Swing vs bebop

[joe2758]

match the tempos roughly using speed control

What are the differences after taking tempo out of the equation?

[Christian Miller]

More upbeats in bebop phrasing for one


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[joe2758]

Yeah so I'm in my vocabulary stuffing phase and it's all bebop lines from the greats.

Then I thought "I'm playing these all at medium swing tempo..am I just playing swing?"

[Strat-itis]

The CP sounds a little more melodically regularized for execution at higher tempos. But it still does seem like the goal of bebop is to use mellifluous syntax like swing, just faster.

[joe2758]

I wonder if I played a bunch of bebop licks you guys could identify which ones would be out of place in a swing style

[Strat-itis]

Play some CP solo for us at 120.

[andrew]

This is an interesting discussion for sure. It's impossible to draw a hard line in the sand. But speaking in generalities, bebop makes much greater use of altered chords (sharp and flat 5ths and 9ths in particular), chromaticism, more complex chord changes, and more chord substitutions. Swing also tends to resolve phrases more to the 'butter' notes like the root and the fifth, whereas in bebop, notes can more typically resolve other places (a D over a CMaj7 for example).

But as I said, the two aren't mutually exclusive. Charlie Christian is a great example of someone who, although most wouldn't quite consider him bebop, he certain paved the way for it (prebop?). There are a lot of things in his playing that don't take much extrapolation to get to bebop.

[kris]

match the tempos roughly using speed control

What are the differences after taking tempo out of the equation?

I like both recordings.
It is very good music.
In both cases, these outstanding musicians swinging and I like that very much.

[Hep To The Jive]

match the tempos roughly using speed control

What are the differences after taking tempo out of the equation?

Is it Buddy Rich? Wow just a hi hat, no other cymbals in sight hahaa. So there is one difference.

The swing one is more chill, could be more inviting for a casual listener. The bebop one, even with bad sound quality can hear more adventurous playing, which is what bebop is. Both are great. For me I'd prefer the swing style rhythm section to solo over, much more comfortable.

[Cunamara]

It's a different time feel from the rhythm section, a different swing even though both are recognizable as swinging. I hear slightly more of an 8th note feel in bebop drums/bass compared to pre-bop. And the rythmic phrasing of the soloists also tends to be different along the same lines.

[kris]

One soup is lukewarm and the other is hot.
Both are very tasty....maybe one of these soups is more salty...?
It all makes sense.

[charlieparker]

match the tempos roughly using speed control

What are the differences after taking tempo out of the equation?

Interesting question. Would have to transcribe them to really answer, but the Young recording sounds more melodic with more longer held notes and like another poster said more butter notes.

In Bird's, I hear more rhythmic syncopation, more tension notes, less diatonic playing, less breathing.

Both great but kind of like listening to Bach ( Bird) versus some more romantic composer.

[Christian Miller]

Interesting question. Would have to transcribe them to really answer, but the Young recording sounds more melodic with more longer held notes and like another poster said more butter notes.

In Bird's, I hear more rhythmic syncopation, more tension notes, less diatonic playing, less breathing.

Both great but kind of like listening to Bach ( Bird) versus some more romantic composer.

It depends on the solo, but I think this idea that Bird was less diatonic than the players before him is a bit of myth. Or at least - his playing is still pretty diatonic, more so than you'd think from a lot of the writing there's been about it.

What doesn't help is that the Omnibook is written out in null key, which means we end up with more accidentals than you would see if the key signature is written in.

For instance, here's the first 16 bars of Moose the Mooche (admittedly quite an early Bird solo)



And here's the first 16 bars of Lester Leaps In


The main difference in terms of the chromatics is Bird's use of the G flat, and Bird is using chromatic passing tones - but not in a way that would be alien to any 30's jazz musician. (The 1-7-b7 run down is incredibly common throughout the recorded history.)

Also Bird is rather scalar here. Lester is more blues oriented. There is also more of a sense of Bird playing the chords rather than a generalised blues tonality which you feel more with the Prez example.

It's interesting how every phrase in the Lester example starts on the beat.

[Christian Miller]

Great topic!

I'd say you need to choose maybe another swing musician to compare with Bird for a couple of reasons.

