Why study bebop?

[christianm77]

Great article.

I agree with much if not all of what it says.

Mostly music: 21st Century Bebop?

If anyone had MADE me study bop (for example at college) I would have ended up hating it though haha.

[AlsoRan]

Great article with solid points IMHO.

I think where people go wrong is when they hold up bop, and all its associated idioms, as being superior to all other music. People get offended and then the battle is on.

Thanks for a very thoughtful article.

[mr. beaumont]

I agree with much of it as well. The only part I disagree is that we've moved so far past "bebop" (as defined in the article, not just the 40's music)

I still hear a lot of i, the tradition, playing changes, the intellectual part, but the groove too, even if it's not "swing" in the traditional sense....in the good modern stuff, at least.

[TH]

While I personally feel that the jazz idiom of the post 40's era is essential to my study of the improvised art, I do have issues with the course of study in some schools of academia. Granted it's financially expedient to teach a course of tools "required" for a knowledge of jazz as we know it, I see a phenomenon wherein kinds learn the works of others without having the slightest idea of the creative constraints that had taken artists there.
Learn how to make the sound, and minimize the spirit and process. Study of bebop can lead to the worship of the form and in that process close off the individual's license to make it their own.
At the beginning of any movement there are talented individuals who are given free reign to make a language based on their own propensities and tendencies. Then they become recognized and their spontaneous footprints become cannon. Then they become rules that come with it prohibitions of further innovation.
That's the danger.
That's why a lot of people who are doing really great stuff these days avoid the label "jazz".
I once asked a really well known modern player if he ever played bebop. He said "It's all bebop." For him a spirit and an evolutionary language informed the term.

I went to a school that teaches the adoration of bebop, among many other things. Right next door is another school that teaches a freer improvisational interpretation. When those kids show up at a jam, they've got a much deeper feel for the traditions and the future. Cuz they found it on their own. Go figure.

David

[Hep To The Jive]

C'mon folks, it's not the issue that needs an urgent care. What really needs to be addressed is pre-bebop, pre- 40's jazz education!

I am really tired and annoyed calling people for gigs specifying that, yes it's a jazz gig, but no, it's not bebop or straightahead, it's NOLA/trad style jazz and so are the tunes. How come those jazz graduates show up with no feel, no vocabulary, and no knowledge of the freaking tunes?? Those cats accepting a gig thinking they are so smart and educated playing their freaking Inner Urges or whatever so they sure can handle anything? Is that the mentality? Well screw such jazz education! The last thing the world needs is another clueless bebop player thinking they are next John Coltrane.

Phew, sounds like a rant, I know, but after a recent less than a fun gig I felt like a thread like this would be a right place to vent.

Carry on

[christianm77]

C'mon folks, it's not the issue that needs an urgent care. What really needs to be addressed is pre-bebop, pre- 40's jazz education!

I am really tired and annoyed calling people for gigs specifying that, yes it's a jazz gig, but no, it's not bebop or straightahead, it's NOLA/trad style jazz and so are the tunes. How come those jazz graduates show up with no feel, no vocabulary, and no knowledge of the freaking tunes?? Those cats accepting a gig thinking they are so smart and educated playing their freaking Inner Urges or whatever so they sure can handle anything? Is that the mentality? Well screw such jazz education! The last thing the world needs is another clueless bebop player thinking they are next John Coltrane.

Phew, sounds like a rant, I know, but after a recent less than a fun gig I felt like a thread like this would be a right place to vent.

Carry on

Heh, well we all got to start anywhere with any style of music.

There are people who are willing to learn, and those who aren't. I learned a lot out of playing pre-bop jazz even though it's not what I want to do really.

If people don't enter into things with an open minded mindset, the chances are they'll end up unhappy and
closed off anyway. None of my favourite musicians seem to have that attitude regardless of their tradition.

If I was a middle eastern jazz fusion musician I might get annoyed by jazz musicians who come in and go 'oh it's just harmonic minor, right?' and totally miss the point.

Anyway, open minded musicians can learn in any style, and arrogant players are always arrogant.

PS: early jazz is very difficult for players that have only played post-bop stuff. They usually sound awful, tis true. But OTOH learning pre-bop has enhanced my understanding of everything else. So yeah, I think it should be on the syllabus (it IS in some schools). Only problem is the historical schism between the mouldy figs and the filthy modernists means a lot of teachers in jazz education have never played this earlier music. They have no knowledge.

I think we'll see that changing, next 20 years or so.

