The argument is hot. Hectolitres of ink (real and virtual) have been spilled to compile countless studies, research, publications and social posts. Long-standing friendships have been shattered, famous musical groups have been disbanded, fierce enmities have arisen.
Well, you might say, it is not rocket-science to develop a phrase, making use of concepts like target notes, tension and resolution, melodic skeleton and so on and so forth…but what happens when the underlying harmony change?
Well, we discussed how the concept of “tripartite phrase” can help to structure our improvisation, we delved in the idea of target note, tension and resolution, and finally proposed how to start a bebop phrase.
I already told you that day when I was at the airport on a business trip, and I had a long time to go before catching my flight home: had already drunk all the beers I could, I was sleepless, nothing to read, nothing to do…in short I didn't know what to do.
If you don't know three hundred standards don't move to New York, they say.
So, many of my friends, blog viewers, students and other jazz lovers asked me to propose some effective strategy to learn these freaking three hundred standards...and here we go.
When we think about bebop piano, we can’t help but think of Bud Powell… but we all know that there were many, many other incredible piano players on the bebop musical scene.
Introduction
There is a huge difference between hearing and listening, set apart the further concept of active listening.
Hearing is a passive behavior, the mere reception of acoustic stimuli followed by a certain level – very variable indeed – of cognitive elaboration.
Dear all, please allow me to point out a very interesting forum created by a friend of mine to offer room for discussion about music, musical gear, musician’s life and hacks, technical issues and many things more.
To understand what displacement is in practice – that is, the rhythmic shift that occurs when a dissonance appears on a downbeat instead of a target note, and the target note is postponed to the following downbeat or is even played on the upbeat – I propose a beautiful phrase by Arturo Sandoval on There will never be another you (from bar no. 39).
The great pianist and teacher Barry Harris, famous for having played with all the greats of bebop and for having been a great friend of Bud Powell, has developed his own teaching method since the seventies (perhaps the most famous of his concepts is that of the “sixth diminished scale”) where he has tried to systematize in a “no nonsense” way the various “tricks” to learn to build a bebop vocabulary.
Introduction
I have already proposed you the concept of the "tripartite division of the phrase": a somewhat bombastic and pretentious label which means nothing more than approaching a line by breaking it down into its three key elements: beginning, development and conclusion.
The Renaissance had modal counterpoint, with its abstract geometries that tended towards the sky... the Baroque had the meeting-clash between counterpoint and tonality, with its intent to pacify the mind and heart in the ecstasy of the sublimity of physics that becomes beauty.
I strongly believe that every now and then everyone should get out of their comfort zone and test themselves with something completely new, out of the kind of music he usually plays and composes.
Introduction
Bebop language is essentially tonal music: its goal is to melodically express in the clearest possible way the underlying harmony, up to the point that in you listen to a bopper improvised line without any kind of background (piano, bass, other polyphonic instruments) you will nevertheless perfectly perceive what chord is implied.
I was a 16 or 17 year old lad when I enrolled in the famous "Quarto Jazz School", housed in the former eighth division of the semi-disused psychiatric hospital in Genoa (the raving lunatics one, therefore very suitable for jazz musicians and aspiring ones)
In another post, we spoke about “improvising with the chord notes”.
Here is a synthetic list of options to consider when dealing with substitutions - re harmonis
During my early childhood, my father was unemployed and my mother had to work and take care of two small children (my sister hadn't been born yet) and during this period my brother and I, refractory to any attempt to place us in nursery school, often spent entire days at my paternal grandfather's house.
Here we are: the theme has been exposed, the sax and trumpet have done their solo and now it's our turn...and what do we do? How do we start?
Notated transcription of the beautiful Andrea’s solo over the French song Le ciel de Paris.
These are some of the purest bebop lines I have heard in my whole life.
I'll start by saying that, as you know, I'm quite an enemy of the pattern method, which in my opinion doesn't help at all to build a reasoned and musical phrasing but only a "Lego" approach to improvisation.But as in all things there is an exception - the block exercise, which has as its goal the development of the ability to develop a phrase while "underneath" the chords change.
The faded parka sings in the wind like a red flag, frayed but never tamed.
Who knows what material - wool, polyester, esoteric artificial fabrics that capitalism tries to make us accept as "more modern, more beautiful" - his scarf is made of, red that one too.
LEVEL 1: Ignorance
You know that something exists, you've heard about it, but you don't know what it consists of. Example: I've heard about harmony but I don't know what it is.
SCENARIO 1
I run to the living room to look for the briefcase with the computer, but it's not there, the cleaning lady moved it. So I call her to find out where she put it. She doesn't answer.
I insist, on the seventh attempt she tells me that she put it on top of the closet while she was dusting and forgot to put it back.
Exploring Barry Harris harmonic concepts and movements.
(Realisation and playback with MuseScore - apologies for the absolute lack of dynamics and swing).
I - The walking man
This approach, typically pianistic, was taught to me by Andrea Pozza, a great jazz pianist, renowned teacher and a person of great humility and sympathy.
Since I am absolutely convinced that the world of jazz teaching (but perhaps the whole world in general) is now going backwards, I will allow myself a brief rant not so much about the general principles or the basic concepts that underlie jazz didactic, but rather about a brief excursus on the systems that - although sometimes containing ideas of a certain value - have proven in practice to be inefficient as teaching tools within the reach of everyone, and not only the talented and the geeks - who in any case would have managed to learn to play jazz even in the absence of any organised method.
…ain’t never heard ANYTHING about dorian, or mixolydian, or lydian… I heard nothing, but I learnt to play jazz!
I have always liked jazz.
My father was quite a fan and had a small but select discography in which, next to Sinatra, Benny Goodman and some other swing orchestras, the original bebop, hard and pure, had a respectable place.
Here we go: let me propose you a little study about how to apply the famous "Barry Harris movements", based on his "sixth diminished scale" concept, to the famous ballad Stella by Starlight.
You can find a playable score here:
https://musescore.com/user/3263916/scores/23140663
