The Bebop Line that Keeps on Giving

[pamosmusic]

Hi Guys,

Here's another short video based on an idea I had for taking lines and exercises apart and applying them in different ways.

I took a short melodic idea from a Charlie Parker tune called "Marmaduke" to use as an example. The first step is to break the idea down into it's parts. I've written that out here so you can see what I was working off of in the video:

start on an [A] go [up a second], [down a sixth], play an [ascending root position triad], then [down a second]

Any of those aspects in brackets can be changed and -- start on an A, go down a third, then down a fifth, then play the triad ... etc.

Part of the cool part about this is that it forces you to think about how you really interpret lines. Everyone interprets them differently so everyone is going to come up with different lines once they start breaking away from the original. For example ... A up to Bb and then that ascending D minor triad also happen to come together to make a melodic pattern played on a first inversion Bbmaj7 arpeggio. If someone chooses to describe it that way then they're going to get different lines, fewer lines, more lines, whatever.

Interested to hear what you all think.

[pamosmusic]

PS ... the bebop line that keeps on giving is ALL of them.

[yaclaus]

Love your ideas, very inspiring!

[edh]

Cool man. I to like your ideas.

[pamosmusic]

Nice --- thanks guys. Do you happen to have any ideas you think might work? Sections of tunes or transcriptions your working on? Anything like that?

[AlsoRan]

Nice --- thanks guys. Do you happen to have any ideas you think might work? Sections of tunes or transcriptions your working on? Anything like that?

This was a nice bit of "sage" knowledge that I have come across every now and then in my Jazz instructional books.

And the answer is "yes!" (at least for me).

I find that I have three or four ideas that I have been leaning on in my latest studies/playing (are they kind of the same thing ) and they somehow find their way into every trip through the leadsheet, albeit disguised or slightly modified, as you showed.

[srlank]

Okay. I definitely gave this a shot today. I used a line from Wes's 4 on 6. This is a transcription I have been working to get down, but now looking to milk more for ideas. So following the concept of keeping it simple, I took one lick with a chromatic slur and a slide. The slide moves horizontally into a lower position. This helped get in my ear the intervallic structure of the lick, but also helped visualize more in a horizontal manner. Focus was a lot above the 12th fret where I need the most work. Great thread. Thx.

Edit: Forgot to add the idea is taken up position-by-position to get the whole neck horizontally. Sheesh. It's difficult to communicate clearly sometimes in written form and without the aid of a guitar.

[pamosmusic]

This was a nice bit of "sage" knowledge that I have come across every now and then in my Jazz instructional books.

And the answer is "yes!" (at least for me).

I find that I have three or four ideas that I have been leaning on in my latest studies/playing (are they kind of the same thing ) and they somehow find their way into every trip through the leadsheet, albeit disguised or slightly modified, as you showed.

Would you like to share one of those three or four? I'm interested to see what everyone else is checking out!

[AlsoRan]

Would you like to share one of those three or four? I'm interested to see what everyone else is checking out!

Nothing earth-shaking, believe me.

1) First is a mixolydian shape-based line that goes 4-3-Root-b7

2) The next one, another mixolydian line has me slide into the 5th and hold for one beat, then play a triplet 1-3-5, and finally play the b7-R in eighth notes

I have to get to my guitar to describe the other two.

Like I said, nothing earth-shaking, but something that I can readily see, hear, hum, and play over the 1 Chord.

[pamosmusic]

Nothing earth-shaking, believe me.

1) First is a mixolydian shape-based line that goes 4-3-Root-b7

2) The next one, another mixolydian line has me slide into the 5th and hold for one beat, then play a triplet 1-3-5, and finally play the b7-R in eighth notes

I have to get to my guitar to describe the other two.

Like I said, nothing earth-shaking, but something that I can readily see, hear, hum, and play over the 1 Chord.

Very cool --- "earth-shaking" is over-rated. Can you think of an examples of how you were able to alter those lines to get more juice out of them? Put them over different chord types or transpose them diatonically or anything like that?

Maybe try the exercise above in some form?

[AlsoRan]

Very cool --- "earth-shaking" is over-rated. Can you think of an examples of how you were able to alter those lines to get more juice out of them? Put them over different chord types or transpose them diatonically or anything like that?

Maybe try the exercise above in some form?

