Why study bebop?

[henryrobinett]

Bebop is more important for people who want to know how to play Jazz. This style has complex harmonies and frenetic rhythms making it stood out from different popular music. It takes more training and practice to make Bepop Scale sounds good. Once you learn to internalize this style, you gonna be the lord of Jazz.

BTW, not that it's bad, but I never play the bebop scale. I'm not sure the beboppers did either. I think it was a later invention for students. To think that you have to play the bebop scale to play bebop is not accurate at all. They're just passing tones that help you rhythmically phrase properly. I don't think beboppers ever really thought about scales. Lines and chords.

[jazznylon]

BTW, not that it's bad, but I never play the bebop scale. I'm not sure the beboppers did either. I think it was a later invention for students. To think that you have to play the bebop scale to play bebop is not accurate at all. They're just passing tones that help you rhythmically phrase properly. I don't think beboppers ever really thought about scales. Lines and chords.

Starting at 1:33 Dizzie literally plays a Minor scale with a passing #7 note so I guess technically speaking it is a 'bebop scale'. Not a fan of the name but whatever. So far thats the only example I found. So yes they have played the bebop scales at one point or another. Right before that though in the recording I'm guessing both Dizzy and Charlie were playing the Double Harmonic Scale?

I'm guessing these are just extremely rare occurences so in a way this post was pointless. They might have thought it but perhaps only as a 'passing thought'. But what do I know?

[henryrobinett]

Starting at 1:33 Dizzie literally plays a Minor scale with a passing #7 note so I guess technically speaking it is a 'bebop scale'. Not a fan of the name but whatever. So far thats the only example I found. So yes they have played the bebop scales at one point or another. Right before that though in the recording I'm guessing both Dizzy and Charlie were playing the Double Harmonic Scale?

I'm guessing these are just extremely rare occurences so in a way this post was pointless. They might have thought it but perhaps only as a 'passing thought'. But what do I know?

I didn't mean that it wasn't played. It's a passing tone. I don't THINK they thought of it as a bebop "scale." They were playing through chords and designing the lines so they fit rhythmically and harmonically.

[mr. beaumont]

Yeah, I think the common Internet misconception is because these guys weren't "thinking" scales that it means they didn't know them or use them.

I've seen plenty of bird lines, for example, where he'll play a scale pretty darn straight. And yeah, he'll include a passing chromatic in particular places to place a strong note on a strong beat.

But I doubt he ever thought much about that. I suppose one can learn bebop scales, but if you listen to enough bop and nick enough lines, you'll hear things this way, too.

[grahambop]

Yeah, I think the common Internet misconception is because these guys weren't "thinking" scales that it means they didn't know them or use them.

I've seen plenty of bird lines, for example, where he'll play a scale pretty darn straight. And yeah, he'll include a passing chromatic in particular places to place a strong note on a strong beat.

But I doubt he ever thought much about that. I suppose one can learn bebop scales, but if you listen to enough bop and nick enough lines, you'll hear things this way, too.

That's how I learned. I was playing those kind of things from listening to records, years before I heard the term 'bebop scale'.

[mr. beaumont]

It's like when I see folks here talk about practicing lines and placing chord tones on strong beats. I honestly think, if you have to be that literal about it, you haven't listened enough yet.

But then again, when I release my worst selling method book "Be somewhat competent in jazz in ten short years!" Chapter 1 is where I'll lose most folks, because it begins with 6 months of listening to only jazz before you even try to adapt it to an instrument.

[grahambop]

But then again, when I release my worst selling method book "Be somewhat competent in jazz in ten short years!" Chapter 1 is where I'll lose most folks, because it begins with 6 months of listening to only jazz before you even try to adapt it to an instrument.

Haha, that's exactly how I learned! And it took at least ten years before I thought I was getting anywhere.

[christianm77]

It's like when I see folks here talk about practicing lines and placing chord tones on strong beats. I honestly think, if you have to be that literal about it, you haven't listened enough yet.

I don't practice or teach this because I think that's what Charlie Parker etc literally did. I do it because 1) Barry Harris told me to do it (I think unquestioning acceptance of authority is not as terrible a thing in the Arts as it is in other walks of life) and 2) because I suspect the reason he told me to do it is to develop rhythmic control in scale use.

Not because he literally thinks bebop lines always have chord tones on the beats. I think it's possible Barry Harris may have done some listening to bebop in his life.

So, you may as well ask - why practice anything other than the music itself? Now there's a thread....

