How Do Bebop Players Do It?

[Kman]

After seeing some recommendations on this forum I recently bought David Baker's bebop book vol 2. All of the example are in C. There are hundreds of examples in major and minor from actual recordings. If you memorized 1-2 of these lines per week you would become a monster on II-V's. I would be interested in hearing from someone who has spent some time with this book. It's has to be one of the best books out there.

[Alter]

For me the simplest way to view the fretboard is to divide it in five areas. A simplification of the CAGED system really. You find these areas by learning 3 tonic notes, (actually only two are enough, on the two bass strings of the guitar). As an example, on the key of G it would be:

1st position, above the G on the 3rd fret of the 6th string, so around frets 2-5.
2nd position, above the G on the 5th fret of the 4th string, so around frets 4-7. Can easily find that G it's always 2 frets up from the G on the sixth string.
3rd position, below the G on the 10th fret of the 5th string, so around frets 7-10.
4th position, above the G on the 10th fret of the 5th string, so around frets 9-12.
5th position, below the G on the 15th fret of the 6th string, so around frets 12-15. That's our initial 3rd fret G one octave higher.

Then you learn five shapes, same procedure for chords, scales and arpeggios. When you have them, start combining consecutive positions. No need really to memorize 12 or 15 shapes, you just learn 5 areas and move around them as you can. Always start with the chord shape, you want to learn your scales and arpeggios around that chord shape, so when you play tunes there's always going to be a chord shape wherever you are on the fretboard, and you play around that. Follow the chords on different areas of the fretboard, or stay in the same position if you wish, etc..

[Alter]

I wasn't even aware of the CAGED system until recently, but it always made sense to me to present things the simplest way possible, beginners or advanced players alike. One thing i really liked about the american education style.

[lawson-stone]

I just lightly finger notes I hope will fit and hum "beebop bee beebeebop" so that no one hears the mistakes.

Bonus: audience members say "Look, he's singing his lines while he plays!"

[SleepyheadRooster]

I don't know how much Wes Montgomery knew but when listening to him play and watching him on video, I can hear and see that he employed a relatively small number of chord voicings to great advantage. Similarly, he uses common fingering patterns as the springboard for his solos.

I think it's much better to take a few things, put them to work immediately playing tunes and add new things as needed rather than thinking that you have to learn a million things before you can start playing.

This is advice I can use. I’ve been playing guitar, singing, writing songs, and teaching a long time. And I give this sort of advice to my students all the time.

And then I forget to take this advice as I decide to add jazz guitar to my repertoire. Consider me reminded.

I’m taking a “learn tunes first” approach. I learned Take Five two nights ago. It took some real work to sort out the fingers, but what a kick (for me anyway) to play the head along with the recording and Paul Desmond. And I could see things in that melody that I’m still chewing on and hope to find ways to regurgitate.

I also invented a little game for learning the neck better. Take one octave anywhere in any position. Let’s say C on the 3rd string up the 8th fret first string. Then I’ll ask my son to pick a key at random. He might say E flat. So I just run through arpeggios in that key - with and without altered tones - in that key and in that one octave. I have to play a lot of inversions and circle back to lower notes to fit extensions into the octave, and it really works my brain because I need to know the fretboard better. But it is working. It think it will help me improvise. And it’s sort of fun.

Maybe try that. I have an idea now how I might apply it to tunes as well. Just staying in one octave and choosing notes deliberately as opposed to running big root position scale positions...

[Litterick]

CAGED is an ironically appropriate acronym.

I found a book in my local public library titled Mel Bay presents Essential Jazz Lines in the Style of Cannonball Adderley, by Corey Christiansen and Tamara Danielsson It is full of devices, phrases and lines used by Adderley and transposed for guitar (Mel Bay also publishes editions for other instruments). It is light on theory and simply gets you to learn by playing. It is a lot of fun.