You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 5 Improv Hacks That Will Improve Your Bebop Solos - #13

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

Some easy things you can do right now to get that classic bebop sound. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin. And I'm Adam Manus. Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast. Today we're going to give you five creative improv hacks guaranteed to improve your B-Bop solo. Now, am I taking it too far with the guarantee, Adam? Now, normally I would say that you should undersell and overproduce, but I think that in this case, you are not overselling at all. We will improve your B-B-B-B-B-B-B-Solos with these great hacks. Okay, good.

Because I think that, you know, B-Bob, even if you're not playing straight B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B, I think it's such an important skill to have in so many places. It's almost like the foundational language of this music in a lot of ways. And it's just great to kind of have it in your vocabulary. So it's cool to have some different ways to be creative with it. Now, let me start out if that's okay, with one that's very simple, because I love starting simple. And that is to not start on the one. Now, this, we're talking about rhythm, of course. This seems easy, but if I play a line like this, one, two, three, four.

That's okay, right? Yeah, it's like six out of ten. Six, six. I was going to say six point five, but okay, that's cool. But now if I go, one, two, three, four. That's groovy. Yeah, now we're at a seven maybe, you know. And I realize I played a little bit different line,

but it's just a lot of times I'll hear players playing good stuff, you know, and everything's like starting on one, it just gives it that segmented playing. So if you took a line that you like doing, one, two, three, four, one, as opposed to two, three, four, where it's just a little bit square or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's not to say that you should never start your phrases on one, but switch it up. You know, if everything is starting on one, start on the end of one. If you're starting to do everything on the end of one, go back to one or go to two or something like that. Right, because, I mean, the notes that we have available are the same all the time,

and the lines we can get creative with and change them up, of course, but sometimes just starting on that end of one instead of on one. And then, of course, you can extend this to the end of three, the end of two. There's all different ands to add it to. So speaking of switching it up, that brings us to our second point, which is creative enclosures to start a line.

Now, what's a creative enclosure? That's not a hunting term to like a really fancy duck blind or something like that. It's surrounding a note in a number of different ways. So that, let's say you have this phrase, instead of that, starting on this D, you can... Hold on a second. I'm going to give that a 5.5. 5.5?

That's not bad, man. Come on. That's a solid case. Anyway, instead of just starting straight on this D, you know, on one, you can surround it from the top and then the bottom. Already, it's a little... Whoa. You can go from the bottom.

a whole step below and then a half step below and then from the top one two three already it's starting to feel a little more b-bop you can start from a whole step above and then a half step above and then a half step below hear that sound all the time and what's great about this is you're dealing with less information really you're just playing but when you when you look at that d as your goal note, you can surround it however you want. Now you've gotten more mileage out of just that one little lick. Right, right. Yeah, I love that too because I'm always hearing from, you know, players saying, well, I've got the same old stale lines and they'll play them. I'm like,

those are good lines. Those are good ideas. And you're hearing them, you're feeling them. Sometimes it just needs, just like the rhythmic thing. Sometimes it just needs a little bit of melodic flare. And there's so many different ways to do this, that can become a big part of your individual style if you play this outright. Absolutely. And you can use those, you know, not just to start a line, but in the middle of a line too. Right. Same line, but putting that

enclosure around the B-flat, you can do that on any of those notes. Yeah, and I mean, this is really one of the easiest ways to get to that authentic B-Bop sound. I mean, of course, it's got to be swinging, it's got to be in the right context, but these enclosures are so much, I mean, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk,

you know, all the great bebop players that were rooted in that music, you're going to hear a lot of this in their lines, especially early on. True. All right. Number three, we've got diminished resolving to major. Now let's unpack what this sounds like. We've got a C major.

We've got all that kind of stuff, but we've also got... That's a 9 out of 10 right there. Okay, I'm getting there. So I'm going to go, 1, 2, 3, 4. So that's 4 bars of C major, but I'm throwing in a C fully diminished. and I'm giving it this with that major 7 as opposed to the diminished 7th and then I'm resolving it right into the major.

That's great. It's such an emotional pull on that C major. It's a great way to mask it for a second and then bring your audience home to that one chord. Yep, that's it. So that brings us to diminished scales broken in thirds. So everybody knows the diminish scale, right? If you don't, check it out. the half-volt diminished scale, let's say we're in F, F, G-flat, A-flat, A-natural, C, D, E-flat, F. Now, we usually use these over dominant chords going somewhere.

So in this case, we'd go to a B-flat major 7. A little enclosure there. Nice. A couple of enclosures. But for this, instead of just playing a straight diminished scale, just like you would with any other scale, you can break this up in thirds And then go to a scale pattern. It's really effective with the diminished scale I mean it just has that great Like out there I'm tumbling kind of sound and then you bring it home

So that's a really cool hack. Great great and our final creative improv hack for bebop playing is what I like to call a bebop arpeggio. Now, I like to think that I came up with this name, but I'm pretty sure I didn't. Well, I know I didn't come up with bebop or arpeggio, and I'm probably not the first one to put them both together. Are you just throwing around classic musical terms? I'm trying. I'm trying to say, all right. But, I mean, the way I think about it, because, you know, I grew up playing a lot of classical music and going through a lot of the traditional classical piano pedagogy. And so, you know, all the different arpeggios, and, you know, practicing them a lot of different ways.

But as I started to hear jazz, and especially B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-Rah, I was always hearing that kind of sound, you know, and I started learning some of the solos, and I was like, man, it's arpeggiated, but it's not, you know, you never hear... Because that's corny. But you might hear things that sound like arpeggiation. So the closest I could come up with in terms of practicing, and this can work really well for any instrument, is thinking about going up to the ninth,

and we'll do it in dominant seventh, but you can do it in minor, you can do it diminish, you can do it in major seven, even six, nine. But we look at one, three, five, seven, nine. And you know, on the piano, this has some technical challenges in terms of how you do this. but it's the, you know, it's the same thing going up into different keys. But the way it's broken up rhythmically,

especially with the more traditional bebop sound, I think, is... So you're going up to the seventh, and then you're going third to the ninth. And there's a lot of different... A lot of different cool ways to practice that. But the foundation is that, you know. And you can use that on other quality of chords, right? Yeah, yeah, like right there was...

Minor 7. Major 7. You can even play around with the Lydian. You can kind of do it wherever Lidian dominant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, dominant with the minor 9th. Uh-oh, that got into some diminished hacks.

Not for today, right? Oh, you were on 9.5, and then it bumped you down to 9.2. So, anyway, I hope you guys enjoy those, those five. You can really take any of them, I think, kind of individually, and especially like the jazz, I mean, the bebop arpeggio, and kind of take that through on your instrument, the different keys, different patterns with that, and use it to enhance your bebop playing.

All right, peace. That's it for today's episode of the You'll Hear It Podcast. For more information or to hear more of these podcasts, go to openstudionetwork.com slash podcast.