Bebop Dorian Scale

[bako]

The down beats spells out the V7 more than IIm7 chord.
Playing a V7 sound over a IIm7 especially within a II V moment is a common sound.

1 2 b3 3 4 5 6 b7 8 (D F G B) G7

These two point more towards Dm, perhaps they would better serve what you are looking for.

1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7 7 8 ( D F A C) Dm7

1 2 b3 4 5 b6 6 b7 8 ( D F A B) Dm6

Arguing over which version is the best or only valid Dorian bebop scale is not a great investment of time.
Neither is worrying about the outcome of such discussions.
Check it out, make up your own mind, if it serves your musical needs then keep it,
if not move on and find something that works better for you.

[Guitarzen]

I don't really buy the notion that you have to use chord tones on beats and non-chord tones on off beats. It's a myth afaik. I'd be willing to bet $100 you could find that "rule" being broken by every major jazz artist. I'm also not a fan of "bebop" scales, as they are simply coming up with a scale name for an already commonly used scale + chromatic passing tones, that I would use anyways. The less information you need to memorize in order to play a solo, the better. I'd rather have 8 scales with free use of chromatic passing tones, then have to think of 24 unique scales based on what passing tones you use.

[bako]

I dunno, but I think the answers for playing bebop are right there in the music.

Elements of style are always best grasped by thoroughly studying the details of the music itself.
Getting a sideman gig in the right band can also teach some important lessons.

Formulas and concepts are by their nature oversimplifications.
The belief that they are enough on their own to fully codify style is an act of faith
well beyond my atheistic leaning religiosity.

So then, what value if any do they offer.

I love ideas. I view them as experiments to try, results pending.
Every idea will at some point will come up short, this is a given that I accept.
Some ideas get there sooner than others.

When I set out to address tonal chromaticism in my playing, (notice I didn't say bebop)
I practiced by playing mostly half steps within song form at about the 80-90% level.
This kind of playing helped me develop a better sense of how far it is to get from here to there.
Lessons learned filter into playing over time.

Later, I encountered 8 note scales, first via Barry Harris and his harmonic viewpoint.
It's amazing how much new harmonic info the addition of a single note facilitates.
That surprised me.

David Baker's melodic concepts I know mostly 2nd hand via the internet and teachers.
My personal interest is not only placing chord tones on downbeats but to develop the skill to
control the arrival of whatever notes I want to emphasize within whatever rhythmic reality I can summon.

Suspensions and appoggiaturas describe delayed resolution which can happen on strong and weak beats.
If someone here wants to bean count the appearance of such moves in the solos of bebop masters I
would be most interested to read the results.

Ok, so certain 8 note scales can control the arrival of chord tones on beats of emphasis playing 8th or 16th notes.
That's fantastic. What then is the game plan within triplet subdivision or mixed subdivisions?
I really should go to the source, internet discussions at times omit important details of an author's presentation.

Hours of fun and enlightenment in small doses can be had exploring concepts
but for learning style, it's probably best to as they say in sports "go to the tape replay".

[mr. beaumont]

I don't really buy the notion that you have to use chord tones on beats and non-chord tones on off beats. It's a myth afaik. I'd be willing to bet $100 you could find that "rule" being broken by every major jazz artist. I'm also not a fan of "bebop" scales, as they are simply coming up with a scale name for an already commonly used scale + chromatic passing tones, that I would use anyways. The less information you need to memorize in order to play a solo, the better. I'd rather have 8 scales with free use of chromatic passing tones, then have to think of 24 unique scales based on what passing tones you use.

certainly.

but a big part of bebop IS playing chord tones on strong beats.

[princeplanet]

That particular scale you ask about is just a mode derived from the Mixolydian Bebop scale. Bebop interchanges ii for V very often, ie, treat ii - V as just V ....

There is no "scale" used in Bebop. It is a myth. It's all about chord tones decorated with chromatics, nothing to do with scales. This "show me what scale to use" fixation comes from the CST school, or rock/blues/pop players moving to jazz and bringing their primitive thinking along with them regarding scale usage.

If you are practicing bebop scales, I am sorry, but you are wasting precious time. Learn the language, the Baker books are full of it, but the best source, as has been said a million times, is still the recordings. If you are too lazy to work it out (like all the jazz greats did), then you won't pick it up, regardless of how fast you learn to play all you "bebop scales" ....

[RyanM]

To answer the OP, it's just that the ii chord is being ignored. As Barry Harris says, "there is no ii in bebop".

In other words, it "works" because you're just treating the whole ii-V as just V. There's no D bebop dorian, just G bebop mixo.