[Hep To The Jive]

Only problem is the historical schism between the mouldy figs and the filthy modernists means a lot of teachers in jazz education have never played this earlier music. They have no knowledge.

I think we'll see that changing, next 20 years or so.

That's the point. It's not that some players are not open to it, they just completely missed it in their studies, because the schools don't teach that type of jazz.

That time I had a last min gig, and I was scrambling for a horn player. I called all the specialized guys first, and of course everyone was already booked and working. And only the bebop guy was avail and really wanted( needed) the gig. Do you see what I am maybe trying to imply here ? hahaha

[docbop]

To learn something you have to go back to its roots, with Jazz that King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and work your way forward. It pretty much lays out in a logic progression of skills to master. Look at other careers and professions they are taught by first learning the history and basics to build an understanding what why and then how things advanced over time. You don't learn to be a physicist by only learning the last twenty-five years of physics and math. It's a process and in Jazz Bebop is the era you're going to get the solid foundation from, with that foundation then you can play any style that came or comes later.

I was on one Jazz conference calls yesterday that I've mentioned in past and we touch a bit on this topic. A common complain with the name old and even today's players is young people want to learn or sit in and they don't know the fundamental tunes, don't have the ear, they don't know the forms, common changes, haven't even listened to the key solos, they act like music only goes back twenty-five years. Without that foundation they can't can't say like in <fill in classic tune> or name some solo from a classic record. It was pointed out detailed listening is big part of learning.

Also mentioned in the conf call I'll throw it in here is detailed listening to an artist. Similar to what I was getting at in one my threads the other day he said people today have access to a million tunes by thousands of artist and the listen tunes cycle thru all day, but they aren't learning anything from it. What needs to be done is pick one artist you really dig and want to play like, then listen to them constantly. learn to sing how they played heads, sing the solos you love. Then transcribe and analyze their melodic choices, the rhythms they use, how they combine the two factor. Do that with one artist maybe even just one song by the artist get every detail and nuance possible. Doing that with one artist or song will teach you more than doing a handful of artist. It will change how you listen to other artists in future.

So learning Bebop era will give you the foundation for playing other eras of Jazz. Better yet start before the Bebop era go to Louis Armstrong then you'll understand what the Bebopper grew up listening to and playing in there youth. Also pick artist or tune and learn every thing you can about them, that's what Metheny did with Wes Montgomery.

[christianm77]

That's the point. It's not that some players are not open to it, they just completely missed it in their studies, because the schools don't teach that type of jazz.

That time I had a last min gig, and I was scrambling for a horn player. I called all the specialized guys first, and of course everyone was already booked and working. And only the bebop guy was avail and really wanted( needed) the gig. Do you see what I am maybe trying to imply here ? hahaha

Oh sure. But then, you are talking to the wrong person. I used to do 200 gigs a year swing stuff, easy. Could have done more if I'd actually worked a bit harder at actually getting gigs. I was purely a sideman, but I didn't really enjoy most of them. Noisy bars, dance gigs etc. Not a listening audience.

Getting gigs with that stuff is pretty easy.

I do fewer gigs now, but it's more my projects. Some of them are swing influenced.

But I've realised it's not really my music - but that's my decision, and my luxury.

You want to work? Learn the trad/swing repetoire and get chanking. If you are in your 20's and want some fun, think it would be AMAZING. I came into it a little too late.

[christianm77]

To learn something you have to go back to its roots, with Jazz that King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and work your way forward. It pretty much lays out in a logic progression of skills to master. Look at other careers and professions they are taught by first learning the history and basics to build an understanding what why and then how things advanced over time. You don't learn to be a physicist by only learning the last twenty-five years of physics and math. It's a process and in Jazz Bebop is the era you're going to get the solid foundation from, with that foundation then you can play any style that came or comes later.

I think learning swing music and trad repertoire REALLY taught me how bop (and Bossa) harmony works. It's not just useful for play noisy bar gigs.

I was on one Jazz conference calls yesterday that I've mentioned in past and we touch a bit on this topic. A common complain with the name old and even today's players is young people want to learn or sit in and they don't know the fundamental tunes, don't have the ear, they don't know the forms, common changes, haven't even listened to the key solos, they act like music only goes back twenty-five years. Without that foundation they can't can't say like in <fill in classic tune> or name some solo from a classic record. It was pointed out detailed listening is big part of learning.

