Peter and Adam are here to make some serious claims about the Bebop Scale. What do you think about this scale? Check out Chris Park's newest video here!↓ • The 15 Notes You NEED ...
David Baker is going to haunt you in your sleep. From the history I've read David Baker who was basically same age as Barry Harris is the one who came up with label Bebop scales. David Baker came up with his pedagogy for teaching Jazz before Barry Harris started teaching his. Seems like they both taught similar things but they used different labels for things.
Ha! This was exactly my reaction. I originally learned all of this from David Baker's books. (And what sticks out in my memory wasn't "scales", but "chord tones on down beats", and all the different ways to do that.) Then in the last few years on these Internet videos it's become standard to lump this into the Barry Harris approach, and I always thought but what about Baker!? In my mental picture, Barry Harris's system revolves around alternating maj6 resolutions and diminished tensions up a scale of chords. It's like he took the major bebop scale and made a system of harmony, tension, and release out of it. Whereas David Baker was more directly giving rules and norms of bebop language where chord tones are on downbeats, and approach tones, chromaticism, arpeggios, and patterns are used to put lines together. I've been thinking about it a lot recently in terms of being skeptical of "systems" and reverting back to methods to get a certain sound, as a kind of antidote to the trend of online lessons, e.g., going back to David Baker's lessons over Barry Harris's. In that sense, this video is coming at an interesting time for me with a similar but different perspective on it.
Don't get me wrong I love David Baker & Barry Harris both. But my musical DNA was originally given to me by David Baker. So it's nice to see his place in the history of bebop education acknowledged.
Many years ago I attended a Guitar Workshop at Duquesne University. Jimmy Bruno was one of the teachers. He drew a circle diagram showing 7 Notes of the C Major Scale "inside the circle" and 5 Chromatic Notes "outside the circle". To my mind, I think what Jimmy was suggesting was to mostly create melodies and phrases using the Major Scale and then use your ear and musical intuition to add in any of the 5 Chromatic Notes whenever they sound good. I think you can create a lot of interesting improvising vocabulary on your own using this Simple Concept. Thank you for your consideration.
I would love to see a deeper dive on this concept, if it has not been covered in a previous video. Is the main idea basically adding some bebop flavor to whatever scale or chord you are working in? Is that different than applying bebop enclosures? Great stuff. Thanks!
Just reverse your melodic direction sometimes in short-scale fragments and that's where enclosures come from. It's an insanely broad subject but I have some good resources on it
Nice job guys. I too would love a deeper dive into exercises from the Barry Harris approach. Also. I love the intro/exit tune to the podcast. Where can I hear the whole thing. Sheetmusic?
"Emotion in Motion" by Peter Martin. Sheet music: www.openstudiojazz.com/emotion-in-motion Track: open.spotify.com/track/1t6KOeUucV53HTjhZIgGA4?si=c780e749f6b44233
@7:06 I'm a bit embarrassed. I've been trying to understand this language for years now and I just noodled around chord tones with adding swing and chromaticism but hearing this and solidifying this understanding makes me sound more "bebop." Now I'm looking forward to practicing this in all the keys. Practicing licks in all keys wasn't a problem but moreso trying to get that swing bebop sound that flows seamlessly was. Thanks a bunch for this, I'm looking forward for this year to get this under my fingers.
Harris and Baker present their concepts very differently. Had to unlearn stuff here as well. Thankful to have discovered Harris, albeit later in my musical development. Cheers, Daniel
Would love to hear y’all’s thoughts on Bert Ligon’s book “connecting chords with linear harmony” to me it’s the most accurate system I’ve seen for what’s actually happening in bebop vocabulary. The title says it all 😊
Or… you can just experiment and use your ears. 😅 Sure, Barry and David (I studied with David) each have a system that can lead the total neophyte (often the classical player who has never listened to jazz and/or doesn’t know where to begin with it) into the general territory of bebop, but it’s up to each student to personalize/expand the elements of the system. The thing is, if you already intuitively grasp bop, you’re already subconsciously employing these elements and already have your own way of communicating them. If that’s the case, there’s no need- despite what the super-talented-but- super-opinionated BH might claim- to “unlearn” anything and to scrap what’s already intuitively grasped so you can learn “the right” system or method. (Barry was famous for HATING Bill Evans, and he also verbally swatted down the great Fred Hersch- with whom I also studied- when Fred humbly and respectfully offered an idea that varied from Barry’s own.) Regarding systems in general, I tend to defer to the old saying, “Evil is the rock upon which every system eventually shipwrecks,” lol.
Based on my reading of David Baker and Jerry Bergonzi, this video from TILF sounds a lot like the bebop scale: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-A1TcQiWm888.html. It's all the same stuff, a pedagogical tool for helping people learn how to construct lines with a good sense of rhythm.
