Tag Archives: bebop scale guitar

5 Of My Favorite Bebop Shortcuts To Fix Your Jazz Phrasing

When I was still just getting into playing Jazz, before I moved to the Netherlands, then I often found it very frustrating that I knew what scale to play, the arpeggio of the chord, and all those basic things, but I still couldn’t get it to sound right.

The lines that I played in my solos were correct but way too boring:

At the time I was checking out solos from Parker, Joe Pass, and a Danish Jazz guitarist called Jakob Fischer, and the way their lines flowed were much more elegant:

But while I mostly understood the notes and how it worked with the chords then I could not make my own version of it.

The solution sort of came from two things: Going to Barry Harris workshops in the Hague where I later went to study, and then those solos that I was checking out. Barry could really explain Bebop melodies in ways that made sense, and that also taught me more about how to break down the phrases I found in solos so that I could make them into more flexible chunks and get into my own playing.

That is what I am going to show you here, Let’s get to the first Building block which you might recognize from the previous example.

#1 Beautiful Bebop Interval

One of the problems in the boring line is that the melody is super predictable in how it flows which makes it heavy and not very interesting in terms of rhythm. In fact, all of these blocks are really about adding rhythm to your lines, because that is what Bebop is all about.

Here’s a great way to change the melodic direction by adding a lower chord tone, in this case, the 5th of the chord, and a chromatic passing note, it is actually a Barry Harris technique, but I’ll explain that later.

And that can be put into a lick like this:

But you can use this on other chords as well, on a G7 where the 3rd is B and the fifth is D:

or on a maj7 chord also going from the 3rd down to the 5th (show the lick Ex 7)

So you can see how you can easily move it around in the scale and have your melodies come more alive. The next one is taking this and going a step further.

#2 Beautiful Bebop Interval 2.0

Now that you have the large interval skip you can also add a leading note to that low chord tone and that really works:

And, of course, this can become a line:

Again this will easily work on a G7 as well, giving you something like this:

A side-note to these two examples is that you can see them as part of Barry Harris’ chromatic scale where he essentially sets up a system for adding leading notes, where anything can be a leading note, and that gives you some really amazing options, I’ll link to my video on that in the description of this video.

Make it your own!

An important thing to keep in mind is that you want to use these to develop your own material, so make variations of them, and explore what you can turn them into because that is where they really become valuable.

A few basic takes on the first two blocks could give you:

So there are all these things you can create from this and they all work. Let’s explore a way of changing up the rhythm by adding embellishments which is a little less complicated than these large intervals.

#3 The Triplet trill

It is nice to have material that is easy to throw in there and that change things up so you are not stuck with endless rows of 8th notes, again this is about rhythmic and melodic variation.

Let’s say you are playing a line like this:

But you can add a bit of energy to the first part of the line by playing it like this

And that trill is essentially just this phrase:

I think you want to play this with legato to get it to sound good, because playing it picking all the notes just doesn’t sound as good 99% of the time.

This little phrase can be used in so many ways. If you combine it with an Em7 arpeggio it is great for a Cmaj7 chord:

Or if you move it in the scale and add a leading note then you have a Dm7 lick:

In those Barry Harris Masterclasses, I remember Barry referencing this as a Parker thing when he added it to the solo line he was working on, but I am not sure if he always did that, it is certainly something you will find only in Parker solos, it is all over Bebop, and maybe a little less in Hardbop.

When it comes to learning this, then being practical is usually more efficient than being systematic, so an easy way to start exploring this in a scale is really just to move from string to string and see where it is easy to play, and from that try to see where you can use it, which for this position could give you an exercise like:

And an ascending where you are adding that leading note could then be:

Let’s take a look at another important trill to use, so that you never get stuck with 8th-note sickness again.

#4 The 16th Note Trick

This is also really easy to insert into your lines, notice that it again is easier to play it with legato technique, especially for higher tempos, but here you can actually get away with picking the notes as well.

