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Howdy - you addressed Kevin but I thought I'd step in with an answer according to my understanding (which may require enlargement!). Check out Bill Evans essay here: kind of blue
Originally Posted by jayx123
Someone somewhere pointed out to me that Evans claim about the tracks being centered around scales (in this case modal) was an entirely new approach to improv. Previously, as KS mentioned, it was about the chords. Bu the whole shift out of bop, or at least a key component, happened when folks started playing scales over stuff as opposed to, e.g., chord embellishments and upper extensions with chromatic passing tones (i.e., boppish playing - which itself differed from the older style of embellishing the melody of the tune).
Fast forward past modal jazz and suddenly everyone is wondering how to relate these scales back to chord changes, and presto chango, you get the Aebersold idea that chord changes can be approached modally. E.g., play Mixolydian over the 5, Dorian over the 2, etc.
But while the older bop musicians knew their scales, that wasn't the mental scheme with which they approached improvising. Imo, it's also why it's so difficult for young jazzers to make the changes in a tune when they start with the chord/scale approach. Then again, if you're playing more "modern" jazz (Shaw, even Golson?), it's not about "making the changes" in the traditional sense (although, you're still in trouble if you can't sit in the harmonic structure of the tune!).
In fact, in a funny historical reversal, there are even "new methods" out now that encourage players to just work on melodic embellishment. I can still play plectrum banjo, so I'm ready for the next big thing: fusion Dixieland.
[Edit] Bah, Kevin replied while I was typing...
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11-24-2010 03:16 PM
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This is a beautiful, thorough response, and it highlights a lot of points that many new jazz players don't understand. Chord-scales were implemented AFTER bebop and post-bop styles were around, and since their introduction they have been taught as "the" way to play traditional jazz. Musicians playing traditional jazz today are expected to combine chord-scales, melodic embellishment and chord-tones+extensions approaches in their playing. Originally Posted by jbraun002
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Thanks jazzaluk, that was close to what I was trying, in my clumsy fashion, to say. Originally Posted by Jazzaluk
Whilst I agree with your definition of bebop, I'm not sure how authoritive your views on jazz and its creation and development are if, by your own admittance you don't know much about one of the most important originators of the music. I find your attitude re. this great originator fascinating — "cute and trite" eh? Your academic studies appear to have instilled a certain arrogance when it comes to a major artist of the idiom. The whole point of jazz at the time was that the young hawks in each new generation wanted to break new ground. It's what artists do, the sheep just follow. I speak as a successful (not in financial terms, but artistically) artist, (I'm a sculptor) not a regurgitator. Of course, the old farts still playing music as if were the 30s/40s/50s today are happy and make others happy but they are only only playing what has been played before. Similar to most classical players, they are interpreters not creators. Big difference. Originally Posted by ksjazzguitar
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Bebop had become a dead end of faster tempos and more changes. Miles and others wanted to take the new language and be bluesier and more musical with it. !959 gave us Kind of Blue, Mingus Ah Um, Giant Steps, Time Out, and The Shape of Jazz to Come. It was new, but totally informed by bebop. I'd say they made the right decision, as this stuff is just as influential to today's jazz as bebop is. But those guys were able to do it because of their bebop chops.
Last edited by cosmic gumbo; 11-26-2010 at 01:03 AM.
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Bebop is what killed jazz as a money making music genre.
Thanks, Dizzy and Charlie.
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It's not that simple. Jazz as a money making venture died alongside the decline of the swing bands in the late 30s and early 40s. WWII and the recording ban didn't help any - and with the advent of radio and TV, now broadcasting live shows that you could listen to out of the comfort and convenience of your own home, why would you spend the money to go downtown from your comfy new suburban white-picket-fence existence? Plus, people's tastes just changed. Originally Posted by Drumbler
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True. As Jeff said, bebop didn't really replace swing, but they coexisted for a while and as swing died out, bebop tried to fill the vacuum. And bebop was somewhat marketable for a while. If the problem was just that people didn't want to listen to bebop, there were still plenty of swing musicians around. There are always plenty of musicians out there trying to play what people want to hear. Originally Posted by FatJeff
We tend to want to reduce history down to these simple, "X caused Y" equations, but usually things are much, much more complicated than that. There were major social and economic changes going on in this country in the 50s and 60s. I think that the decline of music education in schools played a large factor. The American self-image of the Eisenhower 50s didn't lend itself to the idea of going to seedy jazz clubs. (It was a very different zeitgeist than the 20s and 30s, and even the early 40s.) And the rise of TV led to a culture whose entertainment was more family oriented and tended to be at home. I'm sure if I were smarter I could come up with some more factors.
Peace,
Kevin
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If bebop had a simple explanation, we wouldn't still be arguing about the definition 60 years later. Swing was jazz, but it was the dance and pop music of it's era. That got replaced by doo-wop, r&b, and r&r, as a new postwar youth culture emerged.
The lesser demand, logistics and economics of touring with a big band became unfeasable, and jazz musicians were forced to come up with something new to play with smaller groups if they wanted to keep playing jazz.
Even though swing was incredibly popular, and in great demand, nobody ever made much money, because the groups were so large, individual pay was low. Bebop seemed to develop somewhat with the mentality of, "if we can't make money, let's at least play music that challenges and satisfies our jazz needs, without a group that needs 16 members. What can we do with only 5 or 6 musicians?"
It became more of a music to satisfy the musicians, than an audience.
If Bird was the king of bebop, just remember, whenever he left NYC to tour, he couldn't afford to take a band with him, and relied on union musicians from wherever he was traveling to. This is also why standards became so important to bebop. You had to be able to have a repertoire that everyone knew, whether they had played together before or not.
