The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I have bits and pieces of improv theory kicking around in my brain. My only formal instruction was a bit of chord scale. But, over the years I’ve seen references to bebop scales (eg David Baker and Barry Harris).

    Do these relate to one another? Do they overlap?

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  3. #2

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    yes and no... if you consider melodic improvization in David Baker as well as in Barry Harris approach scales are more like really scales... they contain melodic information and they are not necessarily related to particular chords... but to changes, functions, melodic logics, rythm, harmonic movements etc.
    To me they are more related to real practice of playing...

    In CST they are more like scope of notes/pitches which are theretically ( and often quite arbitrarily) related to particular chords .. much more abstract.


    To relaly feel that stuff - take more time... forum explanation can give an idea but only real preactice will relaly show what is what

  4. #3

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    They are different things.

    A chord-scale is a linear expression of a chord. That means primary chord tones and extensions arranged as a scale (ie in pitch order and within a single octave). You can play the notes of a chord-scale vertically as a chord or as linearly in a solo.

    Bebop scales are scales + chromatic passing tones. They are strictly linear concepts. 12 note chromatic scale can be played as a major bebop scale with 5 passing notes. You wouldn't put these half notes in the chord. If you put these (altered) notes in the chord, you're not playing the major chord implied by the major bebop scale.

    You can play, say, David Baker's dominant bebop scale for dominant chords. But according to the "common CST undestanding" the chord scale would still be considered the Mixolydian. You are just adding a half note to that mixolydian scale as a melodic/rhythmic device. That extra half note is a passing note that is not intended to exist in the vertical (harmonic) chord. At least not implied by the half notes in the bebop scale.

    Also note Barry Harris's extra half notes should not be confused with his 6th dim scales. The former is like bebop scales but the latter is a different notion all together despite the extra chromatic note.

  5. #4

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    From reading Hal Galper's book "Forward Motion", the reason for inserting the chromatic note is so a phrase can land with a chord tone on a strong beat of the bar. One and three if 4/4 time. Basically making a seven note odd number length scale an even number 8 note scale. This would allow a clearer definition of the harmony to the listener. The stronge chord tones being the third and seventh. However, looking at Charlie Parker solos theres plenty of landing on a flat 9 or flat 5 on the one of a bar followed with a resolution.

  6. #5

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    The idea behind the "bebop scale" (which doesn't really exist, nor did it ever) is just the start of what constitutes the major part of what sets Jazz apart from most other music. Remember that line from the film " Inside Llewyn Davis", where the Jazz impressario explains to the young folkster how that "In Jazz we use all 12 notes!"

    So sticking a chromatic passing tone so that the rest of the scale lands chord tones on "every other" note is a good way to start hearing a very rudimentary way of landing chord tones on beats. But that's gonna get old real quick. If you wanna Bop, you need to find dozens of ways (if not more) to embellish chord tones against the chord of the moment. You can do this with a number of diatonic devices, or chromatic devices, or preferably both. If you like players that use a lot of chromaticism, you may want to investigate other places to insert chromatic notes (passing, enclosures etc).

    It can take years to just get jiggy with the above approach before you get confident enough to start ignoring certain chord changes by "horizontally generalising" some of the time, but you can't just play horizontally (CST etc) from the get go and sound like you know what you're doing. You will sound way more legit if you put on those Bop training wheels for a few years and drill the shit out of your chord tone embellishment devices.

    Of course, if you don't care to sound "legit" or you don't wanna learn some Bop rules, then make up your own, Heck you can even call what you eventually come up with "Jazz". You wouldn't be the first...

  7. #6

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    I look at 8-note Bebop scales as just three more chord scales. If I recall, there are other 8-note scales in Barry Nettles' CST as well. Bebop scales have a distinctive sound. They're just a choice.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by princeplanet
    The idea behind the "bebop scale" (which doesn't really exist, nor did it ever) is just the start of what constitutes the major part of

    Of course, if you don't care to sound "legit" or you don't wanna learn some Bop rules, then make up your own, Heck you can even call what you eventually come up with "Jazz". You wouldn't be the first...
    I have never understood the need for another note to land on the right beat. Who runs a scale like that when improvising? If you want to land on the right beat, you can add any note, or play any note in the 7 note scale twice. Or, you can play a melodic idea in something other than straight 8ths and land whereever you want.

