Are bebop scales useful?

[A. Kingstone]

In the 80's Barry Harris gave us his half-step rules. He never called anything a bebop scale.

In the new century Barry said "The rules are more important than the half-steps". (Paraphrased due to my age)

What he means (I believe) is it's not where the chromaticism happens (and lets face it that's what we are talking about) but the right amount for the given line.


So our recipe : Chromaticism (Bebop/Bullshit/Fertilizer) + Time In The Field = A Bumper Crop.

[jordanklemons]

I suspect that the world would be a better place if I did not try to do that I am curious if there isn't one of the videos on YT where he talks about this? It came up every year when he came to the school I studied at, and so much material from those workshops have been published.

Dang, between all these shootings that keep happening, and now this? I might just have to curl up and hibernate for the weekend. I don't think I can face the world for a few days.

[nick1994]

Pete, I'm not the right one to answer your skepticism specifically, because I'm not one of the guys spending my practice time with the bebop scale. But I'm a fan of talking more about process and actual methods during practice time than theory and ideas anyway... so I figured I'd chime in on this. Like I said earlier, my approach was to understand what the central set of skills were that would allow me an improvisational sense of freedom within a bebop context, and to reverse engineer a set of practices that would help develop those skills. Some people might get them from the scales, I just wasn't able to.

So the main skill I decided to focus my time on was to learn to feel, and even anticipate, the strong harmonic beats. I'd spent years working with metronomes trying to feel the 2 and 4 to get that swing feel down... but nobody was really talking about how important it was to feel and anticipate the 1 and the 3 when playing lines... and being able to line up the notes in an intentional way around those beats. So I decided to write a series of "bebop etudes" for myself where I started essentially with a guide tone line that moved through a progression on the "strong" beats.. and then I filled in the weaker beats with chromatic movement, arpeggios, scales, neighbor tones, whatever, etc. It really didn't matter to me. The etudes have turned out to offer me a ton of really cool results... but ultimately, the primary focus from the beginning was simply to spend time practicing FEELING beats 1 and 3 and how to even set them up ahead of time.

Here's a video of the first chorus of a basic blues I wrote:

A buddy of mine took my video and recorded a 2nd track of him comping the changes. If you're having a hard time hearing the changes in the first video, or are just curious to see how they go together...

So my practice time would be first to memorize an etude. Then to play through it without backing tracking tracks paying extra attention to the sound... can I actually HEAR the chord progression moving without the chords being spoon fed to me? Then I might relax my ear a bit and play slowly through the etude tapping my foot on 1 and 3 and over emphasizing that note as I tape my foot... much like I used to do with 2 and 4. Then there is a whole plethora of other things that can be done to create and extract phrases and vocab from the etude. But again, my main goal was learning to feel the 1 and the 3 in my bones... to the point that I could feel it coming with no thinking or 2nd guessing necessary.

jordan, do you have pdfs of these etudes that you wouldn't mind sharing?

[christianm77]

In the 80's Barry Harris gave us his half-step rules. He never called anything a bebop scale.

In the new century Barry said "The rules are more important than the half-steps". (Paraphrased due to my age)

What he means (I believe) is it's not where the chromaticism happens (and lets face it that's what we are talking about) but the right amount for the given line.


So our recipe : Chromaticism (Bebop/Bullshit/Fertilizer) + Time In The Field = A Bumper Crop.

You can even hear Charlie Christian doing the same with open strings in his I Found a New Baby solo to make a chromatic line resolve on the right beat.

Rhythm first, notes second. Always. That's what bop is IMO, and it's certainly where the bop scales come from.

[Vladan]

One way of using chromaticism is to make certain note land on a certain beat, that's because, over time, purely diatonic enclosures, trills and other ornaments became overly cheesy, but then, over time, chromatic approaches became cheesy, too, so musicians got to invent something new and there they came up with half naked dancers, twerking and all that stuff ...

[jordanklemons]

jordan, do you have pdfs of these etudes that you wouldn't mind sharing?

Sure. Here's the blues. The etude is 2 choruses. I'd only memorized the 1st chorus when I filmed that video, so there's a 2nd half you're not hearing.

[jads57]

Well there are only 12 notes, how hard can it be,LOL!