Also mentioned in the conf call I'll throw it in here is detailed listening to an artist. Similar to what I was getting at in one my threads the other day he said people today have access to a million tunes by thousands of artist and the listen tunes cycle thru all day, but they aren't learning anything from it. What needs to be done is pick one artist you really dig and want to play like, then listen to them constantly. learn to sing how they played heads, sing the solos you love. Then transcribe and analyze their melodic choices, the rhythms they use, how they combine the two factor. Do that with one artist maybe even just one song by the artist get every detail and nuance possible. Doing that with one artist or song will teach you more than doing a handful of artist. It will change how you listen to other artists in future.

Brilliant! Can you share? I think what another musician hears in music is one of the most interesting things you can discuss with another musician.

So learning Bebop era will give you the foundation for playing other eras of Jazz. Better yet start before the Bebop era go to Louis Armstrong then you'll understand what the Bebopper grew up listening to and playing in there youth. Also pick artist or tune and learn every thing you can about them, that's what Metheny did with Wes Montgomery.

I couldn't agree more...

[ronjazz]

Paul Desmond said that jazz, like writing, can be learned, but not taught. The real truth in this is that successful jazz players express their personalities through their music, not their chops or arcane knowledge.

Jazz in classroom settings actually discourages innovation and originality, unfortunately. I can't think of a single great player who sucked when they entered college and came out as a great player; most of the fine players who went at all rarely stayed more than a year or two, and most of them learned on the bandstand in real time. This is quite a different experience than classical players have, where the music is standardized and where the good jobs are being orchestral sheep. As a specific exception, the fine classical soloists don't learn their art in school, they develop it from within, and great schools like Juilliard give them exposure to a high level of professionals who can point them in the right direction. The biggest problem for young players today is simply lack of gigs, especially the crucible of the 6-night a week, 2 or 3 sets a night schedule that musicians went through from the 30s to the 80s.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I was a metalhead/nascent shredder when I started taking jazz lessons. Not because I wanted a career in jazz (lol) but because I wanted to add that vocabulary to my palette -- in all aspects of music, harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic. Even in the period of my playing when I was full-on metal and shredding decently, if I may so allow, those lessons served me well. I learnt how to read a chart, how to analyze extensions and alterations in order to define what was inside and outside. I started learning true improvisation, where listening is much more vital than blathering.

Of all the quotes in that article, Bird's resonates the most with me, is what I guess I'm saying, because for me it was the desire to let the song play me, rather than me playing the song. And while I don't think that "spirit" or "soul" can be taught directly in any uni class, I do think that learning other genres, be it jazz, or Middle Eastern musics, or flamenco, or whatnot, what learning those disciplines can do is open up our ears so that we can find outlets for that spirit or soul. In a way it's like cooking -- we have to learn how each herb, spice or seasoning flavors the stew that will eventually become our own voices.

Thanks for airing out a thoughtful article.

[Stuart Elliott]

Jazz in classroom settings actually discourages innovation and originality, unfortunately. I can't think of a single great player who sucked when they entered college and came out as a great player

Emily Remler said she sucked when she started at Berklee. When she left she may not have been a great player, but she was prepared to become one through steady gigging in New Orleans (iirc).

[Jonah]

C'mon folks, it's not the issue that needs an urgent care. What really needs to be addressed is pre-bebop, pre- 40's jazz education!

I am really tired and annoyed calling people for gigs specifying that, yes it's a jazz gig, but no, it's not bebop or straightahead, it's NOLA/trad style jazz and so are the tunes. How come those jazz graduates show up with no feel, no vocabulary, and no knowledge of the freaking tunes?? Those cats accepting a gig thinking they are so smart and educated playing their freaking Inner Urges or whatever so they sure can handle anything? Is that the mentality? Well screw such jazz education! The last thing the world needs is another clueless bebop player thinking they are next John Coltrane.

Phew, sounds like a rant, I know, but after a recent less than a fun gig I felt like a thread like this would be a right place to vent.

Carry on

I may be wrong.. but it seems to me that starting from bop and on jazz became really universal style.
Bop is strictly urban music with certain cultural enviroment audience and it seems it turned out to be more important than if it's American, French or Japanese... the most importnat thing became its belonging to certain urban subculture.
It's not associated strictly with any place or even to some degree to particular epoch (we know of course when it happened but it's not important and does not have direct refences and swing styles have strong retro cultural reference)

As for pre-bop styles... first in a great deal those are still very strongly connceted with American root music.. or in Europe with local traditions of variete/cabaret styles, or local folk styles..
And second... pre-bop styles did not have artistic conception as a part of it... it was pure entertainment business. And bop was probably the first jazz style that - kind of said - 'I am art, listen to me as an art'... not really openly but that it was there I believe


The thing is... bop can be traced in plenty of post-bop styles as a sort of core idiomatic structures... I mean you may not hear immidiately that it comes from bop - but here and there you can fing plenty of things connected with it.
Using it as learning mateiral can be a good conventional system.