I actually plan to record a Blues example using those and other lines in June while travelling and in a hotel. For now, I really don't have the time to fully engage on this topic, although I really love it.

At first, I resisted these pet lines, but as a guy who is just starting to get moving again on improvisation, I found them liberating and well, "safe."

I hope there are others here who can fill the void in my stead.

For now, here is an article from which I first got the idea of, for lack of a better word, "milking" a single musical idea. I hope it helps, panos . I can see where you are going and I like it.

[pamosmusic]

I actually plan to record a Blues example using those and other lines in June while travelling and in a hotel. For now, I really don't have the time to fully engage on this topic, although I really love it.

At first, I resisted these pet lines, but as a guy who is just starting to get moving again on improvisation, I found them liberating and well, "safe."

I hope there are others here who can fill the void in my stead.

For now, here is an article from which I first got the idea of, for lack of a better word, "milking" a single musical idea. I hope it helps panos .

Great stuff! (Though I'll admit that academic writing always makes my stomach turn a bit)

As a little exploration I think I'll practice things from this and make another video on Saturday about what I'm able to glean. Id love to see what others get from that article. I find this stuff fascinating and following that General process and using it to develop nutty practice ideas from narrow exercises or lines is a blast. It's checking out stuff like that and transcribed lines and technical studies and deciding what to practice, how to develop it and what to change, and what to pass on entirely that will eventually make me sound different than each of you and vice versa.

anyone want to check some of yhose ideas out and report back?

[PMB]

Nice one, Peter! I recently went through the same process for Anthropology. Here's a list of derived motifs:



Taking the first idea (the interval of a 4th) and keeping the general rhythmic profile, I came up with a simple little 'A' section line over RC changes:

[Groyniad]

very often its about appreciating how little you need to make something musical happen

ideology works really well i think

[pamosmusic]

very often its about appreciating how little you need to make something musical happen

Interesting how do you mean?

[pamosmusic]

Nice one, Peter! I recently went through the same process for Anthropology. Here's a list of derived motifs

Awesome! Have you found that Anthropology makes an effective springboard for other ideas? Have you tried working with any of the other motifs you listed? What do you like/not like? Can you go into any detail about how you manipulated them (for example in the melody you wrote)?

[AlsoRan]

What I like about this approach is that you are actually making music from music. It is a little more fun that doing it from arpeggios and scales, at least for me.

I am using both approaches.

[Groyniad]

pamosmusic:

well pbm's 'ideology' sounded fresh and interesting - and it was based on an upbeat and a single movement across a fourth

the modifications to the original idea you're working with are often very subtle - but they make a significant musical difference

the tiniest rhythmical change - starting a four note idea on 4 rather than 1 say - often gives you a brand new sound

the marmaduke idea you start with is a one note modification of one of the most famous phrases in jazz - fats wallah's honeysuckle rose - but it sounds brand new, and its a surprise to find that its so closely connected to the famous motif.

[PMB]

Awesome! Have you found that Anthropology makes an effective springboard for other ideas? Have you tried working with any of the other motifs you listed? What do you like/not like? Can you go into any detail about how you manipulated them (for example in the melody you wrote)?

Anthropology is a great source for ideas as the figures are all so distinctive and relatively compact. I was playing a whole bunch of rhythm changes tunes that day with a piano player and we were talking about how often RC solos have a generic quality that bears little relation to the melody. We broke down Anthropology into motifs and later that night, I wrote Ideology as an compositional etude.

I worked on some of the other motifs but was attracted to the challenge of restricting myself to the single interval of a rising 4th. As a result of that restriction, I tried to vary the implied tension against the basic harmonies and put the intervallic figure into a number of different rhythmic contexts. As for the melody, I unconsciously retained some of the same pitches as the original (the syncopated Bb in bar 4, the Gb to F movement in bar 6). More importantly, I attempted to echo some of the attack points and general shapes of phrases from Parker's tune and the melody simply arose from that process.

[pamosmusic]

What I like about this approach is that you are actually making music from music. It is a little more fun that doing it from arpeggios and scales, at least for me.

I am using both approaches.

I think it's odd how this is often referred to as being two approaches. Lines you transcribe use scales ... they use arpeggios. Take a line with a prominent arpeggio and adjust it so that it covers different inversions and chord types and *voila* it's arpeggio practice AND vocabulary. Take that same line through your scales diatonically and *voila* it's a scale practice AND vocabulary.