[christianm77]

Sure. Here's the blues. The etude is 2 choruses. I'd only memorized the 1st chorus when I filmed that video, so there's a 2nd half you're not hearing.

Sounds great. I have no idea what the **** is going on in that.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

One way of using chromaticism is to make certain note land on a certain beat, that's because, over time, purely diatonic enclosures, trills and other ornaments became overly cheesy, but then, over time, chromatic approaches became cheesy, too, so musicians got to invent something new and there they came up with half naked dancers, twerking and all that stuff ...

It is all the fault of jazz!

[jordanklemons]

Watched it at half speed and it all became clear.

Woah! Dude, that's a sick idea... I just tried it. Brilliant!

I play this stuff REALLY slowly when I'm working on it, so I get a similar effect in my practice time. Only later do I speed it up to a more "real world" bop tempo. But actually being able to sit back and hear the recording at half time is kind of the perfect way to take in the lines. Great call! thanks

[jordanklemons]

Sounds great. I have no idea what the **** is going on in that.

Hahaha... I'm not sure if that's a huge compliment or an indication that I'm off swimming in f*&^head land (as one of my old college buddies used to say when a jazz player was just... well... off swimming in f&#^head land). hahaha

Here's the deal. Bebop scales didn't work for me. I read and worked at BH's method of counting the number of chromatic passing tones for a while. It didn't work for me either. While it made sense intellectually, it didn't help me gain a sense of improvisational freedom.

So I went to the drawing board and asked myself, what's the biggest stumbling block I have that's preventing me from just being able to blow bebop lines over changes. The best answer I could boil it down to was harmonic rhythm. I couldn't truly FEEL and ANTICIPATE the strong, structural beats within each measure that held the harmony and rhythm together in my bones. Mainly, I chose to think of beats 1 and 3 as the primary and most important beats. While there are other beats and subdivisions worth exploring... I saw 1 and 3 as the two structure columns holding up the building.

So I went through the blues form and composed a guide tone line that used chord tones on those strong beats. The chord tones were not just 1, 3, 5 and 7. They were ANY note that could define the chord... including 9, 11, 13, and altered extensions. That gave me 2 notes per measure. I wanted to compose the etude with constant 8th notes, which meant I needed to fill in 6 more notes per measure. (+ 2 +) and (+ 4 +). ANYTHING can happen there. It could be a purely diatonic scale run, it could be an arpeggio, it could be 3 chromatic passing tones, it could be a scale run with one chromatic note, it could be a neighbor tone movement... it really didn't matter what I put there, because the goal was simply to learn to feel the 1 and 3 coming ahead of time... so what happens in between them didn't matter. I mean, it did and didn't matter at the same time. I decided to utilize a lot of chromatic movement because I love the sound of it personally. But anyone else could focus on filling these in with diatonic arpeggios or baroque style ornamentation or anything. The primary goal is simply learning to feel the harmonic rhythm moving. And when performed, it SHOULD sound like you can hear the chords changing because every time you get to a new beat 1 or 3, the guide tone line resolves to the next chord tone and the harmony and rhythm work together to create the effect of movement.

It's actually a really similar idea to BH's chromatic passing tone method, I just focused it more on stemming from the feel of 1 and 3 as the starting point and let the rest of the notes take care of themselves. But same idea of filling in notes to get things to line up "properly".

Does that help it make sense? Also, fuzzthebee's idea of listening to it on youtube at 50% is a GREAT way to hear the harmonic rhythm moving and the chord tones falling in the proper place. That might help too.

[jordanklemons]

@Christian...

Sorry. It's always in my tendency to start with the big picture, try and explain the whole thing, and THEN break it down into the smaller particulars. I keep trying to remind myself that that's not always a good way to approach things in typed word. I find it seems to confuse people more than anything. So let me apologize for my previous post. Not that any of it is untrue, I'm just not sure how helpful it actually is. Let me try one more time in a different way.

Maybe we can just break down the first two measures of the etude to see the details of what's happening?

So if you look at the beats 1 and 3 of the 1st 2 measures, you get 4 chord tones making the guide tone line I wrote.

