But my outside kitchen is all Camp Chef all the time. I've got Weston, thanks for the great fryer so I could make my tempura batter, make my tempura fish. I cook the high mountain all the time. That's what's in my pantry, a Ryan Cooler's game saver. If your game doesn't taste good, if your fish smells bad, there's an excellent chance that you did not preserve it in a game saver vacuum sealing system. And of course Michael David Wines, which I'm about to drink right now. I'm Scott Laceff, the sporting chef and I will see you next time.


Hi guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to explore the minor scale and look at a few things which you probably did not know about it, right? Maybe a few things which were left out from certain theory, text, books or manuals or guides or maybe, you know, you may find a few new things in this lesson. I'll also be revising and touching up some of the normal, commonly used questions or the commonly used approaches of composing music in minor. I, for one, I don't know why or how, but I tend to make a lot more music on the minor keys or the minor scales than I do on the major scales. I do use major a bit, but then I combine it a lot with minor. For those of you who've heard some of my songs, you'll probably have an idea by now, right? So I'm going to give you a few approaches to just make your minor music sound a bit more interesting and to give you some foundational aspects as well if you did not know them. So for this lesson, I'm just going to take the minor scale which is used more commonly in music, right? The harmonic minor. So that would be a great way to remember that would be a minor third which anyways is a common thing for all the minor scales, right? You go, that just makes it minor. That is the minor tonality. You need that minor third. And then in addition to that minor third, you could have a play between the sixth and the seventh. So for the harmonic minor, you leave the sixth as flat, not natural. That would make it maybe Dorian or melodic minor. That would be so that's the minor third, perfect fifth, minor sixth. And then we have that natural or the major seven. So harmonic minor in a nutshell, flat three, flat six, normal seven. Normal meaning major seventh as per what the major scale was. So let's first look at the basic harmony of the harmonic minor scale. We look at the triads. We look at some of the extensions which I think are really cool. And then we'll piece them together and perhaps unlock some secrets which you did not know along the way. And if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to our channel. Hit that bell for notifications. We do quite a few lessons on our YouTube channel. We do theory. We do ear training. We go live quite often. And we also do normal piano technique exercises and stuff. So hit the subscribe, hit the bell, very important. And most of our lessons, rather I think all of our lessons in recent times have been supplemented by my handwritten notes as well as notation when we need it. In some instances, even backing tracks and other resources. So all of this stuff is waiting for you on our Patreon page. So do head over and be part of that community as well for a very nominal monthly subscription. Right. So let's get cracking with the lesson. So the triads of C harmonic minor. Remember I've chosen the harmonic minor scale in this demonstration, not the natural or the Dorian or melodic, the harmonic minor. So the first chord will be C minor. That's your home bass if you will. You could extend this chord with a minor major seven. That's a very, very interesting chord. Right. For a harmonic minor, you have that maybe for a natural minor or Dorian, you have a more minor seven or more normal sound. But for a harmonic minor, you have this even at the D. Okay. You get that even in the melodic domain. Okay. So that's your one minor. Now the two is a diminished chord, which in this case is D diminished, but you can extend the chord by doing quite a few things really. You can extend it by going, you can go minor seventh, flat five, or we also call that as a half diminished or you can go diminished seventh. So just remember the second chord could either be a diminished, normal diminished triad, or if you want to extend the chord using sevens, you go minor, minor seventh, flat five or diminished seven, very common chord, minor seventh, flat five, diminished seventh. So that's about your two. Now the third is very interesting in the harmonic minor. The third is an augmented triad, which we don't really have in the major scale or the natural minor, right? That's your augmented chord. And if you add some more mystery to it, you can add an augmented major seventh, which you can, I guess, use here and there. You may, you may not want to use it all the time. It just sounds very, very weird and mysterious or dreamy, you know. Just know that you have the augmented chord. And I'll tell you what you can do on the three as well to make it a bit more normal in this lesson. Okay, coming to the four. I love the four for the minor, the C harmonic minor. You'll have four minor, but then you can extend that by doing four minor sixth, which will be root minor third, perfect fifth major sixth. You can also do like a minor seven, or build something around that. You can build a motif, resolve it back to the tonic. Beautiful embellishments for the four minor. Okay, so we do that quite a bit. You can also make the four a lot more colorful, a lot more grander, you know. A lot more mysterious, especially with that sixth. Okay, coming to the five. The five is a dominant chord. So usually music theory and just general compositional discussions will always do stuff around the five. You can have a lot of chordal color, but harmonic minor already gives you that color. You don't have to leave the scale. So you can have your five normal. In this case, G major, you can have a G seventh, G B D F, okay, but you can also do a few things. You can even sharpen the five to get an augmented sound. So this is also called as a G seven, sharp five dominant chord with a raised five. The five has gone up. You can also call it an augmented seventh. Another great way to use the