But then again, when I release my worst selling method book "Be somewhat competent in jazz in ten short years!" Chapter 1 is where I'll lose most folks, because it begins with 6 months of listening to only jazz before you even try to adapt it to an instrument.

Hahahaha, true.

[christianm77]

The article, written by a non-American, acknowledges the different context and status bebop holds between American musicians and non-American. He observes it might not be as relevant outside America.

This far along into this thread, it's my observation that this attitude is manifesting itself noticeably. It's almost like Manfred Eicher is more influential to jazz musicians across the pond than Charlie Parker is.

I think in the UK jazz musicians are desperate to feel authentic or connected to the American tradition (or maybe that's just me lol.) Or for that matter, any tradition. Could be Brazilian music or Gypsy jazz.... Same thing - a quest for authenticity...

I think it may be different in mainland Europe.

[destinytot]

The article, written by a non-American, acknowledges the different context and status bebop holds between American musicians and non-American. He observes it might not be as relevant outside America.

This far along into this thread, it's my observation that this attitude is manifesting itself noticeably. It's almost like Manfred Eicher is more influential to jazz musicians across the pond than Charlie Parker is.

Nothing against ECM, but I think that's an important observation.

[henryrobinett]

It's like when I see folks here talk about practicing lines and placing chord tones on strong beats. I honestly think, if you have to be that literal about it, you haven't listened enough yet.

But then again, when I release my worst selling method book "Be somewhat competent in jazz in ten short years!" Chapter 1 is where I'll lose most folks, because it begins with 6 months of listening to only jazz before you even try to adapt it to an instrument.

Yeah well, I practice it this way and I tell my students to do it this way. But it's only because it creates a literal habit of hearing the pulse of the beat and getting used to articulating it. Not that one has to PLAY it this way when you're improvising. Many times the accent occurs off the beat. But it gives you CONTROL.

[henryrobinett]

All kinds of people do all kinds of things. Carlton does his thing, Bonamosa does his. Rosenwinkle, Julian Lage, Adam Rogers. I don't know. They're ALL great. I'm not talking for you OR for them. Only for me and what I've observed to be true for myself.

[christianm77]

Tbh Henry I misread that original post as more general prescription.

I personally find bop really important to play jazz. That said I found swing really helpful to understand bop.... and so on.

This is the sort of thing I do with my students cos I found it useful.

[Stevebol]

The article, written by a non-American, acknowledges the different context and status bebop holds between American musicians and non-American. He observes it might not be as relevant outside America.

This far along into this thread, it's my observation that this attitude is manifesting itself noticeably. It's almost like Manfred Eicher is more influential to jazz musicians across the pond than Charlie Parker is.

Blues for Alice, measures 5-8. Look for the 4ths, 6ths and 9ths. The 'pretty notes'.

[ccroft]

I think it's useful to study it. I just don't think we should play it in public :)

Seriously though, if bebop is a language it was mostly invented by piano and horn players. When we try to speak it there's usually a strong accent. Sounds a little awkward I think. Sounds a little forced, like we're not at ease.

Warning: Hyperbole ahead. Anyone know a bagpiper who can play Donna Lee at a few hundred BPM?

When it comes to phrasing, wind players have a natural advantage: breathing. It makes soloing more like speaking.

[Stevebol]

Why do horn players like Confirmation?

[grahambop]

Why do horn players like Confirmation?

Because they are the only people who can play the bridge properly?

[Stevebol]

I was always turned off by the 'intellectual' aspect or view of music but as of about a month I'm really into bop. It will make you think.
Right now I'm working on ii-V chord sequences. Not ii-V-I's. Big difference.

With the internet I can get to the bottom of something with some effort so I'm not that concerned with what's taught in schools regarding jazz.
It doesn't have much to do with me. I can focus on what I want to focus on. We all know the drill. If you come to jazz you're supposed to throw the baby out with the bathwater and forget everything you think you know.

I can't do that. My frame of reference isn't jazz and classical, it's blues and classical. In order to understand bop I look to common ground between those two.

[lawson-stone]

I think it's useful to study it. I just don't think we should play it in public

Seriously though, if bebop is a language it was mostly invented by piano and horn players. When we try to speak it there's usually a strong accent. Sounds a little awkward I think. Sounds a little forced, like we're not at ease.

Warning: Hyperbole ahead. Anyone know a bagpiper who can play Donna Lee at a few hundred BPM?

When it comes to phrasing, wind players have a natural advantage: breathing. It makes soloing more like speaking.