Like this it sort of works as an enclosure for the note F and if you add an Fmaj7 arpeggio you have a great Dm7 line:

Again you can try to move that around to other strings, if I start on E on the G string then it can become a great line like this:

Which is obviously a lot more interesting than:

And here again, you can explore it by moving it around, and see what is practical for you, which is also how I came up with this exercise:

It is about using it!

As you can tell, then I am focusing on how you can use these phrases not only how to play them, and that is because I think that is way more important. In the long run, you want to make it a part of your playing, and your sound and you do that by learning the concept, not just a lick. Which is also really what Barry Harris taught by moving things around the scale and how to make phrases into exercises. Let’s make arpeggios more Bebop!

#5 The Other Triplet Arpeggio

This is different form the Bebop arpeggio that ou probably already know, with a triplet and a leading note:

Another approach that is also really useful is to play arpeggios like this:

This is especially great for targeting the 3rd f the chord, so for a Dm7 you can use an Am7 arpeggio and get a line like this:

And it also is a great way to get the transition from Dm7 to G7:

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The 5 Bebop Facts That Will Help You Learn Faster

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Bebop was not invented on guitar, and some of the ways we usually learn things on the guitar works against learning to play Jazz or Bebop, but there are a few basic but important things that will help you think about playing Jazz in a different way so you don’t waste your time practicing the wrong things.

Getting Into Jazz and Learning Bebop

When I was starting out trying to learn to play Jazz then I was doing the same thing that everybody else does, I was working on scales and arpeggios and learning some solos hoping to combine that into something that would be my own Bebop solos. But, it doesn’t really work like that, you don’t learn a language by only learning the alphabet, which is obvious because a lot of very different languages use the same alphabet,

So even though we all use the same notes then we need to practice different words. So transferred to music: Different exercises will be useful depending on what style of music you play.

When it comes to learning Bebop then I always relied on analyzing solos that I transcribed myself or what I could get my hands on written out, but a major breakthrough was going to a Barry Harris workshop at the Conservatory in the Hague. He showed us exercises that were tailor-made playing Bebop and that really helped my playing get a lot better.

One Octave Arpeggios Rule In Bebop

One of the first things that I learned from Barry Harris, that really was a game-changer for me was that you should practice the arpeggios as one-octave diatonic arpeggios in a scale.

The reason for this is pretty simple, that is how they are most often used in Bebop solos as you can see in this transcription of Charlie Parker’s solo on the blues Billie’s Bounce.

If that is how you want to sound then it is probably more useful to practice playing arpeggios like that instead of only working on complete positions all the time.

Another advantage to this exercise is that the arpeggios are connected to the scale and you can use the other scale notes to make lines as well as the arpeggio, it is not an isolated thing like a separate arpeggio position.

There is another huge benefit to working on arpeggios like this, but I will cover that later in the video.

Scale Patterns Are For Heavy Metal

I have often heard people writing off Bop solos as patterns and scale runs, but that really sells short what is going on, it actually doesn’t describe it at all. Jazz is not that pattern-based. In fact, saying that any style is just a bunch of patterns strung together is probably untrue, maybe, except metal as the Ikea-Shredder Yngwie Malmsteen demonstrates playing his favourite 4-note scale pattern on YouTube

A Bebop line is like this:

Comparing it with this “yngwie”-Bop:

Learning To Compose Bebop Lines

For Jazz you don’t want to spend too much time on mechanical scale patterns in your practice, the goal is to do exercises that help you come up with Bop melodies, and it is not just rules and mathematical equations that create the melodies.

Take these two exercises:

And using that material you want to work on combining them in a lick like this:

Melodies Built Around The Chords

So if the solo is not just scales and scale patterns and not just arpeggios, then what is going on?

The arpeggios are often central in the melodies, and the melodies are created around the arpeggio notes. If you take the opening phrase of the Parker Solo:

It is really just an F major triad with phrases leading into each note and the chord tones are placed on the beat. You should also notice that the b7 is introduced later in the line announcing that the chord is changing to Bb7. Parker does this very often.

You want to work on hitting chord tones on the strong beats, 1 and 3 to get the sound of the chord across. You also want to practice creating melodies by adding scale notes and chromatic passing notes around those notes because THAT is what these melodies mostly are, and that is what you should practice creating.

