You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Is Bebop Relevant?

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Today, Peter and Adam handle a controversial question: can bebop still be implemented into modern playing, or does it sound too outdated?Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Monday's Open Studio Live Events (all times are EST):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)4:00 PM - You'll Hear It Live on YouTube6:00 PM - Bass Guided Practice Session with Bob DeBoo and Reuben Rogers on YouTubeFor the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Yo, Adam. Yo. I wonder with this, Peter, if this sound is still relevant. I would say it's still relevant. That's B-Bob. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Music advice and inspiration, of course.

Coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. It is Cyber Monday. Go to Open StudioJ.J.g.com for all those great deals. We'll talk more about that later at the end of the show. We will talk more about Cyber Monday. Cyber not I'm a crypto cyber

genetic organism He's from the Information Super Highway Folks remember that 90s phrase the information Super Highway Al Gore give me oil

Give me oil Okay It's a series of tubes That connect So we were just doing a little Stevie Wonder Bebop mashup there because we're talking about today

Is Bebop still relevant And how we can use it And I hope I demonstrated some interesting ways that you might be able to apply a little bit of it towards even more modern contexts like that. But what I want to talk about specifically, I'll see Peter's going into it now, is what I was doing there and some ways you can get a bebop sound just kind of out of nothing. Wait, we got to answer the question first,

before we jump into the specific techniques with which we will exemplify said genre. Oh, man, he's got high energy right now. He's got high podcast energy for sure. What is the answer? Is that too verbose? Am I being too much of a? Gramarian. You might be. Would you like me to play an arpeggio? Arpeggio. You know, I love the way you arpeggioated that.

Arpeggio? Yeah. Well, it's because I just love jazz piano so much. Jazz piano. Okay. No, we got to answer the question of... Is B-Bop so relevant? Yes.

No, I'm saying yes, we have to answer that. Would you like to answer? Yes. Okay, good. Now we can get on to the... You were jumping the gun. You were already getting into specific... Oh, I think it was obvious by...

Wait, why do we name the episode that? We got to answer it. Well, it's like hook them in, and now we're going to tell them how to get a little bit of a B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-W sound. We're just going to give you a very basic tutorial of a couple things you can do that will get you there very, very fast. So check it out. So we're going to E-flat minor here. Go back to that groove for a second. Okay.

So I'm not going to show you something that you can just get into it right away, right? Check this out. Just that. I'll do it even slower. That encapsulates just, first of all, I just want to put a caveat on this. Bebop is an incredibly rich and deep. and dense language and there's a lot to it. And it cannot be reduced now to one phrase.

Yeah, but if we were to reduce it. This is what it would be. It would sound a lot like this. That's chess. So what this is, is it kind of, it will get you kickstarted in the right direction, right? It will get you that bebop sound right, right away. So in E flat minor here,

and Peter's obviously doing the superstition, wait, no, the higher ground groove. Yeah, sorry, E flat minor groove. So what we have here is an E flat minor chord, right? I literally have an E flat minor seven chord, E flat G flat, B flat D. And I just started going down. This is the first thing that you can apply and start getting a B-Bop sound. These broken seventh chords, right?

We talk about our jazz arpeggios, right? So going to the seventh and then going to the ninth. Both of these work really well. So we start with just an arpeggio. And go up or down. Either one works great. and then at the end of that arpeggio, arpeggio,

really it's a broken seventh chord, our E-flat minor seven, we put a, what we call it an enclosure. So my target note on this enclosure is E-flat. And before I play that E-flat, I go below it by a half-step. I go above it by a whole step,

and then I surround it by a half-step above and a half step below. So D, F, E, D, and then my target E-flat. So the whole thing is, you got it. Oh, yeah. that's it yeah so just that just those things now if you take that again

anywhere in the key of e flat minor it works really really well you can do this anywhere with the diatonic e flat shape and then you can when the chord changes on any tune in any style this works I mean it's still just magically works

it's almost like cheating it's a little bit like cheating but it sounds good so it does and there are different There are different arpeggios and there are different enclosures, but this is the basic structure that you can just start with. And again, it's a deep-dense language and there's a lot to it. So please don't exactly what we're saying here. But this is just a way. We're not sponsored to say this by the Charlie Parker Bebop Association of Kansas City,

Vine Street, LLC. The views express here are not a thousand views, there's like Open Studio at the greater jazz community area at large. But what we're saying here is just a basic way to get into the sound. Now, timing, we're not going to go on a deep dive with this. We've done that before, which is fun. But let's just give a little bit to that because as you're, expanding your knowledge of this,

the thing is like, okay, show me another, show me another. But there's so much in just this one. There's so much in just this one. And you hit on some of them with just going up, you know, arpeggiating with the upper extensions, but there's also like one, two, three, four, where you're starting on the beat.

