How to REALLY play bebop blues 

Really good, thank you. I appreciate the effort that went into finding the harmonically correlated phrases from various recordings. Gives a sense of how Bird heard his way through the harmony.

I like the Major 6 as the "1" chord for a major blues. It feels peaceful and resolved, as it is based on the major pentatonic scale. And it's a more "old-school" sound that you hear in the 1930s swing and blues.

2:00: the sixth is common in this idiom. You find Paul Chambers’ bass lines loaded with sixths. Adding them adds motion to the harmony.

I love Barry Harris System. if we see the major as Maj6, then the Maj7 sound that we are so used to has already borrowed a note B from the Ddim7 to create the movement in playing the Maj7 arpeggios. Which means once we start to play 2 4 b6 7 with C6 we are creating harmonic movement.

nice analysis!

I’m starting to sound a bit better but when I listen back to what I played on a gig I only hear clams and how much work I need to do! Thanks for this post!

I always think about the #IVdim7 as a IV7b9 with the b9 on the bottom, just a different inversion of the chord before. And you could fit that theoretically into your analysis given that the F blues scale contains the b9 of Bb7.

Great lesson. Thanks

Really great lesson and analysis! Thanks!

That's really useful, thanks!

Very good stuff. Lots of great examples to show your points

Very clear and concise! Thanks

Very good lesson. Thank you.

Good stuff man!

What a brilliant breakdown!

Super interesting and informative.

great stuff! subed!

really helpful

I didn't even realize I had jazz anxiety until the moment I learned it was being monetized.

Hi great again, best way to play be-bop blues, learning from master, all is in that great lesson and for free .Blessings and greatings from FRANCE .Sorry for my English.

This into has me having LSD flashbacks

I love Now's the Time because a) it's a blues, b) it's the only Bird tune I can play! I can play C Jam Blues in other keys, though.

.D minor pentaonic is very playable over an F major- the accompanist can go ahead and add the E flat- for the Bflat 7th, i find the E natural more aggreeable, than E flat- the Bflat 7 aug.11 sound is very similar to a C7 natural 9, sharp 5- so the 4 chord is acting as a dominant- similar to D-7 flat 5 natural 9

Germane to your first argument, even if it's not Bird: every Barney Kessel blues I can think of (Basie's Blues being the most commonly referenced) starts with a I6, stated either in chord melody or as an arpeggio. Dominant 7 on the 1 sounds kinda 60s to me.

At the end of WWII The first bar was always a Bb6 which could also include a b7 - so a DOMINANT (add)13 - The Charlie Christian Tonic chord... and that's in all the early rock n roll too. Jump blues. Western Swing. Rockabilly. Straight dominant 7 chords are more of a 60s thing. I will skip any blues with bebop soling that starts on a Maj 7 - I don't want to hear that.

The soloist can play anything as long as he makes music out of it. The comper has to play the chart so the soloist knows what to expect. A major 7 passing note is fine over a minor chord but a major chord changes the key. I think they used a lot of dom7th chords just to kept it moving and you can play pretty free over them. Just my take

I've been digging into bird a bit recently and I've noticed that a lot of the time if you look at what he's playing on strong beats, it's almost always just the triad, no 7th or even 6th present. He also seems to have common triads he uses to express different tonal centres. Every bar 8 example you showed the strong beats spell out an F#diminished triad from G harmonic minor, like you pointed out. He also tends to use the Augmented triad from it's melodic minor. Obviously it's impossible to tell how he thought about improvising without asking him, but it seems that the idea of 7ths, on major, minor or dominant chords might have come later on in the history of jazz

I’ve been transcribing some of dex’s playing on blues walk and yeah he just straight up plays Fmaj6 or Fmaj7 on the first chord most choruses. He also will spend entire choruses riffing on a simple blues lick and then switch to perfectly outlining the changes with bebop lines in the next. I think switching approaches mid solo is really key to keeping the audience engaged and probably why dex got away with playing such egregiously long solos all the time lol.

Always the best content. Thank you, from Brooklyn NY. I want to take a lesson. Please give me the information if possible.

Great lesson, thanks.

very nice... jazz anxiety down about 15%.

Blues for Alice clearly starts with an Fmaj7 also

I just tried to push my own glasses up.

Wait a sec … is that actually a wound G string?!? Whoa! Hard Core! 😲

I thought this was common knowledge. The whole difference between blues blues and bop blues is that boppers treat the one chord more like it’s in a traditional key. That’s the way I teach it, and more or less the way I was taught (though my teachers weren’t always as clear and explicit as I would have liked). Cheers for a great video 😊

Really good, thank you. I appreciate the effort that went into finding the harmonically correlated phrases from various recordings. Gives a sense of how Bird heard his way through the harmony.