Db - C - B - Bb

It's just a descending chromatic line. Against the chord changes it's

#9 - 9 - #5/b13 - 5

After playing the #9, there's a sort of pentatonic/blues scale idea which I intentionally started off the etude with because, while it is a bebop etude... it IS meant to be the blues. So I wanted to start there. Then I used the B natural note (+ of 2) as a chromatic approach note to resolve to the natural 9 of the Bb7 chord on beat 3. Following that C note, I just employed a straight up arpeggio for the rest of the measure to outline the chord.

Measure 2 starts on the B natural which is the #5/b13 of the Eb7 chord. Then I employed 3 chromatic passing tones from the 3rd of Eb (G note) to resolve me up to the Bb on beat 3. After playing the natural 5th of the chord, I jumped down to the b7 of the chord and then employed a 2 note chromatic passing phrase to resolve into measure 3.

As you can see, there's no standard rule being employed for the note selections in every measure. We could analyze every measure of all 10 of the etudes I composed and you wouldn't ever find a deadset rule that governs all of them. It's not about adding this many chromatic notes here and that many there, or about following some predetermined set of rules from a scale. It's about creating a sense of improvisational freedom from all of that. ALL musical devices are allowed for and employed. The only steadfast rule that doesn't change is the focus on feeling the destination. It's not about HOW to get to the destination. It's just about feeling the destination so that you can choose to approach it in any way you wish... chromatic, diatonic, arpeggios, combinations thereof. The harmonic rhythm is fixed. The rest is up to you. You could even rewrite the guide tone line and come up with your own etude if you don't like mine. You can employ whatever devices you want in your lines. It's all fair game.

[christianm77]

@Christian...

Sorry. It's always in my tendency to start with the big picture, try and explain the whole thing, and THEN break it down into the smaller particulars. I keep trying to remind myself that that's not always a good way to approach things in typed word. I find it seems to confuse people more than anything. So let me apologize for my previous post. Not that any of it is untrue, I'm just not sure how helpful it actually is. Let me try one more time in a different way.

Maybe we can just break down the first two measures of the etude to see the details of what's happening?

So if you look at the beats 1 and 3 of the 1st 2 measures, you get 4 chord tones making the guide tone line I wrote.

Db - C - B - Bb

It's just a descending chromatic line. Against the chord changes it's

#9 - 9 - #5/b13 - 5

After playing the #9, there's a sort of pentatonic/blues scale idea which I intentionally started off the etude with because, while it is a bebop etude... it IS meant to be the blues. So I wanted to start there. Then I used the B natural note (+ of 2) as a chromatic approach note to resolve to the natural 9 of the Bb7 chord on beat 3. Following that C note, I just employed a straight up arpeggio for the rest of the measure to outline the chord.

Measure 2 starts on the B natural which is the #5/b13 of the Eb7 chord. Then I employed 3 chromatic passing tones from the 3rd of Eb (G note) to resolve me up to the Bb on beat 3. After playing the natural 5th of the chord, I jumped down to the b7 of the chord and then employed a 2 note chromatic passing phrase to resolve into measure 3.

As you can see, there's no standard rule being employed for the note selections in every measure. We could analyze every measure of all 10 of the etudes I composed and you wouldn't ever find a deadset rule that governs all of them. It's not about adding this many chromatic notes here and that many there, or about following some predetermined set of rules from a scale. It's about creating a sense of improvisational freedom from all of that. ALL musical devices are allowed for and employed. The only steadfast rule that doesn't change is the focus on feeling the destination. It's not about HOW to get to the destination. It's just about feeling the destination so that you can choose to approach it in any way you wish... chromatic, diatonic, arpeggios, combinations thereof. The harmonic rhythm is fixed. The rest is up to you. You could even rewrite the guide tone line and come up with your own etude if you don't like mine. You can employ whatever devices you want in your lines. It's all fair game.

It's going to take me a little while to sift through all of this, but I like the sound, recognisably bebop, yet very much your own take on it.

[jordanklemons]

Thanks Christian. I'm glad it comes off as traditional yet still my own. It's part of the "curriculum" I'm putting together for myself to help me relearn guitar. So that's kind of perfect. Got a lot of practice ahead of me. Just wrapping up number 9 and 10 and putting them into the computer tonight so I can print them all up and have a little booklet on my music stand to work from.

