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11-21-2010 06:37 AM
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I think the main problem musicians have a difficult time with bop is... they don't have the musicianship, even Randall's post of a young Vic really didn't have the feel. But it appears to be from his right hand/arm technique... he was playing almost a rock guitar as far as action and still couldn't get the notes out with out extreme effort...He was playing from arm...Check out his playing now, he plays from the wrist...and it really shows, or should I say, it sounds, check out all the players with effortless chops, they play from the wrist...
Before the Bop suspects created Bop... they were playing eight hour Dance gigs... I wonder why they got bored.
Markf... I know and play with lots of musicians who have that feel, all colors, all backgrounds. They may not be Dizzy etc... but they have the heart, the feel, the motivation and we actually play music. Were not missing the point... part of being a musician is being aware of the history, and part of being aware of that history is discussion of that history. I don't believe bop would happened without the awareness of swing and blues...
Is anyone really trying to say stay away from theory, written music, sight reading, understanding what your playing or hearing... I'm in amazement sometimes... best Reg
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I read that Wikipedia entry on bebop a few weeks ago on my own. There was one aspect of bebop I was surprised I'd totally missed in years of listening- the changed role of the drums.
In swing, the drums provided the rhythmic bottom for the group. One could always find that 4/4 beat with them. In bebop the drums gained some freedom and the rhythmic bottom was assumed by the string bass. I'd guess this came about due to the fact that bop went beyond the 4/4 time signature and the bottom devolved to the bass. The drummer was freed up to get involved in the call-and-response patterns during sessions, previously the province of the wind instruments and piano. As a result the drums got more melodic, greatly expanding on what, say Krupa did with BG.
I did a sort of test when I read that. I listened to some early Hamp small group stuff and some Second Testament Basie, versus some Wardell Gray, Diz, and Dexter Gordon. Sure enough the difference in the role of the drums was obvious- and the bass was in charge of keeping the beat in the bop tunes.
So now it is a little more solid to me how Charlie Christian got be known as a forefather of bop. The swing band guitarists, Fred Guy, Freddie Green, Allen Reuss were still very much in the percussive mode of tenor banjoists of dixieland days (indeed Guy switched from banjo to guitar for Ellington in the very early '30's). Lack of amplification forced them to the role of keepers of the beat with the drummer, although they could do some lead-ins and had the benefit of melody and chording. Christian, introducing amplification, obviously allowed the guitar to break free from the rigid percussive mode in an ensemble- and with bop the drums would follow in a few years.
So with all that changed in bop, change of roles was as vital as anything else.
Cab Calloway got on Dizzy for "playing his Chinese music". Diz rewarded him with spitballs. So Cab fired him, and Diz went to Earl Hines' recently reformed outfit- where he ran into Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker, Gene Ammons....
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You have the "Charlie Parker Omnibook" with sixty soli.
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I understand i had the same problems. There is a book called the Charlie Parker Omni-book it is written for all instruments. I really got a good understanding of how to play bebop when i took the time to sit and analyze the melodies compared with the chords. THe great part about the book is it also had the solos transcribed so that you can see how charlie parker approached improv. I know that Charlie parker is certainly not the only bebop player out there but if you take that method and apply it to other players i think you will find you get favorable results. Good Luck.
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I could be wrong, but I'd guess that when a player decided he wants to get some "bop chops", he probably doesn't mean '42 to '50 bop, but more like post '55 Hard Bop. If this is true then the attributes of true Bebop such as asymmetric rhythm and the older cliches aren't as important to him.
Also RC based tunes probably aren't as important for the hard bopper either. I'm surmising here so tell me if I'm wrong, but someone like Wes did very few RC type tunes....
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Yeah, I think people get confused about what "bebop" refers to. Too bad - even if you don't want to end up playing it, it's such a great learning tool.
As to the Omnibook, I did my analysis of the Confirmation, and I'm thinking of including it in a book pitch I'm doing, so I decided to retranscribe it. So far, I've found some rather glaring mistakes. Granted, he tended to slur his notes a lot and the original didn't have the advantages of good software, but still ...
Peace,
Kevin
PS RC?
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RC = Rhythm changes...