dominant chord in the same scale, you know, is to add the flat nine, which is actually the A flat. But we call it a flat nine because it's with respect to the G root. So you do G B D F A flat. That's what the dominant does very often. It resolves to the tonic. So you have a lot of options for the dominant. Another nice thing with the dominant is you could do a seven sus four. Again, diatonic G C D F and then resolve it to the dominant seventh and then tonic. Okay, let's go through the dominant chord once more. So you have G dominant seventh, augmented seventh, seven flat nine. And then you could do a sus four sus four with a flat nine rather seven sus four with a flat nine back to the minor. Okay. So that's the dominant lot of options there, right? Coming to the six. Generally, the textbooks are going to say six major, but you can also build a six minor. Okay. I'm going to elaborate on that a little shortly. Okay. And finally, the seventh will be a diminished chord with an additional extension that would be a diminished seventh, D diminished seventh. Another thing you'll realize is diminished sevens are kind of inversions of each other. Again, I'm going to elaborate this in the lesson. So I just wanted to start our lesson like that to kind of give you all the chord possibilities of C minor in this instance, C harmonic minor. What you would want to do is start with the triads. If you don't know the triads already and do check out the charts, do check out the notes which I've provided. It'll help you. And one thing I like to communicate to my students in general is always write down your scales in circles. Don't write them in lines because circles will just help you find thirds, triads, intervals, chords in general a lot better. So write it in a circle and then build your music or your chords accordingly. Okay. Now let's look at things which you may not have heard or used with respect to the harmonic minor. The first thing is the mystery of the sixth chord. Okay. This is something I found out a bit late in my journey of playing on the minor scale in general. What I found is, well, the one is minor. You can't change that. But if you do a progression and you go one to the sixth, it sounds very uplifting, very epic, very brave, right? Right? But in this same scale, you could just slide your major third of A flat down by one and you get a minor version. So you could take the same sequence, very harmonic minor, right? So this gives you a little bit more, you know, diabolic sound, a little bit more evilish kind of sound, right? A painful. Let me just show you a few possibilities with melody and try and weave in something. Let's see where it can go. Right? So that minor kind of feels a bit unresolved when you do major, it just lifts the music. Okay, so that's just one thing you may not have known when you normally write down the triads of the harmonic minor. I'm also telling you this because it's something even I did not know. So I think in one of my songs which I composed, we tried to analyze it in a class and then students were like, you know, where did that chord come from? And then we figured, oh, yeah, it's actually from the same old minors. So the harmonic minor is giving you so many things, right? So many options to a point that, I guess, that's why they called it harmonic in the first place. You know, you have so many harmony options which the major scale doesn't really give us. Okay, moving on to the second thing which I think which is really great for the harmonic minor, the dominant chord. As I mentioned earlier, you have a lot of possibilities for that dominant chord, right? In even in the major scale. Now, instead of using any altered tones, stones which are out of the scale or as we say tensions or, you know, the sharp nines and all of that stuff, you find that a lot of these alterations are within the key itself. So if you take your dominant chord, G major at the dominant seventh, you have various possibilities. First off, well, you can just do a G dominant seventh, bring it back to C minor. You could also do this. You could add the G dominant seventh, add the flat nine. Why is it flat nine? Because with respect to G dominant seventh, flat nine, that flat nine pulls itself stronger to a C minor. So it's like two very strong pulls. You have the B going to C. You even have the flat nine wanting to go to G. So it's a very strong magnet. So now what you could also do, you could also do the seven sus four root, which is G, C, D, F. Resolve it to the dominant. Yeah. And then back to tonic. So you have a lot of variations on that dominant chord. Another nice way to use the dominant chord, we call it dominant because the fifth note or the fifth degree will be you can add an augmentation. That means you sharpen the five. What was the normal five D sharpen the five and keep the dominant seventh there. Resolve very well. So what I wanted to share is the dominant chord is always the chord you want to play around with. You want to add a lot of colors. And when you think of it melodically, your melody also will adapt and it has to adapt because you're coloring the harmony so much that the harmony has to inspire a new melodic twist. So maybe you could do, maybe your melody could be like this. Okay. Why did I, why did that work? Because flat nine normal root back to tonic. So my melody was or you could go you could keep that E flat ringing and thus you get like a augmented augmented seventh sound. Another trick when you're composing melodies in the harmonic minor scale, when you do dominant going to tonic, you can actually use it in a bluesy context. You can use it with the minor blues scale. Can weave that in, for example, what I'm singing is on the blues scale, but the chords are coming from some other scale. In this case, the harmonic minor, right? So the B flat becomes a passing note. Very exciting chord. So when you use the dominant chord, use it with all the colors, use it with all the extensions. Also remember that you can, you need to compose with the dominant and the tonic. And when that happens, a lot of possibilities exist. Like I just told you, you can, because you have two chords in the context, you can weave in the blues