[Guitarzen]

certainly.

but a big part of bebop IS playing chord tones on strong beats.

Of course, I never suggested otherwise. I also studied classical harmony very thoroughly in college so I know quite a bit about the history and practice of doing so. It wasn't invented by bebopers. Just making an observation and a comment that modern composers and/or improvisors are not constrained in the same way Bach & Beethoven were.

[dortmundjazzguitar]

To answer the OP, it's just that the ii chord is being ignored. As Barry Harris says, "there is no ii in bebop".

In other words, it "works" because you're just treating the whole ii-V as just V. There's no D bebop dorian, just G bebop mixo.

there is your answer. the dorian bebop scale does not exist and it does in fact never get mentioned in bakers books afaik. what *does* exist are different ways to apply the bebop dominant. as has been pointed out, there is no ii chord in bebop. the story goes that cannonball could not figure out what to play over "so what" until someone hinted at playing over G7 and Ab7. to think of "dorian bebop" or "5th mode of the bebop scale" is not in the spirit of david baker's or barry harris' line of teaching.

another use of the bebop dominant is playing it over m7b5 chords. over Em7b5 you play C bebop dominant since Em7b5=Gm6=C7. you would not call it the bebop locrian scale or the 3rd mode of the C bebop scale. decades ago i tried to figure out how joe pass could play so fluently over caravan. when i learned about bebop scales it became obvious that he was playing Eb7 bebop dominant over the C7alt. man, that was eye-opening. of course pat martino reaches the same results by converting to minor and rip Bbm activities over the Gm7b5 C7alt, like on "close your eyes". same principle, different angle. wes aproach often mirrors pat's by converting to maj7 and heavily relying on the according arpeggios (think Fmaj7 Bmaj7 for a II V in C).

i'm a huge fan of approaching improv from a harmonic point of view instead of a paint-by-numbers approach that CST often is. point is that we do not improvise on the chord changes that are presented to us on leadsheets. most tunes have "hidden" changes that are improvised over while other written changes get ignored(like the ii chord in bebop). very often we insert dominant chords to make for smoother voice leading. a popular example are the two bars of Gm in autumn leaves (in Bb). anytime the Gm goes back to Cm we can and usually do make it a G7 chord for a stronger connection. or all the things which has this implied set of chords for stronger voice leading: /Fm7 F7/Bbm7/Eb7/Abj Ab7/etc. or even: /Fm7 B7 /Bbm7 Eb7/ Em7 A7/ Abj D7/ Dbj etc. the improvisor may use this (or basically *any* other) set of changes. i learned this over attya from my teacher: /Fm7 B7/Emaj7 G7/Cmaj7 Eb7 /Abmaj7 etc. K. Werner mentions playing attya in Ab an A at the same time and getting away with it. the greats like miles or trane could make almost anything work. CST as taught by burton or on that old scofield video has a hard time reflecting this practice. it's funny that the baker books which are published by aebersold contain this horrible scale syllabus. i'm sure that it was added afterwards.

of course there are more approaches to chromaticism than the bebop scales. while the bebop scales are organized in a way that give *harmonic* implications (see the discussions on barry harris, kingston or ben-hur) chromatics can and are being used much more liberally since the early bebop days. heck, george benson made a career out of playing chromatics completely randomly

[grahambop]

So, I'll catch a little heat for this, but...

I'm not a fan of these "bebop scales," or the teaching of them, really. And yes, I realize some big names teach them. They really seem to me to be an attempt to "academicize" a concept that's not academic. It's aural. To me they just seem to be a way of putting a common passing tone into scale fingerings. And for that, I suppose they're useful.

But if I might high horse a minute, I really think if you want to learn to play bebop, you gotta cop licks from the masters and make sense of them on your own terms. 9 out of 10 posts I see about bebop scales are about frustration and confusion. So how useful are they?

I'm looking at a transcription of Bird playing Anthropology right now. He plays a scale sequentially, without skips or leaps only about three or four times in a 2 chorus solo. Each time he does it, it's for less than one bar.

I dunno, but I think the answers for playing bebop are right there in the music.

Totally agree with Mr B. here. I think I already suggested to VKat in a previous thread that he should listen to the recordings rather than obsess about some scale or other.

I learned by copying Joe Pass, Wes, Dexter Gordon etc., and it just became natural to me to insert chromatic tones wherever they sound good. It was years before I found out this stuff was called 'bebop scales' by some people. Chromatic notes are fun because you can spice up a line with them just about anywhere, as long as it works melodically and rhythmically. If you religiously observe the 'bebop scales' you will only put the passing notes where the rules say you must, which is no fun and very limiting.