Endless Long 8th Note Lines

A cliché description of a Bebop solo is that it is an endless line of 8th notes that never stops and weaves through the changes. I know that in one of my favorite books, Joe Pass Guitar Style, Joe Pass emphasizes the importance of developing the skill of playing continuous 8th notes through a progression, but if you listen to this Parker Solo then it is clear that Bebop is not only long rows of 8th notes. In fact, there is a LOT of space in this solo and the rhythms are not often 8th note runs, so being aware of rhythms, leaving space, phrasing across the bar line, and working with embellishments and triplets are great things to learn to use and to make a part of your sound.

Being aware of this and listening to Parker and Pass playing actually solos will teach you a lot more than a book anyway…

Let’s look at how the arpeggio exercise that I started with can make your life easier and give you more stuff to use in solos.

You Can Use Different Arpeggios On One Chord

If you look at what Parker is playing in the solo then there are a few spots where he is playing a different arpeggio than the chord that is used.

In the 3rd chorus on the Bb7 he uses Dø and

on the D7 he is using F# diminished:

What he is really doing here is that he is using the arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord.

If you take the scale that goes with a Bb7 then you have this scale which you might call a Bb dominant scale or an Eb major scale: Bb C D Eb F G Ab Bb Bb7: Bb D F Ab And If I instead play the arpeggio that you have on D then you get D F Ab C which is Dø

In the same way you have D7(b9) coming out of G harmonic minor (highlight D7 in G harmonic minor)

And the arpeggio on F# in G harmonic minor is an F# dim arpeggio: F# A C Eb

So in that way you have more arpeggios that work over the chords, and you also want to notice how it sounds great to play them as triplets to change up the line. That really adds energy!

There are a few more Barry Harris exercises that are almost great licks in themselves, but I will save those for another video.

Don’t Get Stuck In Bars And Chords

Until now the things that I have talked about are pretty straight forward and the point has been that Bebop improvisers work with the chords as a simplified version of the melody to create their solos. But you can also choose to mess around with the chord progression.

In the first chorus Parker is just playing F7 for the first 4 bars:

But in the 3rd chorus he is clearly going to Bb7 even hinting ad Bbm6 to go back to F

Another thing that he uses is to play over the barline as he does in this example, where he doesn’t really resolve the C7 until beat 2.

Working on being able to improvise with the chord progression and the barlines like this is something that can make your solo much more surprising and interesting, you just have to watch out that you don’t get lost.

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Why You Need To Learn Bebop Themes If You Want To Play Jazz

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Learning Jazz Guitar you probably already discovered that some skills are a lot more difficult to internalize and also hard to improve with exercises in the way that you can practice scales and arpeggios. The things that I am talking about here are skills like rhythm, phrasing, and vocabulary. These topics require a lot of work, but one very effective way to get improvement is to start learning Bebop themes and let those Bebop themes teach you, to paraphrase a famous jazz guitarist.

What is a Bebop Theme Anyway?

When I am talking about Bebop themes in this video, then I am referring to the types of melodies that you find in pieces by people like Charlie Parker, John Lewis, Bud Powell, and others. Usually, they are written using standard progressions, and especially often on Blues and Rhythm Changes. To name a few famous examples, Donna Lee which is probably by Miles Davis, or Parker’s Anthropology, or Dizzy Gillespie’s Groovin High.

What is great about bebop themes is that essentially they are melodies that are written out Bebop solos, so the melody in a Bebop Theme is similar to a bebop solo and not a vocal melody as you find on a great American songbook Jazz standard like the one shown below:

A Quick Win And A Stepping Stone

The immediate bonus here is that when you learn a Bop theme then you are studying a solo and really getting that type of melody and phrasing into your ears and fingers.

One of the best ways to improve phrasing and vocabulary is to learn solos by ear. You have probably heard me and a lot of others say that often. The problem with this is that solos are long, they don’t repeat that many things and they are difficult to both learn and remember.

