An Introduction to the Bebop Language. Bill Evans' solo on "Night and Day" 

You are in for a lifetime of pleasure.

Harry Giovanoni I love Peri’s Scope, that album Is called Portrait in jazz. Featuring Paul Motion And Scott LaFaro

Sunday at the Village Vanguard . I love that "The Monet of the Piano" quote. His life, Trane and Miles' lives, are fascinating for me.

Sugar Plum is one of my favorites!!

Found your recommendation 6 years after you posted it. Fascinating, and I've only watched the first 4 minutes. I'll be watching the whole thing. Thanks so much for posting - that's a gem I had no idea even existed!

All his solo breaks are amazing. He offers in those the best introduction to his solos

That's more important!

@@DavidBennettThomas Yes! 🙃

also weird that he does it on a Gbdim7 (enharmonically F#dim7)

@@dishwasherdetergent3366 harmonically it´s quite similar

@@andrewei609 in fact i find cole porters use of gb diminished instead of f#m7 more interesting because you can consider f#m7 part of the chromatically descending progression of the latter 8 bars in each section

Yes, myself i find a lot of those terms very specific. To much names.

what's mythical about modes?

Have you ever met Jamey? He's a very nice person and he has helped to keep jazz alive. Most people who study jazz won't continue to play it, but if they understand it, maybe they will support it. Jamey helps people to understand jazz.

Modes are just a way of conceptualising harmony, they emerge when you view harmony from a modal perspective. Personally I've moved away from this kind of perspective, but others find it very helpful.

Barry Harris would like to know your location 😂

“Modes only exist in books, never on the bandstand”- Jimmy Bruno

Sure! Glad you like it :)

I’m back here 7 months later, and WOW. I’m definitely starting something with all this info. This is great!

@@jkrai9684 how about now? i'm in the same position you were in at the start

Jarutas Kitsaad You've probably already moved on or figured this out. When it says "chord suggests" it means that Bill is playing something over a chord as if it were a different chord. He is IMPLYING a different chord, he is suggesting something other than what is written as the chord.

Half diminished which is m7b5

@@7khon731 Gotcha, thanks!

motocyclin3 I use Sound Studio. There are lots of apps to slow down music and keep it at pitch.

+motocyclin3 try transcribe

You can also slow down the speed in the video (and others) by pressing the Settings button and adjust to speed to half (0.5)! hope this helps.

To my and my piano it sounds like G#maj7(#11) and the rest of the bridges have the same harmony (bass lines)

True but not that much. Clearly he has major bebop influence, he uses the same devices and play several of the same tunes. What you are doing is justifying the final sound of Bill Evans like it has only one angle of doing so. Saying that someone changed the way we play is not a way to analise. Yes, he played modal ideas, but he also played a lot of bebop music. Of course Evans is Evans, but a lot of Evans is Bebop, just like every single one of those players you mentioned are.

Bill Evans completely absorbed the bebop language, he had loved and studied Bud Powell, along with numerous others - he used this as a jumping off point, along with his deep knowledge of classical music's various composers and eras, to create his own highly distinctive and influential approach to harmony, melody and rhythm. You can hear that in this solo and in many others - check out "Minority" from "Everybody Loves Bill Evans", as another great example. Classifying Evans as a modern modal player is way too simplistic - sure he was one of the first too master that approach, but he absorbed that too, along with his bebop and classical background, all into a completely individual voice. If you want to study a more straight ahead bebop solo I suppose you could take one by Bud's or Barry Harris, but this solo demonstrates how that bebop foundation can be extended, how it's a musical approach that has wonderful implications beyond it's origins - bebop language continues to evolve in the hands of a master player and musical mind.

+MrEdium So, please do your own analysis of the solo from above and actually come up with your proof Bill Evans is playing modal. I am waiting.

Bebop is a language and Bill Evans utilizes the bebop language to create his own style. Sure, He can play modal jazz and go beyond bebop, but his jazz approach is rooted in the bebop language. Your statement is uneducated and incompetent.

This solo doesn't contain any modal stuff per se. That's not to say that he was incapable of it. Check out his solo in "So What" if you want modal Evans. Also Evans' early stuff (Everyone's Talking about Bill Evans, or Conception) are really just extensions of Bud Powell type lines, and over the years his style changed and grew more "impressionistic" with more parallel chords and locked hands stuff. His late stuff got very dense and almost Scriabin-like in places. He was a restless soul, and within the confines of his style he was always searching, even if it isn't so obvious on the first listen.

Sound Studio.

Cool, thanks

It's displacement, just a creative technique.