There is a moment near the beginning of Pat Martino's solo on 'Just Friends' on 'El Hombre' where he plays a wonderful line for about half an octave entirely in descending chromatics, and because of the way he phrases and places the notes, it's one of the best bits in the whole solo. The 'bebop scales' would never let you do that.

[VKat]

What everyone says above is not questioned - all good comments and ideas.

So, does everyone agree that there is no well-established Bebop Dorian scale with the natural 3rd that's so often presented as a separate unitity on numerous Jazz-oriented online resources including YouTube?

What I want to hear from you is something like this: "Everyone who tries to speculate on a well-established Bebop Dorian scale with the natural 3rd is ultimately wrong."

That is, if you like, my main point of this post.

[pushkar000]

Many cats ignore the ii in a ii-V and play as if the whole thing is V.
So sometimes they play Bebop Dominant scale (whether they think of it as a scale or not is not important) over both ii and V.

Seems like David Baker then decided to name that Bebop Dominant scale over ii as Bebop Dorian.

[dortmundjazzguitar]

What everyone says above is not questioned - all good comments and ideas.

So, does everyone agree that there is no well-established Bebop Dorian scale with the natural 3rd that's so often presented as a separate unitity on numerous Jazz-oriented online resources including YouTube?

What I want to hear from you is something like this: "Everyone who tries to speculate on a well-established Bebop Dorian scale with the natural 3rd is ultimately wrong."

That is, if you like, my main point of this post.

"everyone who is indulging in meaningless semantics is ultimately wasting his/her time"

there you go

[princeplanet]

What everyone says above is not questioned - all good comments and ideas.

So, does everyone agree that there is no well-established Bebop Dorian scale with the natural 3rd that's so often presented as a separate unitity on numerous Jazz-oriented online resources including YouTube?

What I want to hear from you is something like this: "Everyone who tries to speculate on a well-established Bebop Dorian scale with the natural 3rd is ultimately wrong."

That is, if you like, my main point of this post.

What we're saying is it doesn't matter whether there is such a thing as Dorian Bebop scales with a nat 3 rd, or maj 7, or anything else for that matter. You wanna play Bebop? Then play all 12 notes! Figuring out how is what you need to be doing, not getting hung up on academic theories about the music.

David Baker did not invent bebop. Barry Harris did not either for that matter....

[Reg]

It's all just training wheels, right.... generally most beginning musicians need some sort of formant to help get them going... something to start with. Just like most don't really understand chord scale concepts.... they get the scale part and then think they have...

Chromatic notes imply a harmonic structure... whether you choose to hear and use it as a harmonic application is the players choice. In bebop, generally most chromatic notes have a relationship to dominant harmony, if not directly, then secondary.

Just as chord tones and arpeggios are also training wheels... to help you develop a language using diatonic notes from the very basic and incomplete harmonic concepts of any style of improvisation... so are chromatic note concepts. There is more going on... it just take more understandings and musicianship to get past the training wheels.

The basic concept behind rhythmic applications of strong and weak concepts.... is not just down beats and up beats, again that's the basic training wheel start, simple and not complicated and will get most soloist on their way and basically sound rhythmically diatonic. There are again more layers and levels of relationships and their applications... that are not simple and don't come from memorizing melodic and rhythmic licks, melodic phrases, (whatever you want to call what you play during improvisation), just as there are harmonic concepts that have relationships and guidelines with notes, chromatics etc... there is also harmonic organization which relates to rhythmic playing. The strong weak concept develops different organization, both macro and micro which helps the soloist and rhythm section have options for where to take their improvisation.

Again... generally most start with training wheels until they begin to.... either understand the concepts, or develop enough language from memorizing from players who don't need training wheels. generally from both approaches.

[VKat]

David Baker did not invent bebop. Barry Harris did not either for that matter....

Charlie Parker did not invent Bebop! Neither did Dizzy (sorry, still can't spell his name correctly after listening to him for over 10 years ).
Bebop? What is Bebop? I don't want to call the type of music C.Parker played "Bebop" as neither did he.
Didn't he say something like that: "Bebop? Why? It's just music!".

So there is no Bebop scale! Ok, there are actually no scales in music - none of them, there is just harmonic series of the fundamental sound wave that are layed oud in a fancy way and they are called scales. I don't like to call them scales either.

I'm kidding

Of course, there are scales, major, minor, Bebop Dorian with the natural 3rd, Bebop Dorian with the natural 7th, maybe some other Bebop Dorian types exist - sure, why not? All are good old scales and I love them!
Maybe it's better that way?

