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Bebop-specific pitch techniques

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#1 ·
Can you please help me identify Bebop specific pitch related techniques?
What I mean by that so that my question doesn't sound confusing as it is:

- What specific pitches, scale fragment outlines, etc. did majority of Bebop players favor?
Of course each master had his(her? ;)) own charachteristic arsenal of techniques but definitely they all had common techniques that made Bebop style so recognizable.

Example: perhaps a single trademark pitch-related technique is 3 to 9 gesture, for instance as Eb-G-Bb-D over C-min. (Or maybe better E-G-Bb-bD over C7)

What other pitch-specific outlines, or just single pitches were favored by Bebop musicians? Please name the context as well.

Please note that I'm not asking about abstract techniques such as for instance approach tones or tritone substitutions, though the latter would probably fit the subject.

I don't think if we generalize this subject for an average Bebop player it will sum up to over 10 such pitch-specific techniques. If it were the case the style would become too constricted and uncreative.
 
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#2 ·
Are you asking about favorite melodic motives/fragments? I don't know why you'd say it would typically be less than ten, I don't think that's correct. On the other hand, Bert Ligon's book (https://www.amazon.com/Connecting-C...86&sr=8-1&keywords=jazz+theory+linear+harmony) discusses three basic melodic "outlines" with variations that can get an improviser started navigating basic chord structures. It's a really excellent book, but three outlines do not constitute the whole universe of improvisational material for bebop or more generally as Ligon makes clear in his other excellent books.
 
#6 ·
Are you asking about favorite melodic motives/fragments? I don't know why you'd say it would typically be less than ten, I don't think that's correct.
...
I feared (oh, not so strong my feeling!) that I would be misunderstood.
Not exactly motives... though could be motives but related to specific chord-scale numbers like the 3-5-7-9 (b9) outline I mentioned, connecting the 3 to 9 pitches over minor or dominant harmonies. Of course it could be 3-b3-2-b2 as well or any other variation.
This is a characteristic BeBop sound that just jumps at you when you get into the style regardless of the player. They all used it.

What other chord-scale pitches (and short outlines) were favored by BeBop musicians?
 
#9 ·
Maybe? You are uncertain!
Why wouldn't you say: "Go and transcribe solos yourself! Until then you have no right to ask such a question." :)

Really, you are right. I'm a lazy bone... but I'm a late bloomer as well. If I had lots of time for transcribing among other tasks like working on scales/arpeggios/general technique transcribing would be on my list but... sorry.
 
#7 ·
Thanks, I have all those and more. Some briefly mention what I'm talking about but it's hard to find that information as it's usually hot highlighted - which is those book's faults.
Jerry Cocker talks about some of the techniques but his Book is an "improvisation reference manual" in a wider, not BeBop specific sense. Though a good one!
 
#11 ·
Let me tell you what I mean by all this if you are confused by my request.

There are people who quite correctly criticize David Baker's 3 Volume books on "How to Play Bebop".
He is not far from the truth but he simplifies some things. Mind you - he's done a great job in analyzing the style and laying it out for... ehhhh... less talented folks? Lazy folks? Not sure who else might benefit from his books. I'm sure all good/great players learned it by ear and they didn't need David Baker's books.

It would be silly to expect someone to read and master David Baker's books and in the end to play authentic Bebop style. What he does is theoreticizing and speculating on the style. Not a bad thing bur of course his method has limitations.

Any art music (including well forgotten Common Practice Period art music) is based on pitch collections and organizing those pitches into harmonic context / melodic structures (including scales and arpeggios) - and that's really all that there is to it.

However, what really differentiates the styles is emphasis on specific pitches in specific places, associated mostly with current harmonic context. I don't mean it's the only feature of music. There is rhythm of course and many regard rhythm one of the most important features of Jazz.

Interestingly enough BeBop in it's raw melodic form is very reminiscent of Baroque and Galant period styles.
 
#12 ·
Whenever I want to learn a style of music I listen and copy until I've internalized the genre and can play it without analyzing in the moment.
Takes some time. Right now i have to play some organ solos in rock and Reggae styles.
very different than sax.
 
#13 ·
WinnSie, this is an interesting question, for sure, and I don't think there's probably a definitive work that has addressed it as you've positioned it. Maybe it's something you could do: if you're academically-minded, you could potentially put together a study of a representative body of bebop improvisations by canonically-respected artists and see if you can find ten extremely common musical gestures that seem to be universal.

I think this will be challenging. Jazz, and bebop in particular, are very different culturally and historically from European art music. While bebop is easily as sophisticated as European art music, its genesis has much more in common with folk music in that it was a mostly aural tradition (even though the leaders of the movement were VERY well versed in functional harmony). Because of this, there weren't schools of bebop like there are schools of European music, and the primary record of bebop is in audio recordings, not in written sheet music or treatises.