Originally Posted by ksjazzguitar
As for transcribing Parker, the faster solos are tricky because he seems to get ahead of the beat sometimes so you don't know whether he "meant" to be a half beat in front or not. I just move phrases to where I feel they should start, (ie, lining up chord tones on down beats) even though I accept that he was probably dislocating phrases intentionally, they feel better for me if played in the pocket first, then choose to rush or lag once the phrase is stuck in my head.Last edited by princeplanet; 11-22-2010 at 11:51 AM.
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Yeah, I know the beat gets shifted around. We can usually make a good guess about what he meant by the resolutions and the accenting, and the "swing." No, I mean, the Omnibook is getting some of the notes wrong. Originally Posted by princeplanet
Right, I'm just pointing out that that's "dangerous" logic. Originally Posted by markf
I hope your wrong. Otherwise none of us can hope to perform anything authentically unless it originated within 100 miles of where we live within the last 10 years. That's too bad - I play jazz and classical, neither of which come even close to that. Originally Posted by markf
I think that there is some idea that this music is trapped in time and space. I think if Charlie Parker were alive today he would be disgusted if people were playing his music exactly as he did, like some Elvis impersonator or a Beatles tribute band (not that anyone's advocating that extreme.) We're not supposed to play jazz as if we're Bird, or Miles, or Trane, or Sco, or whoever - we need to play it as us. Jazz is a reaction to the here and now, not the there and then. Bird gave us a method of how to react musically, an idiom, a dialect of the jazz language. But he wanted us to use to express ourselves, not to express him. If we are trying to guess how Bird's life felt and react to that, then I think we are missing the point.
Yes, but that feeling is captured on tape. Unlike the music of Bach (where I have to guess about the "expression" in playing) with the history of jazz, I can actually listen to the guys play. With respect to the limits of recording technology, I don't think that there is anything beyond what is captured on tape. I don't think that there are any psychic "culture waves" emanating from his horn - it's all acoustic waves that are captured on tape. Originally Posted by markf
That's just how I see it. Unless someone can tell me what is not being captured on tape, I'll continue. I don't really care that his "feelings" are not captured directly (except as expressed through his horn) - even if he were alive today, I wouldn't know. We can never truly know what another is feeling, so that seems a red herring to me.
Peace,
KevinLast edited by ksjazzguitar; 11-22-2010 at 12:11 PM. Reason: slight addition
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Has academia overcomplicated learning bebop to the point that it can't really be explained in a nutshell? Too many experts, too much confusion.
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You are assuming that it can be explained in a nutshell. It took years and the work of many people to develop, why should we expect to be able to explain it in a few pages of trite posts? If that is what you think bebop is, then I suspect that your understanding is superficial (with all due respect.) It is a complicated and sophisticated system of improvisation that cannot be truly and deeply understood without years of study and practice. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. Unfortunately, most of the people who do think their doing it aren't even coming close. I don't see how anyone would expect it to explain it in a few forum posts. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
It wasn't "uncomplicated" for Bird (et al.) to learn so it's not going to be easy for us to analyze. While I have no desire to "overcomplicate" anything, I would rather do that than "undercomplicate" it and think that I understood it better than I did.
What is that old engineering expression - "For every complicated problem, there is a simple, elegant solution - that is wrong." Some things do have simple solutions, but we shouldn't try to shoehorn a complicated and sophisticated system into a simple explanation - that demeans the art.
Peace,
Kevin
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Joining in late to the party here.
I've understood the "popularization" of Be-Bop to have grown out of some experimentation (that met with a lot of resistance initially) Dizzy and Charlie Parker were sort of applying hammer and tongs to while they played in swing bands with leaders who were playing commercial music.
Dizzy was good at teaching other musicians who were interested what they were doing in terms of playing on the upper extensions of chords etc.
Meanwhile (perhaps now apart from Dizzy) Parker discovered he could resolve any note he started with in a phrase within the chord tones, which was a shift from playing lyrically and just enhancing melodies. So it sounded more angular (which Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong decried as Chinese Music). But it grew grassroots among younger players who recognized the potential for greaterv expressive liberties than just mirroring the basic melodies of stock swing tunes.
There was also a move to play in a style "old white cats" couldn't handle. I'm not sure how Stan Levy felt about that!
So to me "Be-Bop" denotes the "new" way of playing jazz that took hold in the '40's and found favor in the '50's in NYC, where it established itself as where jazz was going.
