bebop lines

[wrench45us]

I've been taking a few months to try to expand my meagre piano skills and evolve from just playing chords.

So as a big fan of bebop and bebop melody lines, I thought that would be a good thing to study to expand on the theory I'd picked up in chords study and learn to play a lead line.

So I've come across 3 different books/approaches and thought I'd share a bit about the approaches if anyone was interested.
I started with Hal Leonard Style Series John Valerio Bebop Piano. I had worked with a few Valerio books on the chord work and though he was pretty good. So the book covers somer basic and bebp specific theory, touches on the styles of Monk and Powell and comping and melody. For melody lines, Valerio works from transcriptions of 4 bar snippets from unascribed recordings. He points out common patterns of alternating acscending arps and descending scalar or chromatic stwepwise runs -- and common patterns of surrounding a chord tone. And a really good 4 pages on how a bebop line is guided by a stepwise 'background' note. That came close to what I was looking for. They're good examples, but didn't get me to the core of how and why they worked.

Then I came across David Baker 'How to Play Bebop' Vol 1,2,3. Vol 1 covers the Baker concept of bebop scales. Vol2 are numerous 4 bar transcriptions. Vol3 is how to go about committing a piece to memory. Vol 1 cover all the variations of applying the bebop scale. In iots own way it covered a lot of the same territory that Valerio's melody chapter, but never quite caught the edge.

Then I came across Bert Ligon's 'Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony'. This is more than just about bebop lines, but has a wider ground of all jazz lines, but bebop is definitely in there. Bert posits 3 'outlines' of lead notes follwing the usual ii V I pattern, that within the ii and V bars have the 3 note at the beginning of the bar moving to the 7 stepwise or arpwise, resolving to the 3 of the V that itself moves stepwise of arpwise to its 7 (or 9), resolving to the 3 (or 5) of the I.
It's all very simple and basic, but it's like one of those games with very simple rules and increasingluy complex strategy and variation. This is the book I've been looking for for some time. The first chapter covers the basics of the outlines. The second chapter covers the common 'enhancements' in some detail -- the same enhancement methods that that had to be covered by Valerio and Baker to explain the variations to the patterns they were presenting. Then there are 3 chapters where Ligon deconstructs ascribed transciptions for the 3 outlines -- and that's just good teaching to present how the outlines aren't rigid, but are present as guides. And at last I can more or less deconstruct the Valerio examples using the same analysys and see why/how they work. And then there are chapters on practice strategies/examples.
It's a great book and from what I can gather on review sites, his other books expand on the basic outline concept and are equally well regarded.

[shanecgriffo]

thanks, thats good to know, i'm just getting back in to playing jazz after a 10 year lay-off,(i'd studied it for 3 years at college and had enough!)
its on guitar, tho i have dreams of learning to play more stuff on keys

[duncanparsons]

sounds very interesting - might look that up

DSP