    Not a troll ... real question. Can someone explain why there is so much focus on this that "bebop scales" are a thing?

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I have never understood the need for another note to land on the right beat. Who runs a scale like that when improvising? If you want to land on the right beat, you can add any note, or play any note in the 7 note scale twice. Or, you can play a melodic idea in something other than straight 8ths and land whereever you want.

    Not a troll ... real question. Can someone explain why there is so much focus on this that "bebop scales" are a thing?
    I'm guessing it's because "bebob scale" is a very catchy name. Whoever came up with that name (David Baker?) is a marketing genius.

  10. #9

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    8 notes is for n00bs

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I have never understood the need for another note to land on the right beat. Who runs a scale like that when improvising? If you want to land on the right beat, you can add any note, or play any note in the 7 note scale twice. Or, you can play a melodic idea in something other than straight 8ths and land whereever you want.

    Not a troll ... real question. Can someone explain why there is so much focus on this that "bebop scales" are a thing?
    David Baker explained it pretty well in his first of three books on "How To Play Bebop". Preface and Page 1. William Leavitt also introduced 8 note scales for every mode of the major scale in Book 1, page 61, including the three so-called Bebop Scales. Baker claimed that while chromaticism was certainly present in jazz solos predating bebop, Bird and Diz started to go for a more specific approach in their solos, and that their followers continued it. Then Baker introduced tons of phrases, patterns, and chord oulines to illustrate his points.

    He also made the point that modern players may decide to go for something more, well, modern, but that learning bebop is like learning "the common practice period stye" in classical music - and - that jazzers should ground their improvisational capability on it.

    So in the end, I suppose one could say that chromatics can be appplied at will (and are), so it's a matter of playing in a way that is intentionally idiomatic to bebop.

    And one needn't play the entire scale to make the point. For example, over a Dom 7 chord you can play "bluesy and boppish" ideas that are shorter than a scale, utilizing any chromatic note. For example, with Mixolydian as the baseline reference: add b3, #4, #5, #7 to form shorter little ideas.


    The Bebop Scale

  12. #11

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    What's all this about "eight note scales"? A note is defined as the letter name of a line or space of the staff, and there are only seven names of them A through G, and each note may indicate different pitches depending on key signature or accidentals. No scale may have more than seven different notes, but it may have more pitches indicated by duplicating a note or notes and the addition or removal of accidentals. Eight pitch scales, yes; eight note scales, no.

  13. #12

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    Well that's getting kind of picky.

    Generally speaking, if one plays a C# by mistake when attempting to play a C, one would say "wrong note", or "false note" as opposed to "wrong pitch".

    Would you prefer the term "tone"?

    Barry Nettles describes the Diminished Scale as having 8 pitches and also 8 notes.
    Daniel Ricigliano - tones
    Dan Haerle - tones
    Paul Schmeling - notes
    Dick Grove - notes
    Mark Levine - notes
    Bruce Benward and Marilyn Saker - notes

    Close enough for me.
    Last edited by GTRMan; 08-13-2020 at 11:29 PM.

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by GTRMan
    Well that's getting kind of picky.

    Generally speaking, if one plays a C# by mistake when attempting to play a C, one would say "wrong note", or "false note" as opposed to "wrong pitch".

    Would you prefer the term "tone"?
    "Clam" usually gets the idea across. If I'm the one who played it, I prefer, "Don't interpret during this chorus, please".

    More seriously, I thought it was this, from Wiki:


    Types of scale

    Scales may be described according to the number of different pitch classes they contain:

    Chromatic, or dodecatonic (12 notes per octave)
    Octatonic (8 notes per octave): used in jazz and modern classical music
    Heptatonic (7 notes per octave): the most common modern Western scale
    Hexatonic (6 notes per octave): common in Western folk music
    Pentatonic (5 notes per octave): the anhemitonic form (lacking semitones) is common in folk music, especially in Asian music; also known as the "black note" scale
    Tetratonic (4 notes), tritonic (3 notes), and ditonic (2 notes): generally limited to prehistoric ("primitive") music

  15. #14

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    Typical theory thread, lol.