Pre-bop styles today are moslty stylizations

It's generalization of course and the processes were more complex.. but that can explaine why bop could be the choice for jazz language learning method...

The last thing the world needs is another clueless bebop player thinking they are next John Coltrane.

But does the world need another clueless swing player who thinks he is reincarnation of Django?

[christianm77]

Bop means different things to different people. Even the people who played it back in the day.

For instance, for Dizzy it was primarily a rhythmic concept AFAIK.

For Barry Harris, AFAIK, it's more like a specific tradition connected to European classical traditions harmonically with the influence of sophisticated African-American rhythm...

To yet others, all modern jazz is bebop.

To me, Dizzy's concept rings the truest. I can hear bebop in so much of the Black American Music that followed, jazz or non-jazz. I feel the sophistication of the rhythm in that music has rarely been rivalled whatever other directions music has taken.

For instance people think it's a big deal to play in odd time. But bebop phrasing is people playing in odd time and all sorts against the framework of a 4/4 pulse. All we've really done since then is to loosen that 4/4 pulse. The main thing that has happened in a way is that the rhythm section have abandoned their traditional swing era role of holding that pulse, or striving to have the same freedom in 7/8 or whatever.

So yeah, in that understanding all modern jazz is bebop I suppose.

[christianm77]

In modern jazz education when teaching bop, heavy attention is paid to changes playing, because modern pop, modal jazz etc doesn't have this. But the techniques taught are not necessarily bop although it is necessary to know them to play it.

For instance, it's not bop to play a scale so the chord tones line up on the beat. Classical composers had been doing this sort of thing for hundreds of years. That's just the furniture of Western Music.

But when we get into jazz we aren't necessarily checking out Satchmo or Johnny Hodges - we are probably checking out Trane or the music after that. Guitarists might be checking out Scofield or somemone... So we come at it from the modal era backwards.

So looking back we see this preoccupation with harmony and equate it with bop. But actually bop is what happens when you take that framework and subvert it. It's just that to teach modern players to play it you have to teach the framework and the subversion at the same time.

I think that gets lost a bit sometimes.

[princeplanet]

...
So looking back we see this preoccupation with harmony and equate it with bop. But actually bop is what happens when you take that framework and subvert it. It's just that to teach modern players to play it you have to teach the framework and the subversion at the same time....

How about framework first, then subversion later? I've always been annoyed at players who wished to sound "modern" without shedding bop for years the way their heroes did. The best modern players do what the greats who invented modern jazz did: They learn to bebop first, and then subvert it. You can't sound like Eric Dolphy if you can't understand Charlie Parker. This is not to say that you should sound like either, but if you want some connection to this tradition, ya gots ta pay your dues.

Or just call yourself "experimental" (not that there's anything wrong with that.... )

[christianm77]

How about framework first, then subversion later? I've always been annoyed at players who wished to sound "modern" without shedding bop for years the way their heroes did. The best modern players do what the greats who invented modern jazz did: They learn to bebop first, and then subvert it. You can't sound like Eric Dolphy if you can't understand Charlie Parker. This is not to say that you should sound like either, but if you want some connection to this tradition, ya gots ta pay your dues.

Or just call yourself "experimental" (not that there's anything wrong with that.... )

No I mean to say bebop itself was a subversion. A rhythmic subversion.

Bop is not changes playing. Changes running pre-dates that music. But we learn it all in one go. I'm talking about something very specific here. Nothing post 1950 really.

That's why we get all these questions about why we have to line up chord tones on the beat. Of course that's not what Parker did - it's not even what Lester did, but it's what you have to be able to do to go to the next level after that, which is to play anticipations and so on. You need that basic, square framework to advance because otherwise you don't know what you are doing...

It's that relationship between rhythmic stress, harmony and non harmonic pitches that is a basic technique. That's the way to get out of mere Omnibook licks IMO.

[pcsanwald]

I think the article approaches from a positive angle something that I would put differently: I think bop is taught because it's easy to teach in a manner that lends itself to the classroom. It's the same reasons that in jazz piano classes, Bill Evans added note harmony is taught: it's relatively easy to convey as a set of rules, and sounds reasonably authentic relatively quickly.