Why doe soloing on a musical instrument have to be more like speaking? Or singing? The great advantage of guitar and piano I think is precisely that we are not bound by the constraints of breath. The musical ideas can pass from the mind to the instrument. That said, I hardly can play a decent line long enough to strain my breathing anyhow...


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[gator811]

No I mean to say bebop itself was a subversion. A rhythmic subversion.

Bop is not changes playing. Changes running pre-dates that music. But we learn it all in one go. I'm talking about something very specific here. Nothing post 1950 really.

That's why we get all these questions about why we have to line up chord tones on the beat. Of course that's not what Parker did - it's not even what Lester did, but it's what you have to be able to do to go to the next level after that, which is to play anticipations and so on. You need that basic, square framework to advance because otherwise you don't know what you are doing...

It's that relationship between rhythmic stress, harmony and non harmonic pitches that is a basic technique. That's the way to get out of mere Omnibook licks IMO.

I agree. I do think there are casualties in the way it gets represented though, partly due to the encouragement of the abstract thinking which tertiary learning encourages - thinking that all too often loses touch with actual practice.The problem is not the study of "bop" per se - its the isolation of bebop from the considerable body of work in jazz that was pre cursor and contingent with Parker et al.
David Ake suggests that the big band was used as a way of leveraging jazz into 'legit' tertiary music education - because of the analogs with the disciplines of the Western classical orchestra. But he points out that this may have also redirected attention away from individual, improvised exploration of sound, effect and interaction - which is rich in the music of the early Jazz players - and in Free Jazz.
There is an inherent problem or oversimplification in isolating bebop out from the rest of the music that undervalues other elements in the music, particularly sound.
I think we are still a long way from managing these complexities in a formal learning environment - and I dont believe that the examples set in many Classical performance schools are very useful to Jazz education either. Even the teaching of traditional musicianship continues in an outmoded and irrelevant way in many schools.
But that's another thread!

[Rhythmisking]

OMG I can't believe I just read through this entire thread. Yikes.

I mean no offense to any of the fine people here, but as I'm pushing 60, when I was a kid, there was no such thing as a Jazz Studies degree. And I think it's a great thing that jazz is now a legit college-level course of study, and I agree the the level of musicianship in young players is astounding, and I think that is due to the systematization of jazz as a field of musical study. All of that is a wonderful thing.

I also believe that when something new, really new, comes into the world, it doesn't come out from the center of culture. Nearly always, it comes from the edges. It comes from the neglected places and rejected people. We're talking about bebop here, but there's really two different bebops. There's the one that is taught in hallowed halls of universities; systemic, academic, and as legitimate as Beethoven. There's also the one that came out out of the ground as something brand new, crazy and controversial, and caused as many disparaging remarks from mainstream musicians of the 30's as rap and hip hop does among many of us today.

The question I have, is not so much "why study bebop?" (why study anything?) as why did bebop arise in the first place? The musicians who originated that form didn't do it for the sake of future academic study. I would guess that bebop arose out of a desire by musicians to reach for something that didn't exist yet, something that was new, and birth that unknown thing into the world.

Studying something, like art, doesn't make you an artist, but it can make you an expert. If you use that expertise to make things, it can make you a craftsman. Being a craftsman is a wonderful thing, and being a craftsman can be helpful if you have artistic aspirations, but art doesn't automatically come from craft. Art (to me) comes from a powerful desire, a need really, to give birth to something new that doesn't exist in the world yet, and that birthing process is difficult and requires sacrifice. Most often what is sacrificed is yourself, your own life. Later, some people may study what resulted from that sacrifice, because they see only the beauty that was never there before.

YMMV

[Stevebol]

OMG I can't believe I just read through this entire thread. Yikes.

I mean no offense to any of the fine people here, but as I'm pushing 60, when I was a kid, there was no such thing as a Jazz Studies degree. And I think it's a great thing that jazz is now a legit college-level course of study, and I agree the the level of musicianship in young players is astounding, and I think that is due to the systematization of jazz as a field of musical study. All of that is a wonderful thing.

I also believe that when something new, really new, comes into the world, it doesn't come out from the center of culture. Nearly always, it comes from the edges. It comes from the neglected places and rejected people. We're talking about bebop here, but there's really two different bebops. There's the one that is taught in hallowed halls of universities; systemic, academic, and as legitimate as Beethoven. There's also the one that came out out of the ground as something brand new, crazy and controversial, and caused as many disparaging remarks from mainstream musicians of the 30's as rap and hip hop does among many of us today.