scale as well. You can bring in the blues scale and color it up even further, right? So that was about the dominant chord. That was the second thing I wanted to share about the harmonic minor. Let's now move on. So another exciting way to use the harmonic minor is to treat it like what I call as the hybrid minor. Okay, so with a hybrid minor context, you could look at it as a minor scale with the bare minimum requirement being that it has to have a minor third. And it does not need, necessarily need to have any of the exotic intervals as I call it, which in this case will be flat two and the tritone. Beautiful intervals, but let's not call it a hybrid minor. Let's, otherwise then everything will be part of the minor. So I'm ignoring, what am I ignoring? Obvious signals will be flat two because it's exotic in nature. Tritone because it's very, very unique in sound and I'm ignoring the major third because minor, what differentiates minor from major, the third. So the first five notes are in the bank but what makes it hybrid would be what you can do with the sixth and the seventh. So that's natural, that's harmonic. So what you could do is just look at the seventh flat sometimes and the seven natural sometimes and for the most part you use the flat six because the flat six is contained in both the popular minors. The natural minor and the harmonic it's there. In some cases you want to, you know, make it a bit more exciting by make it a natural six. That would make it Dorian but let's leave that out for this discussion. I would love to do another video on its own on the Dorian. So we will do that shortly. So you go natural minor, harmonic minor. So if you consider yourself to be in the C minor scale, you could perhaps look at it as a hybrid minor and say, you know, here and there I'll change my music by bringing in the seven flat instead of the, that mysterious seven natural. So that gives birth to two chords you could try out in your composition. The first is the three. I would immediately consider messing a bit with the three because naturally in the harmonic minor world, the three becomes augmented which for most singer songwriter stuff becomes almost unusable unless you're writing like oh darling by the Beatles, which has that chord at the very beginning, right? Anyway, so the augmented third or the augmented chord at the three flat could be replaced by just a normal major. So that came from the natural minor because of the addition of the B flat, which is the flat seven. So you could do, but to make it a bit more ambient and less obvious, you could make it like a major seventh. Just makes it a bit more just ambient.  So I'm still on C minor. You could even kind of color it up by playing a major sixth. So the borrowed chord will be E flat major seventh or E flat major sixth. Let's see how we can bring this into context. Very harmonic minor. That was the E flat. You can move from there to the F minor dominant. Let's do that again. E flat dominant back to the minor. Just remember we can add these borrowed chords from other scales or just treat it as the hybrid minor. That may be a new approach for you to consider. Okay, another nice chord which can be built because of the hybrid minor could be a B flat major. Because you're telling yourself C, okay, I want to change that B to B flat momentarily. So you get a B flat major and you can dress it up with a major sixth. So another nice way to do this stuff is play the sixth major and you get a sixth flat, seventh flat going to tonic. You're still on the minor scale, harmonic minor, but this is a more braver sound. Now go to the harmonic dominant. So I'm bringing both in A flat major, G dominant, E flat, the borrowed, back to harmonic minor. See how I'm playing around with that? It's like you're considering the harmonic minor and the natural minor as just one scale, like one big scale of lots of harmonic possibilities. So that was another way to use the minor scale which hopefully you find interesting. What I call as the hybrid minor concept. Let's move on. Right. So another thing I'd like to explore or I'd like to urge you to explore would be how a chord can just sound colorful versus a chord to sound very mysterious or very tense as well or very different or very unique. So if you consider the four chord of the harmonic minor scale, if you were to look at its extensions, you can go F minor seventh. E flat is the minor seventh of F or you can do minor six. So you see this scale is incredible in the sense that it gives you like a very normal sound, F minor seventh. And it gives you a very mysterious, very movie theme, like very James Bond like sound. And both these sounds came from the same scale. So you could use both. So that's something cool which you could do over the four minor. You can make it a minor seventh or a minor six. We all know how much you can color the dominant chord that I've explained earlier. Another interesting chord you could consider coloring is the two. Okay. If you take the two, you could either do it as, well, by default, it's two diminished. Now you can color it with a diminished seventh, which is a B on the top. Just to recap or just to revise with you, diminished seventh is like a major seventh minus two or a major seventh down a whole step. So that's what it is. Or you can look at it as a major sixth. So this according to me is a more normal sound, a more grounded sound. Yes, it doesn't sound stable, but it just sounds normal compared to the minor seven flat five, which again brings back that mystery, you know. So this will be again, you can use that together and finally resolve to tonic. So it's just something to realize. And if you look at it in a hybrid context, you can look at an a system where you play even the tonic, which is minor. You could do the normal embellishment, which is the minor seventh, or you could do the harmonic minor embellishment, which is a lot more like I keep saying, James Bondish. So you have that mysterious sound and you have like a normal colorful sound contained within the same scale, contained within the harmonic minor scale. So that's just something I wanted you to consider and you can do a lot on the six. You can do so