This is still only a small look at the history of the origins of bebop. So many complex factors all thrown together. Does this explain WHAT bebop is? No.Last edited by cosmic gumbo; 01-04-2011 at 08:25 PM.
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All great points. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
LOL, I think the real reason Bird never toured with a dedicated group - at least from about 1946 on (after his stay at Camarillo) - was because he was such a junkie, and totally unreliable. Nobody ever knew if he was going to show up for a set or not. And he could never afford to pay his own band-mates because he was always into the pusher for hundreds of dollars. Hell, his horn was in hock half the time and he often didn't pay his band-mates - nobody in their right mind would go on the road with him. Promoters just booked him into a venue and hired local guns for the few nights he would be in town.
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Read dizzy's biography.
People still wanted to dance but they couldn't dance to bebop.
No dancing, no money. The end.
As far as making money, those swing/dance bands were making plenty in the 20s, 30's & 40's.
Of course there were other contributing factors, WW2, end of prohibition, etc.
But once the musicians started playing bebop for their own satisfaction instead of the audience (who wanted a steady beat to dance to) it was over. It describes in Dizzy's book how upset the audiences would get when they couldn't dance. They did not/could not understand bebop. They were not musically literate. Dizzy did not care. He was not interested in what the public wanted.
An interesting read with much info about how bebop arrived.
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Wow. What a great thread!! Very well said, all. The first 20 pages of Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony really are great on the basic outline devices. The 180+ examples are excellent too. The Bop section in 101 Jazz Licks is fun too. Good reads.
I really dig bop outlines and theory. My problem with fusion and some modern jazz is that it has moved away from the bob vocabulary. It's gotta have those elements for me to really feel it and enjoy the experience.
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Thomas Owens wrote a good book on bebop. It's a scholarly study that breaks down a lot of Charlie Parker's most common phrases and then looks at the different instruments / players used on bebop records. The section on guitarists is short, which is fair as the guitar wasn't a dominant instrument in bop's early days, but worth checking out. It's 'musicology' more than a how-to, but the author has a good handle on the subject.
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Bebop was the punk rock of the 40's. It was an anti commercial rebellion by musicians confined to playing "parts" in swing bands for people to dance to. It was created BY musicians,very much FOR musicians. Unpredictable rhythms, phrasings, dissonant (for the time) harmonies. It was intended really only to appeal to an audience that played instruments and appreciated its difficulties. That's why you never catch your mother listening to you Charlie Parker records. Thats why you rarely catch anyone who doesn't play listening to bebop. Casual listeners were excluded at the inception of the genre.
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The big bands were so full of good soloists, that a guy might only get one or maybe two solos a night. Prior to swing, you had smaller groups in the Armstrong tradition that did a lot more improvising, and I think a lot of guys were looking for an outlet to get back to more improvising again. Hello bebop.
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1. bebop had more chord changes and key center changes. the common listener could not/can not get their brain wrapped around that (at least not without effort). effort is not what most people want to engage in when they are listening to music.
2. also, chromaticism was increased. melodies weren't as diatonic/sing-song like.
want to lose an audience? start with these.
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There is a really cool college textbook called Jazz Styles that explains the transition from swing to bop stylistically and commercially in one chapter. It also has great bios on the musical contributors that focus on how their approaches created important changes (not their life drama, drugs, etc). It is in it's 10th edition or so now, so you can buy an older copy for super chap on amazon. It now covers all jazz genres all they way to contemporary. It has a great list of CDs to hear the changes, if you choose look them up. It's a standby for me now.
I listen to bop and hard-bop 90% of the time. I collect old blue note, riverside, prestige, and other OJC albums. I have over 800+ CDs from the 50's and 60's jazz era. Most of them are not guitar based whatsoever. In fact, I have to admit that I don't listen to "jazz guitar" if I have a choice. I feel like the most important controbutions to bop, post-bop, cool jazz, free-bop, and funky jazz were primarily horn and piano men.
Funny enough, I was listing to The Complete Eric Dolphy on Prestige set the other day while driving with my girlfriend and I asked her if she knew what bebop was. Mind you, glam rock is her favorite music. Her reply was a little syncopated swung-eight note vocal skat that was dead-on bop. I said, you're right! You got it! She smiled and laughed, but it was true. It's a phrase, a feeling, a line of stylistic notes, a logic, and an art.
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Thanks again for all of the great posts. I really dug reading this thread. Kevin, write that book. I look forward to what you say every day, even when you pwn my ideas. lol.
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How would you define "Bebop" jazz music in musical definition terms and layman's terms? This music was introduced in the 40's that was very popular in that decade and still admired by many today.
I read Charlie Parker told a Downbeat interviewer: "I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing (bebop) I'd been hearing". I don't know if that really explains it other than there is a lot of key center changes.
Thanks
Last edited by cisco kid; 02-03-2011 at 04:49 PM.
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It's probably easier to list it's characteristics than to clearly define it.
- Generally fast tempos
- Emphasis on improvisation rather than complex arrangement of melody - as in the big swing bands which preceded it.
- chord progressions often, but not always taken from popular ballads - Ornithology = How High the Moon
- use of chromatic lines, moreso than swing era - Hot House
- music was aimed at small clubs where people listened, rather than danced. Again this is a contrast with the Swing Era, as is the size of the bands, although that is usually attributed to economics, not musical evolution.
I'm sure you will get other, more scholarly answers.
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Thanks for the replies. It can be a little diverse in the replies but understandable. I had a friend who felt bebop jazz as just playing the chromatic scale gone wild and another thinking it had to do with Gene Vincent's 1956 rock tune "Be-Bop-A-Lula".
But then in the 70s some jazz guitarists from the 40s, 50s and 60s thought Jazz Fusion was like mixing oil and water together ... it doesn't work for them. To each his own.Last edited by cisco kid; 02-03-2011 at 07:23 PM.
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