The question I have, is not so much "why study bebop?" (why study anything?) as why did bebop arise in the first place? The musicians who originated that form didn't do it for the sake of future academic study. I would guess that bebop arose out of a desire by musicians to reach for something that didn't exist yet, something that was new, and birth that unknown thing into the world.

Studying something, like art, doesn't make you an artist, but it can make you an expert. If you use that expertise to make things, it can make you a craftsman. Being a craftsman is a wonderful thing, and being a craftsman can be helpful if you have artistic aspirations, but art doesn't automatically come from craft. Art (to me) comes from a powerful desire, a need really, to give birth to something new that doesn't exist in the world yet, and that birthing process is difficult and requires sacrifice. Most often what is sacrificed is yourself, your own life. Later, some people may study what resulted from that sacrifice, because they see only the beauty that was never there before.

YMMV

Bop incubated during WWII. They were versatile musicians. They could all read music. They all played blues and the popular music of the day.
Miles Davis never met Charlie Christian but he said he 'instigated' the bop movement. He could play endless choruses and no one else could do that at the time. Long solos did become a characteristic of bop so Miles is right in that sense.
Bop was started by musicians who didn't wind up in the military for the most part.

You don't have to sacrifice your life for art. That's what's wrong with academia. They made their bed with the junkie martyr because Bird fit the profile. A respected musicologist said to me- bop would have happened without Bird. Didn't give it much thought at the time but he was right.
That's not what they teach in school though. It's all about Bird in the ivory towers.

[Stevebol]

OMG I can't believe I just read through this entire thread. Yikes.

I mean no offense to any of the fine people here, but as I'm pushing 60, when I was a kid, there was no such thing as a Jazz Studies degree. And I think it's a great thing that jazz is now a legit college-level course of study, and I agree the the level of musicianship in young players is astounding, and I think that is due to the systematization of jazz as a field of musical study. All of that is a wonderful thing.

I also believe that when something new, really new, comes into the world, it doesn't come out from the center of culture. Nearly always, it comes from the edges. It comes from the neglected places and rejected people. We're talking about bebop here, but there's really two different bebops. There's the one that is taught in hallowed halls of universities; systemic, academic, and as legitimate as Beethoven. There's also the one that came out out of the ground as something brand new, crazy and controversial, and caused as many disparaging remarks from mainstream musicians of the 30's as rap and hip hop does among many of us today.

The question I have, is not so much "why study bebop?" (why study anything?) as why did bebop arise in the first place? The musicians who originated that form didn't do it for the sake of future academic study. I would guess that bebop arose out of a desire by musicians to reach for something that didn't exist yet, something that was new, and birth that unknown thing into the world.

Studying something, like art, doesn't make you an artist, but it can make you an expert. If you use that expertise to make things, it can make you a craftsman. Being a craftsman is a wonderful thing, and being a craftsman can be helpful if you have artistic aspirations, but art doesn't automatically come from craft. Art (to me) comes from a powerful desire, a need really, to give birth to something new that doesn't exist in the world yet, and that birthing process is difficult and requires sacrifice. Most often what is sacrificed is yourself, your own life. Later, some people may study what resulted from that sacrifice, because they see only the beauty that was never there before.

YMMV

It was all about putting bop on equal footing with classical music. They do have something in common that's inescapable- you have to read music. Bird just played. No song and dance. It was about dignity for a lot of musicians.

[destinytot]

Why doe soloing on a musical instrument have to be more like speaking? Or singing?

That question continues to fascinate me - partly because I believe it to be true, but mostly because I haven't quite got a handle on why (yet).

For me, the reason has to do with powerful emotional effects of the speech act on listeners.

On the one hand, I'm convinced that a player can afford to just put the notes in the right place, keep out of the way, and trust in the capacity of the content to touch or move any listener who is willing to engage with it - provided, that is, that the player sends a signal containing information that is sufficiently coherent. (I can identify with a performance style based on emotional detachment.)

But on the other hand, I am (not just 'aware', but) in complete awe of people whose 'voices' - literal or figurative - manifest raw emotion. (That is beyond my experience; to me, it shows not just 'control' but also Courage.) EDIT When the timbre is right, the player cooks with what I'm content to call a Secret Sauce.

Moreover, in this music called 'jazz', the importance of the Blues - with its vocal tradition - is paramount. Try, if you will, transcribing Joe Williams to appreciate why this is relevant to 'bebop'.

[henryrobinett]

Yeah. I guess. But CC wasn't really a bop player. But he was there jamming at Minton's all the time, I guess. He was one of those in between post swing, pre bebop guys.


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