Since Bebop themes are complicated melodies similar to Bebop solos then they are not as easy to memorize or play like a “normal” Jazz Standard melody, but the fact that the theme is a lot shorter and also often has more repetition means that learning Bop themes is a bit like a fast-food version of transcribing, and unlike most fast food it is actually good for you.

So if you are new to learning Jazz solos by ear, what we call transcribing even though there is not necessarily any writing involved, then an easy way to get started is to learn some bebop themes by ear.

What Will You Learn?

There are quite a few things that you develop by playing Bebop themes. Let’s have a look at some of the benefits:

Technique and Fretboard Knowledge

When you are playing this type of vocabulary then you have to figure out how to execute some pretty difficult music, and obviously, that is good for your technique and while figuring out how you can play the phrases then you are most likely going to move around a bit and find a practical place on the neck where you can play it, so in that way it is also a useful exercise for your fretboard knowledge.

Phrasing and Rhythm

Studying and learning Bebop lines, and especially when you also (of course) checking out recordings of the song, is going to develop your phrasing. Playing along with a recording and really listening to how a piece of music is phrased is probably the most efficient way to learn to phrase, and I have used Bop themes for myself but certainly also for my students with great success when it comes to improving phrasing. Another exercise that I also see work really well is to write easy solos for students and teach them to play it along with a recording of it. This is also a major part of what people learn in my course the Jazz Guitar Roadmap. One thing is to understand what to play, but it is much more useful to hear it and to experience how it feels to play it with good phrasing.

Vocabulary

My friends over at the Guitar Hour Podcast are often finding themselves discussing what studying vocabulary and language actually is, and it is a term that does not always mean the same thing from lesson to lesson or teacher to teacher. So to me, the point of developing your vocabulary is that you can create and play lines or melodies that sound in-style for a specific genre, in this case, Bebop. So when you are working on vocabulary, then you are, hopefully, taking melodies or licks and using them to help you get better at improvising in the same style. That does not have to mean playing licks all the time, but it is more about learning the language or style by example, which is not that far from how we learn actual languages.

From this point of view then playing Bebop themes are exposing you to those phrases and you internalize examples of how those melodies sound, and how they work which will help you hear phrases like that internally, something that is a part of being able to play solos in that style, but not the only thing you need to do. If you stick with the language analogy then I would describe this as being able to listen to a language and understand it, but not being able to speak it. In fact, that is how I learned Dutch, with an odd period where I understood most things but never could take part in a conversation because it was all passive.

And if you like podcasts then check out the Guitar Hour Podcast for some interesting discussions about pretty much everything guitar-related. They are often what I spend time doing when I am driving long trips, and I am not only saying that because I won the quiz they had at the end of the year.

You can check it out here: https://theguitarhour.libsyn.com/

How Should You Study?

A huge part of what is practical about Bebop themes is that they are shorter than solos and generally also more repetitive. This means that they are simply less information to learn, but they still have important and very useful information.

You will probably benefit from learning and practicing them in any possible way, but there are a few things I would suggest you consider:

Learning by Ear

If you learn the theme by ear then you don’t have to worry about mistakes in a real book or Omnibook, and while it may seem more difficult in the beginning, then the time you need to spend listening to it to figure it out will probably mean that actually learning to play it will take less than half the time because you already know what it sounds like. Using the ability to slow down recordings can be very helpful, but watch out that you don’t overdo it so that you only hear a note and not the phrase.

This is also often overlooked when it comes to checking out transcriptions vs learning solos by ear. If you learn it by ear then you don’t have to worry that much about learning to play it.

If you want to check out some solos to train your ear then have a look at this post:

The Solos You Want To Learn By Ear To Play Better Jazz Guitar

Playing along with recordings

The most efficient way to learn phrasing from studying Bebop themes is to really dig into the way it is played and try to learn the phrasing of somebody performing it. By really experiencing how the melody sounds and how the phrases are played you can develop your own ability to hear and play lines with that type of phrasing.

Of course, this is a lot easier if you also check it out by ear, because you then have already listened to the melody a lot and probably already know how it is phrased, that aspect is already in there.