[eh6794]

Thanks Christian. I'm glad it comes off as traditional yet still my own. It's part of the "curriculum" I'm putting together for myself to help me relearn guitar. So that's kind of perfect. Got a lot of practice ahead of me. Just wrapping up number 9 and 10 and putting them into the computer tonight so I can print them all up and have a little booklet on my music stand to work from.

Hello Jordan,

How are you doing? Are you actually playing again, or still trying to get a feel for everything?

[jordanklemons]

Hello Jordan,

How are you doing? Are you actually playing again, or still trying to get a feel for everything?

Hey man. I'm doing okay-ish. I'm not gigging again. I have a few tentative "play" dates... but haven't pulled the trigger yet to make any of them happen... for a few reasons. But I am starting to practice again. I find it hard to get to every day, even with all the free time I have. Between the chemo and all the issues with, and meds for, my brain, it's tough to stay focused and not get too foggy. But I still try and do a little bit every day. Sometimes it's not even practicing. Sometimes it's writing more of an etude, or entering ideas into sibelius. Just little baby steps.

Also working a lot on my album since the music is done. Trying to get the masters done, the artwork done, all that garbage. But it keeps me 'working' on 'music'.

Definitely anxious to be healthy enough and comfortable enough to start gigging again. Even just to go see music again!!!! I miss it so much. It was such a big part of life before. It's like losing a close loved one. But we're getting there. Slowly.

Also... I'm ALWAYS trying to just get a feel for everything
It's like the story of my musical life! haha

Thanks for asking. Hope all's great with you and yours!

[eh6794]

It sounds like you are trying to figure out how to do everything a different way and adapt. If that's the case, I know the feeling.

It sounds like the first half of 2016 was not your time, lets hope for the second half!

[jordanklemons]

It sounds like you are trying to figure out how to do everything a different way and adapt. If that's the case, I know the feeling.

It sounds like the first half of 2016 was not your time, lets hope for the second half!

Yeah, I'd say I mostly spent the 2.5 years of my grad experience trying to figure out how to do things differently and adapt. I got to study with so many incredible guys, each of whom had their own way of "bursting my bubble"... but also who were really helpful to me with learning to think outside the box and to develop my own thing. It was really frustrating at first to constantly have people pulling the rug out from under me. But looking back it really forced me to re-examine the music, and ultimately I think that's the best lesson any of them could have taught me.

At this point, it's really just a lot of taking all those ideas I'd been working towards, and organizing them in a way that's simpler and more digestible so I can start working through it. Hoping the 2nd half of the year will be better than the 1st for sure!!!!!... and will hopefully just be all about working through "the curriculum", getting back on my feet, gigging again, teaching again, seeing music again, connecting with people again... all that good stuff.

[zigzag]

... hey notice how they keep putting the "better" notes on these important beats? And then because of that, they're able to fill in all sorts of weird, chromatic nonsense in between?? Had they said that, the conversation wouldn't have been about the scales, but about learning to feel the harmonic rhythm...

Yeah, thanks for this. Improvisation is what I like about playing, but I'm not nearly where I want to be. I've recently decided to stop learning tunes and focus on improving my improvisation, specifically in a couple of tunes by Monk and Dizzy. What you just said here has been a recent light bulb moment for me. Thanks for the affirmation.

[rod2605]

I personally have pretty mixed feelings regarding bebop scales. Ultimately, I don't think the language of bebop comes from memorizing a bebop scale that has a particular passing tone added. At least, I never had any luck with developing bebop vocab in an improvisational sense by using them... and I tried.. hard... a lot... for a long time. They may have helped in getting used to running a scale pattern starting from a particular note on a particular beat and only moving in a scalar way. But for me, that just never transcended into improvisational freedom.

What I found that did work was to define what I felt was really happening within the language of bebop and WHY the scales are the way they are. Ultimately, to me, what bebop boils down to is simply having the ability to land on the "better" notes on the stronger rhythmic beats. In order to be able to do that in an improvisational way, the 2 most important skills to develop are to be able to feel and even anticipate those rhythmic beats so you can not only hit the "better" notes on those beats, but even set them up in advance to create tension and movement that draws into them... and the ability to know/feel/see/hear/whatever what those notes are.