Not sure I've added anything to the conversation but I find just trying to workout "Be-Bop" heads like Ornithology, Joy Spring, etc to be pretty uphill stuff. But I enjoy it.
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I think there might be a few basic concepts that tie everything together, but they unlock such complex potential that it confuses people. Don't a lot of you feel there's a basic missing piece to the puzzle that would help you to relate better to what really needs to be understood to play actual bebop?
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I agree most people probably refer to post bop but learning the parker, gillespie, monk, etc. tunes are great for learning about working inside as well as outside of the changes.
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Well the accents that Charlie Parker used with his phrasing really make it for me. I can't seem to get a system on that. I understand scale over chord improv theory somewhat, but the phrasing comes much slower to me and the accents mystify me. They sound great when Parker does them. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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Take any vocal standard up tempo and just work on some phrasing. Normally it is easier to work with the vocal standards cause they dont have as complex chord progressions and a lot of time they have lots of space.
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I'm not saying people need to sit down and be resolving guide tones, dissonances, and chromatics all after 5 minutes of practice. But those are all germane aspects of the style along with others. I think that the problem is that bop is usually oversimplified - "Hey man, just play scales and throw in chromatic notes" or "Use the bebop scale." Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
But the fact that is complex and requires a deeper understanding is what makes it worth learning. You can do it with analysis. You can do it with educated listening. You can do it with lots of practice. Preferably you do it with all three.
But no, I don't think that it can be reduced to some trite little explanation that could fit in a fortune-cookie. If we could do that, it wouldn't be worth learning.
The "basic missing piece" IMHO is to stop looking for short cuts and do the work. (I'm not aiming that at cosmic gumbo, but at our society in general.) Nobody wants to take the time to do anything anymore; they just want everything to happen now. But music is an old fashioned discipline and it requires old fashioned learning. It took Bird years and years to master bop, and he had more talent in his toenail clippings than I could ever hope to muster. Wouldn't it be arrogant for me to assume that I could find some short-cut and figure it all out in a few weeks? If you want to learn bop, do it the way the masters did. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
We know what needs to be done, but we don't do it. I hear guys complain all the time: Why can't I play like those guys? Because those guys did the work we are trying to find a shortcut around. We keep trying to jump the the end, but it is the journey where the learning lies. Most of the time we know the answer but choose to ignore it.
There's an old joke. Two construction workers take their lunch break together every day. Every day, the first guy opens up this lunch box and says, "Ah, man! Tuna fish again. I'm so sick of tuna fish" Every day, it's the same thing. Finally, the second guy gets fed up, "Hey, if you hate tuna fish so much, ask your wife to make you something else." The first guy looks confused, "What do you mean? I make my own lunches."
We usually know the answer. We just choose not to act. But most guys don't even bother finding out what bop really is, let alone do the work. (OK, jazz education is part of the problem there.) Why would they? They're having too much fun racing around their scales. They think they've got it all figured out, so why learn something like bebop - it's hard!
Well, enough ranting for now.
Good point - that is an important piece of the puzzle. I would learn some Bird solos, and play them along with the recording (you can start out half-speed if you need to), trying to match his phrasing exactly. I think that rhythm and time feel is something that must be absorbed by osmosis. We don't even really have a system that can accurately notate or explain phrasing and timing on that level. I always tell my students, "The melody engages your heart, the harmony your brain, but the rhythm? That gets you in the gut." There is just something more primal about rhythm, and after some basic analysis of its surface elements, I just think that you gotta feel it. Originally Posted by backliner
Peace,
KevinLast edited by ksjazzguitar; 11-23-2010 at 02:05 AM. Reason: addition
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Of course not. Let me put it another way: we all know that you don't get swing just by playing dotted triplets and accenting 2 and 4. The vocabulary of the blues is pretty similar to the vocabulary of country, but we hear the difference immeditately. The vocabulary of bebop, all the highly illuminating things that have been said in this thread about arpeggios and chord tones and voice leading by people who know a lot more about it than I do, is not enough in itself to make it jazz: Bach or John Cage have arpeggios and chord tones and voice leading. It's not just the notes you play but how you feel them that makes the difference. Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
(I hadn't heard of Hounddog Taylor, I'll look him out.)