Despite having not worked much as a teacher, I have a pretty good sense of how I'd approach teaching bebop based improvisation to a roomful of 18 year olds. I have no idea, however, how I'd approach Johnny Hodges, or Louis Armstrong, other than by rote, which is again hard to do with a roomful of students.

[Jazzstdnt]

In the end the blogger stated that bebop should be studied (along with post-bop since he included it too). OK, great.

But I think a more interesting question would be "should we study bebop, and if so how much of a jazz studies curriculum should be devoted to it"? And the question would mean what it says at face value - in other words bebop and NOT post-bop.

In other words:
Studying a little bebop scale vs. a lot.
Studying a few Parker heads and tunes, vs. a lot.
Studying a little bit of Monk vs. a lot

Or put another way, why not just focus heavily in the art post......... 1959 or so?

Incidentally I think this is what most schools do, including Berklee.

BTW - Berklee doesn't have an undergrad in Jazz, at least by name. It's a "contemporary music" school. Berklee's online guitar degree doesn't require a single Jazz course, although one can take them as electives.

[Jonah]

I still cannot get rid of a strange feeling that the music that was invented by amateurs by playing in brothels and bars is being taught in bieing taught and scrutinized in academic way....

I use it too of course..
but still I feel that sometimes... those guys were on the edge... this music was revolutionary.. you had to take risks both in music and in everyday life...

and we sit now sit in nice classrooms with notebooks.. good for history research maybe .. but good for music to be born?

PS
Again I am the one in a classroom too I believe.. so no personal criticism.. rather self-criticism)

[princeplanet]

Simple European folk music, too, eventually evolved to become Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky etc. So....

[Jonah]

Simple European folk music, too, eventually evolved to become Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky etc. So....

No, simple European folk music stayed simple European folk music (Even now it is still that same folk music)
And European professional compositional school developed separately - first of all as music for church with further secularization (though interacting of course with folk musics).

I respect your opinion and ready to discuss this in private or dedicated thread if you are intereeted, but not here... because I can easily dorwn the thread in off-top if we go this direction))).

By the way - I do not consider jazz - a folk style, one of the feartures of jazz is that it was professional music (which I cannpot say about blues for example)...

[christianm77]

Despite having not worked much as a teacher, I have a pretty good sense of how I'd approach teaching bebop based improvisation to a roomful of 18 year olds. I have no idea, however, how I'd approach Johnny Hodges, or Louis Armstrong, other than by rote, which is again hard to do with a roomful of students.

By rote is pretty much exactly how Barry Harris teaches improvisation (bop lines.)

Recently did this with Barry in a large class. It was difficult to hear sometimes.

[christianm77]

In the end the blogger stated that bebop should be studied (along with post-bop since he included it too). OK, great.

But I think a more interesting question would be "should we study bebop, and if so how much of a jazz studies curriculum should be devoted to it"? And the question would mean what it says at face value - in other words bebop and NOT post-bop.

In other words:
Studying a little bebop scale vs. a lot.
Studying a few Parker heads and tunes, vs. a lot.
Studying a little bit of Monk vs. a lot

Or put another way, why not just focus heavily in the art post......... 1959 or so?

Incidentally I think this is what most schools do, including Berklee.

BTW - Berklee doesn't have an undergrad in Jazz, at least by name. It's a "contemporary music" school. Berklee's online guitar degree doesn't require a single Jazz course, although one can take them as electives.

Hmmm... I don't have any first hand experience of music college so all of my study has been elective. If I didn't want to bother with bop I wouldn't have bothered.

I talk to people who did go to jazz school and when they say 'oh always found bop very academic and I didn't want to play it but they made us study it' - well that seems diametrically opposed to the original spirit of the music.

But I've always had a problem with authority and being made to do something. That's one of the reasons why I gravitated towards improvised music to start with. My interest in the tradition and history has come from me, not someone telling me I should do it.

Any way, I don't think there's any way you can learn bop in 3 or 4 years (more like 7-10 years of focussed work). The school system cannot teach someone to play jazz, although a well organised program such as Berklee's can certainly advance the student.

I have some sympathy with the idea that we should only teach what is current. I think the fetishisation of the past is a mistake. But it's more complex that that. Bebop is somewhat like counterpoint in that it is a good discipline for many things - changes playing, line construction.

But I feel academic bebop (ii-V-I licks etc) is really missing the point of the music. Which is rhythm and just as relevant to music as it was in 1948.