Right. But what about if one, two, three, four. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where I skip. Yeah, I'm starting on the upbeat. So I skip the top beat. So I skip the target note. Right.

Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's more just of a phrasing thing. It's not like you have to do it one way or the other. But it's like that's another way to kind of thrill this thing. Because you never know what it's not always going to be like, in fact, you don't always want your bebop. There's nothing more square than like a bebop player or a player that's like I've learned some great bebop stuff. Now every measure on the on the beat, I'm going to play the phrase.

And then I'm going to the next. You know, it's the worst. It's the worst. And then, you know. And then, you know, it's just like 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D. It's the worst, yeah. So I would say it's better to like go a little bit deeper and more vertical, you know, an inch wide, a mile deep and high before you move on to the next one

as opposed to saying I'm going to accumulate all these licks. Well, let's look what we can do with this. Let's go back to that Stevie Wonder groove. I'm just going to do this pattern of a broken seventh chord with an enclosure at the end. Or maybe I'll do an enclosure to start and then a broken seventh chord. Okay. And you can hear how much you can get out of that. this hopefully. I'll give it my best shot. Here we go.

What if instead of a broken seventh chord we did a scale? That's with a scale instead of a broken seventh chord. It works just as well. What if we were able to mix scales and broken seventh chords and arpeggios? Well now, we're just kind of playing. That is playing. And what we

get out of that is that I like to call it like the bobbing. Remember the Bob and weave from St. Louis Rams thing years ago? It's where you get these metor rhythms. Dap-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-a-d-a-d-a-d-a-g-d-cda-a-cda-cda-cda-cda-c. You get this syncopated, almost snare-drum solo kind of rhythm. And like we're just demonstrating over the Stevie-Wonder changes,

it works pretty darn well over about anything. It's fantastic. And, I mean, you know, the rhythmic element, which is really the bob and weave and what you were just hit, you know, that exercise, you know, that, you know, do bet-bap-b-b-b-b-d-d-da. And you think about a snare. Think about Max Roach.

Philly Joe Jones, Papa Joe Jones. Totally. Gringery Hutchinson. What a great modern bebop and beyond, you know, drummer. Carl Allen. The way that the snare drum is played, those are your rhythms. Like, that's your vernacular. That's the cadence of how these notes, like, these are just notes.

Yeah. And shapes, but it's like, yeah. But, like, how you accent it. Nice. Yeah. You got to be careful on these. with these road sounds like you can go into like you just automatically go it? Well it can also go

into like a dopeio. Well if you go like major, it's like Charlie's Angels commercial break. Yeah. It's very yeah. On the piano it can sound classical but on here it's like Hogan's heroes coming up next. That's a nice groove. That is a really nice group. We should go out on that groove again. Hey, by the way, today is Cyber Monday.

I don't know if you know. Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday. I am my cyber. I need oil. Why would I need oil? I don't know. I enjoyed that, though. I enjoyed that. But today you can save 60% on all lifetime courses with Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJadjadjad.com. You could also save 40% on subscriptions, which we've, on memberships, which are our subscription courses, like the whole kit and caboodle, piano access pass. All X's

master classes. Masterclasses. Get in on that. Can we announce the next one? Are we allowed to? Not yet. We're not yet allowed to, but there's big names. Fred Hirsch hasn't said we can say it's name again. Fred Hirsch has said, yes, we're on a regular routine here with Fred Hirsch, which is really nice. Ed Simon, we can't say his name, man. Edward Simon is definitely on board. We just did one with Great Billy Childs.

There's more coming. Probably Hancock, we can't say his name? No, we can't actually. Legally. No, enter. Take that out. Leave it in. Leave it in.

No, no, no. But yes, go to Open StudioJadS.com. It's our biggest savings of the years. Your last chance for these huge savings. 60% on Lifetime courses. 40% on our memberships. And we'll go out with a little bit more of this. Stevie Wonder, can we say his name for Masterclass?

Stevie Wonder will not be there. Oh, we don't know that. No, our lawyers are telling me not. No, we can't. Yeah, we definitely can't. I can neither confirm no deny if Stevie Wonder will be at the next master class. You'll hear it, Peter.