Separating the two is a little bit of an unusual thing when you think about it!

[yaclaus]

It's a weird thing realising melodies and music is made of scales and arpeggios. I guess it's because scales and arpeggios don't always sound like beautiful music but just like nuts and bolts. However they're a big part of what makes music music.

[AlsoRan]

I think it's odd how this is often referred to as being two approaches. Lines you transcribe use scales ... they use arpeggios. Take a line with a prominent arpeggio and adjust it so that it covers different inversions and chord types and *voila* it's arpeggio practice AND vocabulary. Take that same line through your scales diatonically and *voila* it's a scale practice AND vocabulary.

Separating the two is a little bit of an unusual thing when you think about it!

You remind me of a thought I had the other day. I am studying and concentrating on only Jazz Blues, using the Mixolydian scale, and then I will be adding ii-Vs as a segue into doing standards that use a lot of ii-Vs.

The thought that I have is that it is funny how we divide and compartmentalize music, hoping to learn each part and then eventually put it all together.

I would bet anything that the great Jazz guitarists of history just learned to play songs directly, without concern for this piecemeal approach.

Still, I have read that they had hours upon hours to immerse themselves in this stuff. I might have 30 minutes a day, these days.

In my defense, I am immediately applying what I learn to making music, and am still sticking in chromatic tones and such, but it is still what I would call a "piecemeal approach" instead of immersion.

Even in my youth, I could not close myself up in my room for hours to learn to play the guitar. I was having too much fun living life and making memories and forming relationships. Ah, it was nice.

[Groyniad]

the fact that you can describe e.g. a parker phrase as an arpeggio with a bit of scale added to the end of it does not mean that the line is - in fact - an arpeggio with a bit of a scale added to it

'arpeggio' and 'scale' are concepts whose home is in our attempts to describe music verbally - not in the music we describe.

they help - not with our attempts to play music - but with our attempts to talk about it

you may think this is just crazy - because look here in this parker solo he plays a c then an e then a g and then a b so it just has to be a Cmaj7 arpeggio that he is playing

but no - that is a fragment of the melody he is playing - which will occur in precisely this form NOWHERE else in his music

the real danger of forgetting that there are no scales and arpeggios in music but only in books or talk about music - is that you come to believe that to learn to play just is to learn how to put arpeggios and scales together in a certain way. you start to think that the true elements of music are scales and arps - and that music is made by putting these elements together. but the scales and arps are abstractions from the music which is always a kind of complex organic unity that is not really decomposable into parts (if you break it up into parts it disappears - a bit like e.g. a living organism).


i think what pmusic is saying about how to work with scales and arpeggios is exactly right. but you could think that what you get when you take an arpeggio/scale fragment through 7 diatonic sounds etc. are etudes or studies not music.

i suspect that etudes/studies can play a very positive role in music education in a way that mere scales and arpeggios can't. an etude is closer to being music than the scales and arps out of which it (unlike real music) is composed - and as such it can really help the player - but its still not actual music.

[pamosmusic]

i think what pmusic is saying about how to work with scales and arpeggios is exactly right. but you could think that what you get when you take an arpeggio/scale fragment through 7 diatonic sounds etc. are etudes or studies not music.

i suspect that etudes/studies can play a very positive role in music education in a way that mere scales and arpeggios can't. an etude is closer to being music than the scales and arps out of which it (unlike real music) is composed - and as such it can really help the player - but its still not actual music.

Okay ... they are studies ... things you practice for purposes of working a particular concept into your playing.

What be the alternative if you don't mind my asking? How does your practice become "actual music?" Honestly it's hard to say if it can be. What do you consider the alternative?

[matt.guitarteacher]

the real danger of forgetting that there are no scales and arpeggios in music but only in books or talk about music - is that you come to believe that to learn to play just is to learn how to put arpeggios and scales together in a certain way. you start to think that the true elements of music are scales and arps - and that music is made by putting these elements together. but the scales and arps are abstractions from the music which is always a kind of complex organic unity that is not really decomposable into parts (if you break it up into parts it disappears - a bit like e.g. a living organism).

Okay? We can agree that APPLICATION is the most important part, and always will be . What's the point? Do you think Coltrane and Parker knew their arpeggios? If they worked on them/studied them to any degree, do you think they were wasting their time?