How Louis Armstrong can help you simplify bebop (video)

[brent.h]

..

[PMB]

Who is Benny G? I came across his videos a few years ago and was immediately impressed. The guy's an excellent player and there's a lot of good advice in his clips.

[grahambop]

His website (from a link under the youtube video) only says this:

[GuyBoden]

Thanks for posting, the video he posted about "Acamdemic Bebop" is very good too.

Played on Youtube link only.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnnJcWl8hHM"

[PMB]

In one of his videos he says he studied with Steve Masakowski. I googled Steve. Seems to be a teacher/player based in New Orleans.

That figures. Steve's one of the best jazz guitarists and teachers out there, a superb player and fine composer. His humble nature obviously rubbed off on Benny G...

[PMB]

His website (from a link under the youtube video) only says this:

So refreshing to read that statement.

[CliffR]

Yep, I've really enjoyed his videos.

[Christian Miller]

Thanks for posting, the video he posted about "Acamdemic Bebop" is very good too.

Played on Youtube link only.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnnJcWl8hHM"

I remember seeing this video a year or two ago and thinking it was one of the best I’d seen on YouTube. But I couldn’t remember who it was….


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[Tal_175]

Thanks for posting, the video he posted about "Acamdemic Bebop" is very good too.

Played on Youtube link only.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnnJcWl8hHM"

I think his demonstration of what he is talking about is very good. I am not sure if I agree with his over-arching description. Displacement, groups of 3 and ending phrases on the up beats are also part of the "academic" teaching of bebop. I am not sure why he includes things like 7-3 voice leading, enclosures as part of "academic bebop" but considers displacement and ending phrases on the up beat outside of it. It seems arbitrary to me. Maybe these were things that were overlooked in the school he studied it. But these are certainly described in academic texts.

The final item he lists is language. But aren't all these other items part of the bebop language? I am not sure why he puts it as the 4th category as if it is a different thing than the first three.

Nevertheless, I think his demonstration of these elements is excellent.

[Christian Miller]

The issue is in order to teach Bebop - a music that thwarts metrical expectation almost to a fault - you need to start by showing people how to play the metrical expectation. So you start off by learning anti-bebop. Cornball stuff haha.

So called 'bebop scales' and so on of course have a history that predates bebop, and jazz for that matter - especially if you remember that these scales do not all involve chromaticism. The fundamental problem these procedures are designed to solve a problem that is actually even more fundamental to European music than jazz - the fact that there are in general an even number of 8th notes per bar, and seven notes in a diatonic scale.

So you have to teach that European 4/4 paradigm, and then introduce the funk once that is mastered - because of course most players start off not being able to improvise on changes at all.

I kind of came across this in my own playing where I found after a couple of years of plugging and playing the Barry stuff my playing actually sounded rather square and regular. I wanted to add more upbeats in my playing, and that took me away from things like added note scales for a while. Added note/bebop scales are ALL OVER jazz - don't get me wrong. But they are inherently regular. That's one way you can recognise them.

I think that square stage may have been necessary for further development.

Anyway, he covers all those points in the video, and probs better.

[Christian Miller]

Also he makes the point in the video that most players are not as rhythmically advanced as Bird.

That includes most of the greats BTW. There's not many, it's a very high bar.

He identifies Barry and Sonny as those who had a comparable level of rhythmic creativity which seems right. Barry Harris himself said Jimmy Raney was one of the few BTW. Barry OTOH was very critical of Sonny Stitt's playing, so that's high praise...

[pcjazz]

Barry OTOH was very critical of Sonny Stitt's playing ...

Can you be a bit more specific about this? Of course Barry worked with Stitt quite a lot and while I heard him criticize Stitt’s personality all I remember him saying about Stitt’s playing was that he liked the rhythm of his 8th note lines.

[Christian Miller]

Can you be a bit more specific about this? Of course Barry worked with Stitt quite a lot and while I heard him criticize Stitt’s personality all I remember him saying about Stitt’s playing was that he liked the rhythm of his 8th note lines.

He said he didn’t have the triplet in his playing and that it wasn’t an issue at fast tempos ‘he could fool you’ but implied that when he was playing slower it was an issue. Which actually is completely consistent with what you said

Maybe ‘very’ is putting it too strong. But I was quite taken aback at the time.

I love the records he did with Stitt.


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[pcjazz]

He said he didn’t have the triplet in his playing and that it wasn’t an issue at fast tempos ‘he could fool you’ but implied that when he was playing slower it was an issue. Which actually is completely consistent with what you said

Thanks, I agree with you (and with Barry).

[PMB]

I think his demonstration of what he is talking about is very good. I am not sure if I agree with his over-arching description. Displacement, groups of 3 and ending phrases on the up beats are also part of the "academic" teaching of bebop. I am not sure why he includes things like 7-3 voice leading, enclosures as part of "academic bebop" but considers displacement and ending phrases on the up beat outside of it. It seems arbitrary to me. Maybe these were things that were overlooked in the school he studied it. But these are certainly described in academic texts.

The final item he lists is language. But aren't all these other items part of the bebop language? I am not sure why he puts it as the 4th category as if it is a different thing than the first three.

Nevertheless, I think his demonstration of these elements is excellent.

Perhaps he's referring to information hierarchy rather than the content itself? Displacement and ending on upbeats are primarily rhythmic concepts and they still constitute a tiny part of most curriculums. The same could be said for many of the instructional books on the market, even those by well respected authors such as Bert Ligon and Mark Levine. This forum only added a separate rhythm topic quite recently...

[Christian Miller]

Perhaps he's referring to information hierarchy rather than the content itself? Displacement and ending on upbeats are primarily rhythmic concepts and they still constitute a tiny part of most curriculums. The same could be said for many of the instructional books on the market, even those by well respected authors such Bert Ligon and Mark Levine. This forum only added a separate rhythm topic quite recently...

And people get a bit weird about it when you start talking about it any depth… like drummers never do that lol


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[Tal_175]

Perhaps he's referring to information hierarchy rather than the content itself? Displacement and ending on upbeats are primarily rhythmic concepts and they still constitute a tiny part of most curriculums. The same could be said for many of the instructional books on the market, even those by well respected authors such Bert Ligon and Mark Levine. This forum only added a separate rhythm topic quite recently...

It would be unfair to Bert Ligon at this point not to mention that his Jazz Theory Resources book has a quite an extensive chapter on Rhythm in Jazz Performance. He basically starts his two book theory series with rhythm. He covers syncopated, superimposed polyrhythms in jazz as well as many other topics in detail. In fact, there is a section where he discusses Parker's displacements and dotted quarter accents. Various rhythmic notions also inevitably come up in chapters dedicated to other topics. One may say that having only one chapter being entirely dedicated to rhythm among many chapters shows some sort of bias towards other areas of jazz, like harmony. I am not sure if that's why the creator of the video considers these rhythmic aspects to be outside of academic teaching or he has a higher percentage of content strictly dedicated to rhythm.

Sometimes people call the tangible and codified aspects of music academic, and the intangible and viscerally learned aspects non-academic. Though I think ending lines on the up beat or having accent groups of three etc. are also encodings and I think they are useful.

Of course there are visceral things about the feel of the rhythm that can't be encoded. But I think that's also true for the harmonic content of improvised lines. Encoding things is just to put the students in the right general direction and it provides some structure in how to hear the music.

[Christian Miller]

I think the ‘academic’ label works. It’s simplified model of real music that helps you study how to do music better.

It’s like strict counterpoint. Good thing to study, not quite actual music yet.

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