many colors on each chord of this scale, which you need to consider. So always write it down before you play it and things get a lot more easier and I've given you a tip earlier to write it in a circle. I would definitely stress on that. Moving to the last thing, which I wanted to communicate to you in terms of really diving into the harmonic minor, it's the diminished chord. So the diminished chord, there are various extensions of the chord, but the more commonly used one is the diminished seventh. So if you take the diminished seventh, it's just a collection of minor thirds. Minor third, minor third, another minor third. So you put three of them together. That's a diminished seventh. And you may argue, can I do four minor thirds? Well, you can't because it's a symmetric chord. It's going to eventually come back to where you started. What's another nice symmetric chord to consider the augmented chord? Okay, maybe more on that in another lesson. Okay, so you go diminished seventh and it's important to know or it's cool to know that diminished seventh chords are kind of inversions of each other. So you don't have to learn that many, which makes life actually a little easier. So if you take D diminished seventh, it is also F diminished seventh. It is also A flat diminished seventh. It is also B diminished seventh. So all of those chords, well are contained in the C harmonic minor scale, but it doesn't provide for a unique sound. So how do you make diminished sevenths usable, I guess? So one way is play the bass note a little lower. So then it becomes more obvious. A D bass, F bass, A flat bass. Now you have a value. Now you have a value for the chord. But if you keep them very close together, then they all kind of sound the same. So diminished seventh chords with different bass notes will give you a different personality for the chord. Okay, and a diminished seventh chord could also be a replacement or an add-on for a dominant chord. You know, you could do... So you could kind of try playing one of them and figure out a way to come to the tonic. So or the other one, D diminished. Now B is sticking on top. So maybe I'll use B in my melody. All roads lead to C minor. Now if I take F diminished seventh, then it resolves to the minor third there because that D inspires you with your melody. So that top note really helps you compose your melody. So let's now try something with the A flat diminished seventh. So start with the top one. All right, so if I'm not mistaken, hopefully I've come up with four melodies right now just using that one chord. Which has four inversions. So there's a huge value for practicing all the four versions of that one diminished seventh chord. So I just wanted to communicate that you have four diminished seventh chords in a harmonic minor scale. How do you make them really stand out, work on your bass, and the other is work on the top most note because when you hear music, the bass note changes the vibe of the music. While the top note is what's the most attractive or the most catchy note, or will end up being your melody note, whatever you're going to work on. Okay, so that's about the diminished seventh chord. I'm itching to say a lot more on the diminished seventh chord because there's so many other ways to use it, but definitely a few more lessons coming your way. Okay, so these were the five strategies, if you will, to work on your harmonic minor chops or to work on your compositional ability using the harmonic minor scale. Let's just go through them. The first thing is to remember that the six can be either six major or six minor and then come back to the tonic or go somewhere else. Just keep that in mind. The six can either be major or the minor. The second thing we looked at is there are so many strategies you can do with respect to the dominant chord. What is dominant again? Five. So you have so many colors and textures for that chord. You can do G seventh normal, then you can do G, G seven flat nine, G augmented seventh, G seven sus four, G seven sus four with the flat nine. You can build a progression literally just using the dominant chord. That's all you really need. Then what did we do? Then we looked at considering the harmonic minor more like a hybrid minor, where you can bring in that variety using both the sevenths, the major seventh as well as the minor seventh. Where did we go B or B flat? And because of the B flat, we ended up figuring out the fact that you can play an E flat major chord or a major seventh or a major sixth. You can even do stuff over your B flat. Make that a B flat major because you have B flat. Now that you're like, okay, it's a C minor scale with a B and a B flat. You know, something like that. That was our borrowed concept where or a hybrid minor concept. Then we looked at the distinction between color and mystery, right? Color is just kind of making something like a four chord more colorful. Otherwise it's just a vanilla chord, as I call it. It's just F minor, but color it with that E flat. But then I'm just trying to give you this different sonic classification where you have something colorful and you have something mysterious, okay? So yes, just that was our fourth strategy. And lastly, we've looked at the diminished seventh chord where the diminished seventh chords, there are four of them. You can use it to really inspire the movement to the tonic. It's like a dominant chord. You can also use it melodically by sticking out the top note, getting inspired by that, and then weaving a melody from there. Also change the bass notes and put them deep down. Otherwise you will not get the characteristic of it, okay? So lots to do with harmonic minor. I hope you found the lesson useful. I hope you enjoy the harmonic minor more after having watched this lesson and definitely write it down, practice it on many keys. I've given it to you on C harmonic minor which is a nice way to start I guess and then build from there, right? You have so many ways of exploring this scale. So I just wanted to try and put it all together or put in at least five of the top strategies which I think will work in music for you, right guys? 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