It is a lot more difficult if you are reading the melody and have to internalize the phrasing from a much more abstract medium like sheet music (of some form).

That said, learning bebop themes and playing them with the recording is never a waste of time, and often also a fun challenge.

What More Can You Get Out Of It?

Now you already know how studying bebop themes will help your phrasing, technique, and ear-training. But of course, it can also be put to use to develop your vocabulary.

The melody is a bebop solo used as a theme so analyzing, studying, and using it as licks can be very useful. Especially if you can find small fragments that you can make variations of and turn into new vocabulary, rather than just quoting the theme. It can also be very useful to start analyzing the melody and understand some of the melodic techniques used since there are quite a few things that are very typical to Bebop that you can check out and use as a way to create your own licks.

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Bebop Magic – One Of The Best And Most Difficult Things About Jazz

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One essential part of Bebop lines and melodies that you need to check out is octave displacement. It is a simple technique, but you need to understand how to use it if you want to really nail the Bebop sound. That is what I want to show in this Jazz Guitar Lesson.

One of the great typical or cliché phrases in Bebop sounds like this:

and actually, that is just a way of playing this line which sounds about 5% as interesting:

I am sure you want your solos to sound like the first phrase, I know I do…

The difference between those two is that in the middle of the first example then the melody moves up an octave in a way that sounds both beautiful and interesting. This is mostly referred to as octave displacement, and you can use this for a lot of great things, and that is what I want to talk about in this video.

What is Octave Displacement

This technique or way of making melodies is called a few things, mostly it is referred to as Octave displacement, but you will also hear, among others, Barry Harris call some of them pivot arpeggios and different ways of looking at them will give you different ideas for using it, as you will see later in the video.

The concept is fairly simple, if you have a scale melody then you can move a part of the melody an octave, just like you saw above:

And you can do this in other places as well:

Another variation could be this:

But here the skip is placed so that the high note is on the beat, and that works but are not as catchy as the other one in terms of phrasing.

But of course, you can also use this on arpeggios to get some really beautiful melodic interval skips in your lines.

I was always drawn to licks like this when I was beginning to learn Jazz, and I was trying really hard to make lines that had larger intervals, but they always sounded unnatural and weird, not like the Pat Martino or Charlie Parker lines that I was transcribing and checking out. It wasn’t really until I went to a Barry Harris workshop that I started to understand how this worked and got some tools to start to incorporate it into my playing.

Pivot Arpeggios

A great way to make your lines less one-directional (B-roll) and add some great twists and turns is to use this on arpeggios.

The concept is pretty simple, instead of playing an ascending arpeggio like this:

Here I am playing first a chromatic enclosure and then the Bø, so the arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord, over a G7 and resolving this to the Cmaj7.

If you turn into the Bø arpeggio into a pivot arpeggio then you get an example like this:

Here you play the B and then you move down the rest an octave to get a nice descending 6th interval.

Strategies For Making Better Lines

And of course, you can extend this to other chords as well and use it to make your lines more interesting with a few adjustments.

Look at this fairly basic Bop-line:

We have an Fmaj7 arpeggio on Dm7, so the arpeggio from the 3rd, then a chromatic enclosure to take us to G7 where the line is built around a G7 arpeggio and a scale run G7b9 sound, and finally an Em7 arpeggio on Cmaj7, so again the diatonic arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord.

This is all pretty solid but you can add pivot arpeggios to this fairly easily like this:

Here I am moving the first note of the Fmaj7 arpeggio up an octave, and later also making the Em7 a pivot arpeggio

But you can also apply this to the G7 bar:

Now the G7 arpeggio in the beginning of the G7 bar is turned into a pivot arpeggio, and you can see that the pivot technique also often works on inversions of an arpeggio since the G7 arpeggio is in fact an inversion with the 3rd as the lowest note.

Displacing David Baker – Aiming for a single note

This is a very specific example, but it I find that there are so many great lines to get from this that it should be included, and you can also add some nice chromatic things with this.

