Charlie Parker Omnibook

[dot75]

As far as I know a bebop player would emphasize the dom7 sound over most chords/cadences...at least that's what I've been told....

I went to an open rehearsal once with a name tenor player (who's name will come back to me) who said he always thought Dominant chords, he was always looking for movement - I stuck my hand up & asked 'even over a maj 7' and he said sure. The pianist (who's name will also come back to me) was surprised but I can see the logic...

[christianm77]

People don’t realise that when you can play you can get away with murder.

That’s why it’s so important to learn how to play instead of worrying about right and wrong notes imo.

[pcsanwald]

People don’t realise that when you can play you can get away with murder.

That’s why it’s so important to learn how to play instead of worrying about right and wrong notes imo.

So true! I think the aebersold era of jazz education over-emphasized avoiding "avoid notes", as opposed to learning to resolve things. I wish that when I was younger, someone would have told me "here's what to do with a 4th over a maj chord" vs saying "don't play a F natural over a Cmaj chord"

[christianm77]

So true! I think the aebersold era of jazz education over-emphasized avoiding "avoid notes", as opposed to learning to resolve things. I wish that when I was younger, someone would have told me "here's what to do with a 4th over a maj chord" vs saying "don't play a F natural over a Cmaj chord"

Yeah. To me, the Aebersold book thing as it presented in the books - "here's a scale of good sounding notes over that chord, now mix up the notes" - is not only a questionable way to think of jazz harmony, it's actually much more importantly, a misunderstanding of how you learn to improvise. (I don't think that's the way JA would actually teach improvisation BTW... But that's how many used his books.)

The approach for a novice improviser is actually to give them things to play, and to teach them how to modify those things and arrive at general principles. Improvisation is not - "oh let's make something up out of a collection of pitches" but more "let's apply the skills, resources and material we have learned in the moment to create music."

From that point of view, I'm not sure it achieves anything at all to tell students learning to play jazz what the 'avoid notes' are. You have to teach them to play good sounding things, not avoid bad sounding things.

This might not involve that much theory to start off with - beyond "here's a cool line - play it everytime it goes G7-Cm", "now try it starting on a different beat", "now add some passing notes" or "hey, Abm6 sounds badass on G7 - try that." Or: "let's listen to this solo and work some of your favourite lines together."

I feel the traditional approach of using chord substitutes (rather than chord scale relationships from days one) points in that direction - you show the student more and more idioms and possibilities, rather than making them feel certain notes are off limits. I also like Barry Harris for this, but I would tend to teach it later.

Later the student can be introduced to more systematic ideas from theory - including the chord scales, and can be expected to seek out material they like from records, linking the two worlds together.

Anyway, I don't want half a dozen CST advocates jumping in saying I've strawmanned the system. I know this is not the right way to use CST, 20+ years on or whatever.... I also know it's exactly how I started trying to play jazz, that it didn't really work, and I think it's true for many others.

I'm not having a dig against JA - he's an important trailblazer in education, and a great musician - but I think we can learn from the problems with the stuff he's put out and develop it.

[PMB]

Darn, missed the prez quote!

The more I find out about Bird, the more quotes he seems to have. There are a lot of ‘Parker licks’ that can be traced back to earlier musicians, sometimes ones quite obscure to modern musicians - classic example is his use of Alfonse Picout’s line on High Society.

People still play it, but they don’t know where it came from, like people use words Shakespeare invented every day....

That lick is so triadic it's no surprise most people don't associate it with a melody. Incidentally, here's Picou himself playing the phrase at 2'30":

[PMB]

Peter Spitzer's list of tunes Parker quoted from in his playing.

Peter Spitzer Music Blog: Charlie Parker's Musical Quotes

I came across this page (cited in Spritzer's addendum) from a Japanese website a few years ago. It's a pretty thorough investigation of Bird quotes and their sources:

Quotes in Bird's performance

[alltunes]

Old thread revival

Finally got this book. Currently using it as a “lictionary”. For example take the first bar in “Scrapple from the Apple” and plug it into a G blues. Why not?

That said are there any tunes in the book you found particularly useful for expanding ones’s guitar language in a broader sense?

[alltunes]

Old thread revival

Finally got this book. Currently using it as a “lictionary”. For example take the first bar in “Scrapple from the Apple” and plug it into a G blues. Why not?

That said are there any tunes in the book someone found particularly useful for expanding ones’s guitar language in a broader sense?

[pamosmusic]

Old thread revival

Finally got this book. Currently using it as a “lictionary”. For example take the first bar in “Scrapple from the Apple” and plug it into a G blues. Why not?

That said are there any tunes in the book someone found particularly useful for expanding ones’s guitar language in a broader sense?

Au Privave and Anthropology for me but honestly they’re all a goldmine.