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Maybe for a bebop beginner such as I, concentrating on the 'feel' is as important as anything. I think I will try to work on short phrases, say 2 to 4 bars and just 'feel' knowing there is all this bebop theory out there to pull from as needed. I think if I try to bite off too much right off, I will get discouraged. Originally Posted by JohnRoss
Thanks for all the help people.
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That's a fine method. Do you think Dizzie and Monk and Bird and Charlie Christian were thinking of theory when they were doing this stuff? Not likely. I think on a certain level, they knew what they were doing, but in the moment they were playing what sounded right to them. Originally Posted by gguge
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Well, I think there is a large degree of math involved in bebop, and our modern jazz vocab is still very dependent on bebop. The technicalities of music are math based- rhythm, harmony, scales, intervals, etc. I think that there is some basic stuff that is not being stressed enough, and I'm determined to find out what it is. I'm sure there is more order to the process than all the confusion being thrown about around here. Sometimes it seems like the ones that claim to have all the answers are dealing with way more information than is actually needed. I am not looking for a quick and easy solution, just the correct one with all the extra bullshit removed. Loads of misinformation is being passed along by misinformed folks, many of them are so-called instructors, and that's a fact.
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I admire your enthusiasm, I have to quibble with this point. And it is pertinent to the OP's original question. (What was that again?) Originally Posted by backliner
The "scale over chord" approach is not bebop. Bebop is about outlining harmony. The only purpose of a scale is to connect chord tones. The "play this scale over these chords approach came after bebop. What Aebersold teachers is not bebop. In many ways what Aebersold teaches is the polar opposite of bebop. (That's not to say that it's not jazz, it's just not bebop.) Again, if you got a time machine, went back to 1950 and tried to explain the Aebersold "play this scale over these chords" approach to a bunch of jazz musicians, they would fall of their chairs laughing. Simply transcribe and analyze some classic bebop solos, you can see it plainly for yourself. (Again, if anyone wants, send me your email and I can send you my analysis.) Don't take my word for it, look for yourself.
Again, I'm not saying the "play this scale over these chords" approach is not jazz - if that's what sounds good to you, go for it. But it ain't bebop. I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding about exactly "what" bebop is - and a lot of the blame lies with how jazz is taught.
Peace,
Kevin
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I totally agree with CG. There seem so be a misguided attempt to cast bebop as some mystical code or musical rocket science. Bebop may sound complex, but complexity is often an illusion, usually the result of several simple concepts that are layered onto each other. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
IMO the key is to look for the simple bebop concepts, try to internalize them and integrate them into your playing regardless of the approach. The more you experiment, the more your ears will open up to the sounds. Ultimately, a good vocabulary (however it is acquired) will trump complex theoretical approaches that paralyse the brain.
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Kevin, I don't understand something, for you, if I understand you correctly, bebop is play chord tones and embellish then using chromatic and enclosing scale tones, but that's also your definition of how to improvise any genre of jazz play the chord tones target the guide tones use chromatic target tones etc. so this raises the following conclusion bebop=jazz and jazz=bebop i agree with the first but not with the second.
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OK, let me clarify. I am saying that that (refer to my earlier attempt at a definition) is the definition of "bebop" - anyone who says any differently doesn't know what they are talking about - that is the only way to play bebop. They have been mistaught by jazz education and have failed to look for themselves in the music itself - the best eveidence. Originally Posted by jayx123
I also am saying that this bebop language is a fundamental part of the jazz language and should be understood by any serious jazz musician. I would say that any jazz musician who does not understand the vocabulary of bebop has a serious hole in their language. It would be like a professor of English Literature who had never actually bothered to read Shakespeare.
As to my own personal playing, I prefer to rely heavily on this language (50%?), but not exclusively. I'm not saying everyone should be playing jazz like Charlie Parker. That is a matter of personal preference. But I am suspicious of any jazz that seems ignorant of these ideas.
No, jazz does not equal bebop or vice versa. But bebop is a foundationally important piece of jazz. In the same way English Literature is not Shakespeare, or vice versa - but I would argue that you can't really be informed about English Literature unless you know Shakespeare - you many not chose to specialize in it, but you must know it.
So I am saying you must know this, but how much you chose to incorporate it into your playing is up to you. But I think that you'll find that it will change the way you hear the relationships of chords and scales and so you will find yourself using some of the ideas you've learned, even if just a little.
Peace,
Kevin
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