I've read the wiki article but I'm looking for recorded examples of bebop or bop on the guitar.
How is it defined? I'm listening to Emily Remler & Pat Martino & I know that some their stuff is bebop, but not all, right? & what the heck is "hard bop?
-thx
See Dizzy - 'Salt Peanuts,' etc.
Here is a nice definition without getting too fancy:
http://www.hypermusic.ca/jazz/bop.html
Guitar is not the first instrument that comes to mind when one thinks of bebop, but here is a good article on it:
http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/...g/Dec-07/32751
There is a recent (re-issued) book out there by Joe Pass that is a good study of some pretty sophisticated harmony. Some real "fist full o' notes" chords and pretty slick substitutions. I can't remember the title (it is at home) but if you like, I will check it out tonight.
"The beauty and profundity of God is more real than any mere calculation."
If you are looking for bebop, check out any Charlie Parker/Dizzie Gillespie combo. They are the well from which it is drawn.
Good examples of bebop tunes are Salt Penuts (as gris pointed out), A night in Tunisa, Koko, Donna Lee, Ornithology. It is typically characterized as uptempo with a labarenth of chord changes flying by to solo over. No many can do it well and I tip my hat to those that can.
When you think of hard bop, look at is as an extension of the cool jazz movement that Miles Davis had a pretty major hand in. Instead of using the new harmonies of bepob to show the soloist's dexterity in handling complex changes flying by, he used it in a more reserved telling way so the musician can focus on playing melody. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers come to mind. His approach wasn't to play tunes that were faster or that had difficult chord changes to jump through, but to get back to the groove and make the music a bit more 'listenable' for the average person. The rise and fall of hard bop was in line with the rise of rhythm and blues. At the time, swing bands were on the way out as bebop had turned jazz from a dance type music to more of a listening type of music.
Other musicians who you could lump into the hard bop style include Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Stitt, Jimmy Bruno, Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Drew, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Blue Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, and Sonny Rollins.
What you have is a more laid back grooving style as opposed to an
uptempo frezy of chords flying by.
Hope this helps....the best i could do off the top of my head.
Nothin left to do but smile smile smile.....
I agree with everything that's been said except for this:
Everything Miles did was a reaction to what was popular at the time. Generally speaking he would take a style and completely own it, making records in that style until people used that style to define him, then he'd move to the next thing. Cool Jazz (i.e., West Coast Jazz) was a reaction against bebop, not an extension of it.When you think of hard bop, look at is as an extension of the cool jazz movement that Miles Davis had a pretty major hand in...
Everyone who said it started with Dizzy (and by extension Parker) are right on, but it was still an evolution of what came before them. Originally the term was used as a method of describing the extremely linear character of the playing. The bebop scale (a definition added after the fact) is simply a major scale that adds a flat-7, i.e., 1-2-3-4-5-6-b7-7-8.
A "major bebop scale" is 1-2-3-4-5-b6-6-7-8.
Again, these were scales named later on in Jazz pedagogy, but they reflect the basic concept, which is playing solos that land on chord tones but may use all sorts of "neighbor tones" to get there.
As has already been said, it became very popular as a more artistic style that was reacting against simple, singable melodies. Compare the soloing of Louis Armstrong versus Dizzy Gillespie and it gives you a really good example of the contrasting styles, but also a great example of the continuum that led from one to the other.
Most soloists in Jazz use melodic ideas, "riffs" just like we think of them in guitar work, and bebop lines all mixed together in varying amounts depending on the soloist. "Hard bop" really just means playing that style through entire solo sections. Pat Martino is the best example of that for guitar. Pat Metheny, by contrast, could play bebop lines all day and night but generally tends to use bebop lines to accent and embellish his overall more melodic soloing.
People who don't understand it (or like it) think of it as just a bunch of notes played really fast, ala Kenny G. But it's really an amazing intellectual concept being played with equally intense emotion. Even in single note playing you are "playing the changes," i.e., outlining every single chord but laying chord tones out in the bars/beats where they belong and more importantly by how you get to them.
It is the essence of improvisational jazz because, just like good sex, it creates the constant ebb and flow of tension and release, as jagged or even jarring non-chord tones resolve themselves to notes within the chord.
Since writing about music is like dancing about architecture, here's a sample of guitar in bebop. The tune is John Coltrane (master of bop tenor sax) with Kenny Burrell (my favorite jazz/bop player) on guitar:
Freight Trane
Dang- got a tab for that?
I love the way he plays (Coltrane, too) Kenny Burrell is my main inspiration for jazz guitar. One thing I hear as a major element to the style is melodic hooks that have long intervals between notes. That gives a real open and lively quality to the tunes.
One of my favorite tunes ever is another Kenny Burrell tune that is really a blues on his album Midnight Blue is Chitlins Con Carne. I have my version on myspace. He also has another blues on there that is a slow blues that has classic bop lines on top of changes that are sort of slow-motion. Kinda cool to hear it like that sometimes.
I think that is what is attracting me to it right now. It "sounds" like it is not supposed to work; like it is all wrong notes played w/conviction. In reality, the notes are theoretically proper. Much like algebra looks like random symbols until it is explained to you what they mean. Then the beauty becomes apparent.Originally Posted by pc
Bebop is when they play so many notes they get rid of all the melody.
My fellow Wisconsinite Les Paul dabbled in Bop. And I believe many Blues players play a hybrid of Swing and Bop.
I think of bebop as basically soloing to the chord changes.
Where most of us seem to riff over changes in a way that doesn't always directly reference the chord (ie pentatonic scale over everything) I think of that as modal, even if we're playing blues, not "modal jazz." It's more free, but can sound dull if the player isn't really great.
I feel bebop is a more rigid form that is built on the chord changes, and the soloing is based directly on the chord changes, playing a Am idea over an Am chord (or playing an extended harmonic idea like CMaj over Am chord)
maybe not a proper definition, but hey
I'd like to listen to some Kenny Burrell. Do you have an album recommendation?
There are a bunch of 'bebop' guitarists; Tal, Barney, Jimmy Raney, Ellis, etc etc. There aren't that many 'hard bop' guitarists if you think of it as a late 50's/early 60's expanded harmonic concept ('half out') ala Shorter/Coltrane/Tyner/et al. Pat Martino, Jack Wilkins, Joe Diorio, and Jimmy Bruno come to mind...
Billy Bauer is another guy you could call a Bebop guitarist.
http://www.billybauersmusic.com/
He died a few years ago.
He only made one album as a leader, The Plectrist, but his sideman work with Lee Konitz and Lennie Tristano is great and easier to locate.
He was a teacher later in life and there are quite a few instructional books published under his name.
He also played a Guild Aristocrat in the 50's. Sigh....
"Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
Elvis Costello
Back in the day, I took some lessons from Tristano in theory and there was a whole school of playing based around him...but Billy Bauer was a great player. You might also be familiar with Chuck Wayne, Joe Puma, and some of the other NY guys...
Midnight Blue is an essential Kenny Burrell recording.
Not a hard bop guy but uses some of that stuff.
Try listening to Wes Montgomery... Probably the best Jazz guitarist. All the jazz guitarists sort of look at him as a model for how you should play. But if you want really straight forward guitar playing check out Charlie Christian, the first real jazz guitarist. He's probably my favorite.
Bop is so not about "straight forward".
AND I wouldn't say Charlie Christian played "straight ahead" all the time. Some of his best stuff he's really "outside". Dances all over the rhythm and phrasing. He teases melody in a very "bop" way. Way ahead of his time.
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