  16. #15

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    I perfected this scale but now I learn it has too many notes and doesn’t exist.

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I perfected this scale but now I learn it has too many notes and doesn’t exist.
    ”Too many notes”, from Amadeus, the movie. Funny stuff.

  18. #17

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    I know that the common term for sounds emitted by instruments and voices is "notes".

    Musical questions often lead to confusion and frustration because the questions are posed in common language but the answers emerge from the hierarchy of musical definitions. This is not just the case of using the "right word"; the definition of the meaning of "note" needs to be correct before the definition of interval (distance between notes - in units of lines and spaces), etc.

    I'm not just poking fun. Even a mathematical approach will soon encounter inconsistencies if one has lost the distinction between ordinal and cardinal numbers, causing much confusion about intervals, scale degrees, and identifying frets and fret spans.

    This distinction between notes and pitches is not really trivial.

    If requested to play a C major scale ascending, what do you play?
    - C D E F G A B C (7 notes, 8 pitches)?
    - C D E F G A B (7 notes, 7 pitches, ending on B)?

    If requested to play a C major scale descending, what do you play?
    - C B A G F E D C (7 notes, 8 pitches)?
    - C B A G F E D (7 notes, 7 pitches ending on D)?
    - B A G F E D C (7 notes, 7 pitches, starting on B)?
    Last edited by pauln; 08-14-2020 at 12:14 AM.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by GTRMan
    Well that's getting kind of picky.

    Generally speaking, if one plays a C# by mistake when attempting to play a C, one would say "wrong note", or "false note" as opposed to "wrong pitch".

    Would you prefer the term "tone"?

    Barry Nettles describes the Diminished Scale as having 8 pitches and also 8 notes.
    Daniel Ricigliano - tones
    Dan Haerle - tones
    Paul Schmeling - notes
    Dick Grove - notes
    Mark Levine - notes
    Bruce Benward and Marilyn Saker - notes

    Close enough for me.
    Barry Harris also says ‘notes’

    OTOH ‘tone’ is more correct in the same way it is more ‘correct’ to say ‘minor seventh’ or ‘diminished fifth’ than ‘flatted’

    Jazz musicians in general also aren’t really theorists per se, and I think this is a good thing. It’s more important in classical theory to establish basic terms and build up and understanding. So terminology is more important... (BH is a stickler though.)

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Barry Harris also says ‘notes’

    OTOH ‘tone’ is more correct in the same way it is more ‘correct’ to say ‘minor seventh’ or ‘diminished fifth’ than ‘flatted’

    Jazz musicians in general also aren’t really theorists per se, and I think this is a good thing. It’s more important in classical theory to establish basic terms and build up and understanding. So terminology is more important... (BH is a stickler though.)
    Tone seems more descriptive. But then one definition of the word "note" is "tone".

  21. #20

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    Chord/Scale vs. Bebop Scales-jpg

    next

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by GTRMan
    Tone seems more descriptive. But then one definition of the word "note" is "tone".
    OK, this is super dry...

    But tone refers to the identity of that pitch - so the tone 'Eb' is one specific thing.
    But a note may or may not be the tone 'Eb'. So, three notes might all be the tone 'Eb'

    So, a diatonic melody that uses every diatonic note can be said to use 'seven tones' but it can at least that number of notes.
    A chord scale can be said to have seven or eight tones, but a player is obviously not limited to playing exactly that number of notes.

    These distinctions are particularly important to pitch class theory I expect.

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    OK, this is super dry...

    But tone refers to the identity of that pitch - so the tone 'Eb' is one specific thing.
    But a note may or may not be the tone 'Eb'. So, three notes might all be the tone 'Eb'

    So, a diatonic melody that uses every diatonic note can be said to use 'seven tones' but it can at least that number of notes.
    A chord scale can be said to have seven or eight tones, but a player is obviously not limited to playing exactly that number of notes.