Jazz scholarship is a relatively new thing and still struggling for recognition in the academic world, but there are probably a lot of opportunities for people who are interested in addressing questions like this if you're ready to put in some work.
 
#14 ·
Not clear what you are asking. You say you aren't wanting information on "typical licks or melodic patterns" which is how I would say the characteristic sound of bop solos is formed.

Then you add some other comments that I really don't understand, about art music and collections of pitches, and so on.

What made bebop sound like it does, is a combination of rhythmic practices and the use of certain notes over certain chords. This has been exhaustively written on (for example, sideslipping, tritone substitutions, emphasis on higher intervals (9, 11, 13) of chords, and so on).

If you want to see this stuff directly, in practice, I would recommend seriously shedding the Omnibook which is kind of the "bible of source material" for those of us who came along after the formative years of bop. You can take just a few bars and see what notes Bird was playing over a particular chord (it's not always "this chord = this scale"; that's an oversimplification). Playing through the stuff gets the SOUND of those usages into your ear. But the rhythmic patterns are a huge and integral part of it, too. Playing those solos gives you a real insight into how Bird played rhythmically. There are certain little patterns, both harmonic and rhythmic, that appear over and over.

I don't see the similarity of baroque to bop music, but to each his own.

Anyway, I would suggest going to the Omnibook, the recordings, and those things on each side of your head.
 
#17 ·
I don't think you completely misunderstand me. You just don't want to accept what I didn't elaborate on enough.
I'm sure you know who Thomas Owens is. I don't even ask a question whether you know that or not.

In his I-st volume he summarizes the harmonic-melodic style of Charlie Parker something like this (can't find the exact quote, sorry): "modified Common Practice Period". CPP of course spans larger time frame than Baroque only but if you are familiar with accompanied violin sonatas of Baroque period their overall construction and feel is quite similar to BeBop soloist lines over the rhythm section support.
The most obvious similarity between 2 styles is rather steady flow of the 8th notes with infrequent simple rhythmic motives. Most of the time motives are melodic.
I think no other style comes closer.

That actually explains what you woud be didn't understand: the collection of pitches and many melodic figures/motives of Baroque period are very similar to Bebop lines but BeBop extended and modified the harmony/melodic figures. By harmony I don't mean the harmonic support from the rhythm section but rather what soloist implies in his lines.

Of course Bebop is a little more than Charlie Parker though if you compare his style to styles of his "peers" you may ask a question: "Are they playing BeBop Light"?

Anyway in my original post I mentioned only one figure: 3 to 9 or 3 to b9 arpeggio. That was very characteristic of Bebop. The focus is clearly on "9 or b9" pitch.
What I was asking about is to help me identify other similar key pitches that were favored by Bebop players in certain places of the specific harmonic context if possible.

Not clear what you are asking. You say you aren't wanting information on "typical licks or melodic patterns" which is how I would say the characteristic sound of bop solos is formed.
Then you add some other comments that I really don't understand, about art music and collections of pitches, and so on.
...
I don't see the similarity of baroque to bop music, but to each his own.
Anyway, I would suggest going to the Omnibook, the recordings, and those things on each side of your head.
 
#15 ·
Another thing is that generally the test of a pattern has been whether it sounds right, not whether it fits a theoretical framework. Much has been made of the deep understanding of guys like Bird and Diz of music theory and their experimentation based on that.

What is never talked about, is all the experiments that they tried, based on an element of music theory, that sounded awful and never made it onto the bandstand. The ones they conceived based on theory and that sounded good, they kept using. But the final test was, does it sound good, not does it fit a theory.

I still maintain that other players, for example Hawkins, were playing as harmonically sophisticated stuff, and that it's the rhythmic vocabulary that really created bebop.
 
#18 ·
This is interesting. By the way, Baroque improvisation/composition practices arise from what "sounded good" exclusively based on the preceeding music practice experience.
J.S.Bach didn't know any "Theory of Harmony" and he never theoreticized his music practices. His compositional/improvisation skills were based entirely on practice.
Only in Romantic period which still belongs to CPP composers became more concerned about "Harmonic Theory" that by that time was well established.

I actually don't talk about Music Theory at all when asking to help me with the original subject.
A little clarification: Rackety Sax mentioned motives as something that might be of interest to me. Yes, to some extent. For instance, the ubiquitous 3 to (b)9 arpeggio is it but as I already mentioned that in this instance it focuses on specific pitch levels and clearly targets the (b)9.

Is it now clear what I'm asking about? Any more specific pitch-related examples of the BebBop style?
"Go and find it yourself in the OmniBook?" - thank you, that's very kind of you or anyone else who might give me that advice.