You, of course, already know the David Baker Lick, in part thanks to David Baker but probably also thanks to Adam Neely:

Using this lick with octave displacement can give you not only some of my favourites but also some Charlie Parker and George Benson favourites, (whoever you feel is more important as an influence 🙂)

Let’s look at one way to understand the construction because actually, it is just a scale run with some passing notes.

Clearly, the G, Gb , F is scale melody with a Gb leading note. E to D is also clearly step-wise. So only the A is a bit odd, but you may know how Barry Harris talks about adding “half-steps” between notes that are already a half step apart. His concept is that in that case, you can use any note as a “half-step” and here we are using the A. So in that respect the lick is a scale run with two added “half-steps”, the Gb and the A

And that A is a great candidate for octave displacement, like this:

This already sounds great and is something you will find in a lot of George Benson and Grant Green lines, but you can also add an extra leading note:

Which sounds amazing, and you can make it a short turn as well, something that I have found with Doug Raney:

Just to give you an impression of how this can be put to use you can check out this II V I lick:

In this lick, I am using the octave displaced licks on the Dm7 chord and on the Cmaj7 chord.

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This Is Why You Should Study Bebop

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You have probably heard people say that you have to check out and learn Bebop in order to learn Jazz Guitar. That in itself can cause some discussion and I am not going to go into that too much in this Bebop lesson.

I think the point I want to make is more than studying bebop is a really efficient way to add what most of us consider Jazz sound to our playing. And there are some things that are just so great in Bebop that you really want to check out, so in this video, I am going to explore some amazing sounding lines that are so pure in that style and you want to know them as well.

I am also throwing in an unwelcome truth or two along the way.

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Content:

Content:

00:00 Intro

00:44 Lick #1 – Bebop Voice-leading and How my solo sucked

3:03 Variation on Lick #1

3:56 What is the point of studying this

4:22 Do you have to become a Bebop monk?

5:14 Lick #2 from Parker: Playing the arpeggio But not just running the changes

5:50 Bebop scales – Creative vs Systematic?

7:02 Basic Arpeggios but very melodic!

7:44 Several voices in one melody

8:51 What should you practice? Maybe do what Barry Harris does!

9:54 Making A Similar Lick for Rhythm Changes

10:45 Octave Displacement = INSTANT JAZZ!

11:01 Example 4

11:59 Example 5

12:26 Bebop is not about Scales

13:09 Example 6

14:21 Improve your phrasing and solos

14:31 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page.

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Major Scales – This Is What You Should Practice

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This question comes up again and again: “How do I practice the major scale” and it is important to get this right so you don’t waste time working on scales or miss important exercises. In this video, I am going to show you what I think you should include in your practice and also show you why with some musical examples. You want to get this right and not waste your time with this aspect of your routine so that you have time to learn to play as well and practicing this way will give you vocabulary too. I will also talk about why I find bebop scales to be a waste of time and bad for your creativity.

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Practice Major Scales like this and You will get more out of it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXIJdBWNyVQ&list=PLWYuNvZPqqcG_YgSiib6TzQ1sSupO84zf

The Most Important Scale Exercise In Jazz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ze22BNftAA&list=PLWYuNvZPqqcFpoIE_ZZirjiWOp84yYbAS&index=10&t=0s

Joe Pass – From the Vault: https://open.spotify.com/album/6RRyVVMofYvprSf4fJViho?si=3w9kvUXzQGihQNsfwIzr4g

Content:

0:00 Intro

0:40 Basic Scale – Positions and systems are not that important

1:39 CAGED, Berklee, 3NPS?

1:59 What Types of exercises

2:24 Diatonic 7th Chord Arpeggios – Here’s Why!

3:27 Examples from Joe Pass and Kurt Rosenwinkel

4:44 Diatonic Triads

5:01 Pat Metheny and Grant Green

6:25 Diatonic 3rds – Make it more playable

7:23 Adding Chromatic Passing Notes to your exercises and vocabulary

8:00 Bebop Scales – Be Creative not Systematic

8:56 Add some variation and open up your playing with All the other things

9:10 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page

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