5 Things I Wish I Knew When Learning Bebop Soloing

🍿 WATCH NEXT:

MY SOLOING COURSES:

MY PIANO COURSES

FOLLOW ME:
---
0:00 I Always Wanted to Play Like THIS
0:49 Lesson 1 - How to Play in 3D
2:10 Lesson 2 - How to Master Music Theory
5:01 Last Chord Scale Charts You'll Ever Need
5:38 Lesson 3 - How to Target Chord Tones
9:11 Lesson 4 - How to Learn Bebop Vocabulary
12:09 Lesson 5 - How to Play Fast

[enterprisesoftwarearchitect]

1. Rhythm and playing ahead or behind is more important than what notes are played.
2. Play some notes softly and the normal volume notes will pop out (feel accented).
3. Focus on the notes of the 7th arpeggio.
4. Practice the major, Mixolydian (b7), and Dorian (b3, b7) modes
5. Target an arpeggio note on beat 1 or 3 using chromatic or chromatic enclosures before.
6. Study melodic contours longer lines/licks emblematic of bebop (listen to songs)… build these lines from arpeggios, scale runs, and targeted notes (#5 above).
7. Take one lick and transpose it to all 12 keys (helps speed your thinking whennimprovising because you’ve memorized a lick with the 3, 5, 7, 9 arpeggios already)

[milobenn]

Super impressed with your ability to integrate several key concepts so clearly. A number of things fell into place with this lesson - thanks!

[MikeHeise-gp]

Developing vocabulary by organizing letters (notes) into words ( lines or melodic cells) is a nice analogy. Thank you!

[testtest-lcxz]

The targeting of notes is very much like Hal Galper's "Forward Motion". That book was a game changer for me in terms of composing bebop lines.

[jonbarnhart]

Glad to see you doing more pianistic videos. Sax always helps me but I’m a pianist so this is even more helpful!!

[patrickr.]

Hi Jeff. Are you still playing the saxophone?

[eraniel]

Much value to your content. Worth purchasing you courses.

[cookicha]

I have a playlist named "Gold" where I save the videos I don't want to lose, for later multiple rewatch. I put like half of Jeff's vids in there 😄

[martinjazzwebster]

Fantastic lesson. Some of the best advice I’ve ever heard. Thanks

[WldHny]

This is so clear--thank you (I'm a piano educator)

[kevinhornbuckle]

Flash cards. Random draw from pile of 7th chords. Then random draw from 12 keys. Then flip a coin for up or down.

[thomascohen]

Very good summary of the essentials. Where were you when I needed you back in college in the 70s? LOL. BTW, I'm surprised you didn't use the term "enclosures." (There's always a critique on YouTube, eh?)

[avantijazz]

Way way too little stress is put in most jazz education on the dynamic weight of a phrase. Lots about note choices and some about rhythm, but the point about shaping the dynamic from note to note is hardly ever mentioned. Thanks for touching on it here, Jeremy Siskind stresses it too. I think you could make a bigger deal of it in another video

So if we look at all the swing 8th notes in a bar of 4/4

||oO|oO|oO|oO||


Bebop lines have an inner note-to-note dynamic variance, which along with a good swing, is what makes them sound so cool.

[davidrichards]

The first absolutely crucial step is to grok that bebop improvisation is never the foremost concern of the faux sophisticate.