By the way, as I already mentioned, Charlie Parker's style may not be representative of the "core" Bebop. Many of his "peers" played less motivically and rhythmically sophisticated lines. Fats Navarro's lines are a good example of that. However he like many others had that "3 to (b)9" run in his arsenal.

Lastly, I feel that you try to convict me in being Theoretically biased. On the contrary, I don't ask about any rationale bihind using one or another pitch-related BeBop techniques. I only ask for practices that emphasized them. "Sounded good enough to make it to the bandstand" sounds good enough to me.

Another thing is that generally the test of a pattern has been whether it sounds right, not whether it fits a theoretical framework. Much has been made of the deep understanding of guys like Bird and Diz of music theory and their experimentation based on that.

What is never talked about, is all the experiments that they tried, based on an element of music theory, that sounded awful and never made it onto the bandstand. The ones they conceived based on theory and that sounded good, they kept using. But the final test was, does it sound good, not does it fit a theory.

I still maintain that other players, for example Hawkins, were playing as harmonically sophisticated stuff, and that it's the rhythmic vocabulary that really created bebop.
 
#19 ·
WinnSie, the type of academic distinctions you're looking for are not natural to most jazz musicians. When a jazz musicians mention "theory," they are not entering into a distinction between functional harmony or "theory of harmony" as you put it, vs. counterpoint or whatever Bach might have called his own perspective. Simply referring to pitches as scale tones or looking for a characteristic pitch collection would be considered a theoretical exercise to a jazz musician.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making between a pitch collection and a lick, though I assume that the pitch collection is less concerned with a particular order or beat placement? Again, this is not the way most jazz musicians think of bebop playing.

I agree with Turf3 that rhythm is the most definitive innovation of bebop. It's not always a purely rhythmic assessment... two strings of 8th notes starting and ending on the same beat are not necessarily the same rhythmic feel, especially in bebop. Where emphasis is placed within the line is a huge factor in making it sound like bop, and so is the placement of harmonic/melodic tension and resolution within the line.

I do see the similarities between Bird and Bach, particularly in regards to the tendencies of chord tones to fall in time with the tactus of the music, and specific licks of Bird's which I can identify in Bach's music nearly or exactly note for note.

I think your question is more of a musicology question than most of us are used to. If I were you, I'd look on facebook for some musicology groups, or look for musicologists who specialize in jazz to ask. By the way, Thomas Owens isn't the most well-known name among jazz musicians. Some will have his book, but the Omnibook (or the recordings themselves) is a much more common reference for bop musicians.
 
#23 ·
The labeling game can get tricky, but no, that's not bebop; I'd call it swing. Bird had to start somewhere.

There's another thread on here where we got into the fact that all the great innovators listened to, played, and absorbed elements of preceding styles in the process of creating something new (some posters on here argued against that idea, but the evidence is pretty clear when you listen to the earliest recordings of innovative jazz musicians).

I agree with those who point out you have to use your ears and listen closely to whatever genre of music you want to play.
 
#21 ·
1) never heard of Thomas Owens myself, and would be willing to bet that the vast majority of actual working jazz musicians have not either.

2) It's really not clear what your goal is. Are you seeking advice on learning how to play bebop solos in a convincing manner? In that case, I will stand by my advice to do less of this from-afar analysis and comparison to other forms of music, and more of playing from the Omnibook and similar materials, listening to the source recordings, and working it out for yourself. I can tell you all day long exactly how this or that artist played a particular set of notes over a particular harmony, in the most exacting detail, and my telling you will not do 5% as much to get you playing it as spending the same amount of time listening to the artist play that passage over and over and attempting to mimic it will. That is the nature of jazz. (Actually I probably could not tell you exactly how the artist did it, but I bet Dan P. could, he's more educated than I am on this stuff - for example, it appears he does know who Thomas Owens is...)

If, on the other hand, you are looking for a musicological analysis of particular intervals favored by bebop players (as, for example, McCoy Tyner's use of fourths), I would have to say that you're probably only going to get repetitions of the kind of responses I and others have given you. This isn't a particularly musicological group of people on this forum; rather a mix of professional players, part-timers, adult amateurs, repair men, and high school students.

My last point on this is that when all the responses seem to be non-responsive to what you appear to be asking, maybe you should read the responses more closely, they may be telling you something that you ought to pay attention to. In this case, it is the importance of finding out about this style of music for yourself by actual application, and the fact that this kind of analysis remains primarily an academic exercise of limited application on the actual bandstand.

Maybe you're asking a bunch of race car drivers a question about combustion theory.
 
#22 ·
Yes, I know Tyner's use of fourths is not really in the bebop style, I just used it as a really well-known and also really easy tp hear example of someone with very definite preferred intervals. Heck, on those rare occasions when I try to force myself to play lots of fourth-based patterns, I even sound faintly like McCoy Tyner even though I am playing it on sax.
 
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