Prez and Bird have lots of similarities, so it can be difficult to tell them apart. Yes, they might have some differences in note choice, but the thing that underpins their playing is asymmetry or polymeter. Both have incredible unpredictability in their playing and phrasing across barlines. Prez was one of the first 'moderns' of jazz because of how he approached rhythm. At the same time, Prez was swing musician who grew up playing lots of trad jazz. A huge emphasis of these 2 styles is on the downbeats: 1 and 3 for trad (counted as one.... two.... one.... two....) and 1, 2, 3, 4 for swing. Prez was heavily grounded in this time feel, but towards the mid 30s he was aiming for something new - the asymmetry.

The other reason is that the recording you've put here is from 1950, which was way after Bird had come to prominence. During this part of Prez' career, he was frequently urged to change his style to be more bop-like Bird. As you can imagine, he resented that especially after so many sax players copied his notes, time, and tone and were making money with that. It was very humiliating for him, but he kind of relented: he started to incorporate Bird's chromaticism (which might have come from Charlie Christian, actually) into his horn lines.

So yeah, Prez sounds similar to Bird because of asymmetry and chromaticism.

Perhaps Ben Webster or Sweets Edison would have been a better comparison because the differences would be starker.



I've transcribed fragments and lines of Bird before, and he is so 'inside' it hurts lolol

Bird was influenced by Art Tatum also


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[joe2758]

I might change my name to Sweets

[GuyBoden]

I've spent many, many years listening to very slowed down Parker phrases (60 - 70%). It's the only way to learn them with my ears.

[charlieparker]

IThere is also more of a sense of Bird playing the chords rather than a generalised blues tonality which you feel more with the Prez example.

I think that is what I kind of what I meant. To me it sounds like Lester is riffing out and playing horizontally in Bb on Lester Leaps In where as I hear Bird paying a bit more attention to the chords and out of key notes on say a dominant chord. Of course, Lester was, too, so maybe the wrong description.

When I look at the heads for Moose the Mooche versus Lester Leaps In, this seems fairly clear to me.

[AllanAllen]

It's interesting how every phrase in the Lester example starts on the beat.

Why does it sound so amateur when I do it?

[Christian Miller]

I think that is what I kind of what I meant. To me it sounds like Lester is riffing out and playing horizontally in Bb on Lester Leaps In where as I hear Bird paying a bit more attention to the chords and out of key notes on say a dominant chord. Of course, Lester was, too, so maybe the wrong description.

When I look at the heads for Moose the Mooche versus Lester Leaps In, this seems fairly clear to me.

Yeah it is clear from the heads, but you do hear Prez sometimes introducing the same sort of harmonic moves you hear in Parker. So for instance in Lady be Good you have the IV IVm thing on a II V that Parker really got a lot of mileage out of.

One thing that makes Swing v Bop comparisons tricky is Swing was a lot more stylistically diverse than bebop. Bop is basically Charlie Parker refracted through different players. Even Bud is Bird on piano to a large extent. It's a small room and that is what it is so good for pedagogy. It's a classical style. (Which is not to say there isn't a lot of music to made in it.)

But swing is a whole bunch of different musical styles. You have Prez and the Kansas City sound (that influenced Parker and Charlie Christian directly) and that heavy blues influenced thing, but you also have the old New Orleans style players. You have players that tended to paraphrase the melody when soloing, but also players who were extremely keyed into the harmony - Coleman Hawkins and Art Tatum spring to mind. You have players whose interest was textural and vocal, like Cootie Williams.

Cootie himself said everyone sounded the same after Bird.

[Christian Miller]

This article is worth a look
Oh, Lady! | DO THE M@TH

[AllanAllen]

This article is worth a look
Oh, Lady! | DO THE M@TH

I thought about getting clever and saying anyone hear Prez do Lady Be Good, it’s the same thing over and over again. As reference to this article, but I didn’t think anyone but you would get the joke.

[AllanAllen]

Bop is basically Charlie Parker refracted through different players.

That’s too narrow what about Monk, Rollins, Clifford Brown, Diz? They were all there too.

[pamosmusic]

That’s too narrow what about Monk, Rollins, Clifford Brown, Diz? They were all there too.

dizzy and monk yeah, though their legacy is maybe in something other than that bop vocabulary. Monk in the composition and Dizzy in the way he plays trumpet. Not saying they didn’t have that vocab, of course.

Clifford and Sonny Rollins were sort of second generation though.

[Aiq]

I might change my name to Sweets

[Cunamara]

Looks like a still out of a film noir movie.

jazz is pretty much the soundtrack of film noir.