While practicing bebop scales may help some people develop those 2 skills, they simply never got me where I wanted to be improvisationally.. to give me the freedom I was seeking. But I did find that boiling down "the problem" into those two skills gave me the chance to reverse engineer other practices and ideas that I did find helpful in developing those abilities and giving me a stronger foundation in feeling and anticipating those beats so that I could toy with them however I wanted rather than however a scale dictated.

Though I have no doubt that heavy scale practice could potentially lead plenty of others to a similar place if they're built that way. I'd say the answer to your question, "Are bebop scales bull$**t?" is... It depends on whether or not you believe they're bull$**t... and either way... what are you going to do about it?

I totally agree with you!

Actually, at least for me, the bebop scales are so stupid. We have heptatonic scales, like dorian, mixolydian, Ionian, Aeolian, etc... And, if you are playing some bebop language you need to learn the way to approach to the important notes of each chord. I mean like thinking about target tones and approaching tones. And you're not going to learn it if you just use an heptatonic scale with an added chromatic note (bebop scale). The way to master bebop improvisation it's to learn wich cromatic sounds you need to add and at the right moment.

So, for me these scales are a total waste of time.

[ragman1]

Are bebop scales bull$**t?

Short answer, no. Depends how you use them. I use them in part and I don't play bebop.

Artists' music quoted with audio examples in this article:

Bill Evans
Charlie Parker
Michael Brecker
John Coltrane
Sonny Stitt
Freddie Hubbard
Clifford Brown
Joe Henderson
Mulgrew Miller
Tom Harrell


'The trap that many players fall into with practising scales is that they develop melodic and harmonic tunnel vision... Unfortunately this approach is not going to make music – it’ll end up sounding like a music theory exercise.

The secret to sounding good comes in how you apply this scale to your solo in a musical way.... The point of practising the bebop scale is not to insert the entire scale into your solos, rather to use this material you’ve learned as a tool in creating musical lines.'

How To Master the Bebop Scale in Jazz Improvisation • Jazz Advice

[Tal_175]

First two chords of Donna Lee. Ab F7. Imaj going to VI7. The head descends Ab major bebop scale to the 3rd of F7 then continues with an half diminished arp from the 3rd of F7 pivoting after A. I think lines like this give a good indication as to how to practice bebop scales (or half step rules).

I don't think bebop scales (or half note rules) should be practiced like how you would practice the major scale, MM scale (in thirds, repeating patterns, diatonic triads, inversions etc). But they should be practiced by working on creating bebop style lines that necessitate them like in the example from Donna Lee.
My understanding is that, that's exactly what jordanklemons post is also suggesting.

[Tal_175]

Christian also has a great video demonstrating this approach.

[ragman1]

Bebop scales, or their derivatives, are just another tool in the box. And aren't that difficult at all.

[christianm77]

I totally agree with you!

Actually, at least for me, the bebop scales are so stupid. We have heptatonic scales, like dorian, mixolydian, Ionian, Aeolian, etc... And, if you are playing some bebop language you need to learn the way to approach to the important notes of each chord. I mean like thinking about target tones and approaching tones. And you're not going to learn it if you just use an heptatonic scale with an added chromatic note (bebop scale). The way to master bebop improvisation it's to learn wich cromatic sounds you need to add and at the right moment.

So, for me these scales are a total waste of time.

Haha day that again I’ll put you in a room with Barry Harris.

Of course there’s different approaches. I’ve always done my best learning when it’s been from the music itself. I first spotted bop scales in the B section of Wayne Shorter’s solo on Yes and No.

the thing about them that was interesting is I could hear them as a gestalt- a single thing, a musical word. Now I hear them and I’m like - oh yeah, it’s that thing. Saves having to work out each note, right?

‘Bop’ scales are just the entry level to doing interesting musical things with scales, ways of taking scales, modifying them and turning them into musical lines.

And sure you can have your own approach, and you can take them or leave them. I was a pure arpeggio player for years and it worked great. But then I started getting serious about the language and the tradition and it rapidly became clear Parker et al weren’t only playing arpeggios and passing tones.

You might think they are overused, or don’t work for you as an improviser or whatever.... you might reject obvious bop language just because it feels a little trite and ‘just so’ 60 years on....

But listen to the great horn players and pianists.... they all play them.