    These distinctions are particularly important to pitch class theory I expect.
    Now this is just the kind of conceptual mischief I'm talking about and you have stuck your finger right in it raising the multifaceted term "tone". Tone is defined variously (inconsistently) as color, interval, note, and pitch. All of these definitions come out of the same manual of musical terms, original 1905, fifth ed. 1975.

    In music, the term tone may refer to sound quality, acoustic color, timbre, or character.
    Tone is also used as an indication of the little intervals - whole tone and half-tone (semi-tone). Here, tone means neither single notes nor pitches, but a relationship between the two. You can't play just "a whole tone" or a "half/semi-tone" without making two sounds, one with respect to the other.
    There is the tone cluster, which is notes, consecutive diatonic, pentatonic, or chromatic.
    There is tone color, which is sound quality.
    There is the tone poem, which is pitches or notes.
    There is the tone row, which is pitches (all 12 of them), self called "12 tone".


    I've decided to now refer to the Bop-tone scales from now on.

  24. #23

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    When quizzed about the harmonic analysis of bebop etc., Diz said something to the effect of "we fill up our measures with rhythm".

    So perhaps it's not just about chromaticism, but chromaticism with jazz rhythmic motivations.

    Some might say that the so-called bebop scales are just a primer for getting used to introducing chromatics in a rhythmically and harmonically logical manner. Then one keeps going...

  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by GTRMan
    When quizzed about the harmonic analysis of bebop etc., Diz said something to the effect of "we fill up our measures with rhythm".

    So perhaps it's not just about chromaticism, but chromaticism with jazz rhythmic motivations.

    Some might say that the so-called bebop scales are just a primer for getting used to introducing chromatics in a rhythmically and harmonically logical manner. Then you keep going...
    Well, yes, that's exactly it.

    Bebop scales in the David Baker sense are like the 'babba's first bebop' it's true. But still remarkably widely used. Anyone who has spent time transcribing will have spotted them in the wild all the time. So that's why they are still very much a thing.

    However, unless you've actually spent time with the Barry Harris added note scale stuff and really shedded it and worked through it, it might not be immediately obvious how far that stuff works into bop lines. It's really a way of going from scales into music. You aren't thinking in chord tones, but you are playing harmony. That's hard to understand unless you've done it, a lot. A lot of more chordal or harmony based approaches to jazz improv feel clunky, obvious and overly prescriptive by comparison.

    When playing changes, I no longer think about vertical harmony. I think about threading melodic lines through different generalised (usually dominant areas) and resolving to target chords. The harmony is emergent from the melody.

    But there's other ways to think about it. You can think about chord tones as accents in the line, and everything else as connecting material.

  26. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Well, yes, that's exactly it.

    Bebop scales in the David Baker sense are like the 'babba's first bebop' it's true. But still remarkably widely used. Anyone who has spent time transcribing will have spotted them in the wild all the time. So that's why they are still very much a thing.

    However, unless you've actually spent time with the Barry Harris added note scale stuff and really shedded it and worked through it, it might not be immediately obvious how far that stuff works into bop lines. It's really a way of going from scales into music. You aren't thinking in chord tones, but you are playing harmony. That's hard to understand unless you've done it, a lot. A lot of more chordal or harmony based approaches to jazz improv feel clunky, obvious and overly prescriptive by comparison.

    When playing changes, I no longer think about vertical harmony. I think about threading melodic lines through different generalised (usually dominant areas) and resolving to target chords. The harmony is emergent from the melody.

    But there's other ways to think about it. You can think about chord tones as accents in the line, and everything else as connecting material.
    Thread hijack:

    If you approach it that way you can get great results, referring to " threading melodic lines through different generalised (usually dominant areas) and resolving to target chords."

    But, suppose you approach a song by familiarizing yourself with the harmony and then scat singing a solo. Are you going to sing the same sort of solo that you got the first way?

    Or perhaps , it's the same thing expressed with different words?

    For myself, I know that what I scat sing and what my fingers find on their own are different. But, I'm not a great player with huge ears