[christianm77]

What I have come to understand in my study of harmonic era jazz is the difference between the iim7 and ivm tonality. The functionality is completely different, and form the point of view of theory a different scale is required.

The bebop 'dorian' scale is in fact the exact same thing as the dominant scale with the root a fourth lower. This is because we can effectively 'ignore' the iim7 chord in ii V7 I's. So the bebop dorian is really just a mode of the bebop dominant.

On the other hand a tonicised minor chord (which the iim chord might be under circumstances) can't be ignored. This harmony was frequently given a natural 7th and 6th in pre-modal jazz harmony. I call this true minor.

The iim7 chord in a ii V on the other hand is more like a preparation for the V7.

(There are overlaps - you can play one thing on the other, so no hard and fast rules.)

I'm not sure if I recall whether David Baker discusses a true minor bebop scale. Barry Harris uses a melodic minor with added notes as required. It looks like the major scale with a b3 basically - if we add one chromatic it would be b6, as with major.

E.g.: Autumn Leaves:

Cm7 | F7 | Bb | Eb | Am7b5 | D7 | Gmmaj7 | %

This (as I understand it) is how we would play over it in 'academic bebop land':

F dominant | % | Bb major | % | F dominant | (raise F to F#) | G minor | %

Hope that makes some sort of sense.

[christianm77]

By the way, I wanted to say in a wider sense that the practice of anything strict and exact is a really good idea. Bach harmony, bebop scales, modes, US triads, metrical groupings, technique whatever grabs your fancy. Exact, conscious, hard work. Discipline. Correct and Incorrect.

Playing music is different from practice. No thinking then!

I've had a lot of fun running bebop scales this week, and I like the way it can act as a gateway to actual improvisation - the training wheels come off quick. I find myself surprising myself with what comes out of it, stuff I've haven't played before. Quite surprising really, given how formal it is.

I started running bebop scales because I was aware of how arpeggio and neighbour tone based my playing was. The playing of actual straight scales (as opposed to modal improvisation) offered a different melodic contour and a way of adding more variety to my lines. If you find yourself mostly soloing in arpeggios, you might find it useful for this reason.

The BH pivot technique is good for this too - a way of playing lines based on scales on arpeggios with a different shape from the usual.

[Stuart Elliott]

As far as I can tell, David Baker, in How to Play Be-Bop, doesn't present a scale named "BeBop Dorian." He does say that a bebop dominant scale can be played over a ii7 chord.

[Reg]

Can't agree with you more, Reg.
and...

There must be 'good' training wheels and 'bad' training wheels - right?

So, when you hear(see) someone offering a Bebop Dorian with the natural 3rd - is that a good or bad wheel to apply over 'ii min7'?

I would hope all training wheel eventually reach their goal...so maybe no good or bad... but definitely much faster.

The dorian with natural 3rd, or bebop dorian with natural 3rd... I don't see or hear those as scales... they're a scales with added notes that reflect a harmony, either a approach, passing or some type of dominant chord... blue notes or just an access point for melodic minor.

I hear almost everything as changes... and I just choose to play melodic lines which reflect those changes or use them as a reference to create and develop relationships. All my lines can be voiced with harmony below, not after the fact as and before I play.

There are obviously many other methods for developing melodic lines, the organization of what they are and their applications... but I always start with both, the lines and the changes, their both the same, I choose how to perform.

When we slow this process down to the level of talking about it... we tend to lose perspective of what we're playing.

Generally, like I said the process of thinking Dorian b9 or Dorian with added 3rd, is a training wheel method of being able to play in real time over tunes. Which should eventually become a combination of playing melodic lines and reflecting changes... I mean who just plays I VI II V when blowin over rhythm changes. Typically there are many more changes, both reflected in the improv as well as in the accompaniment.

I would guess the bebop scales just reflect bebop common practice, and the spelling is just to keep things simple... which I generally hear as dominant approach chords... and any chord patterns derive from that application based on that dominant approach.

So really they're probably good, in respect that very few players are going to develop the understandings and musicianship to develop the application or approach to playing over bebop beyond.... bebop scales.

[billyguitar]

I could write an extremely long reply to this post, but I will hold off from that for now. My main comment is that it isn't a "joke" to use this scale, and you are missing the point entirely. I think this is a classic example of taking a small bit of information WAY out of context.

Professor Baker was actually my first real jazz teacher. I had the opportunity to learn from his books, and more importantly I was extremely fortunate to take several of his college courses about jazz and improvising. I should mention that he is extremely well respected as an educator, composer, performer, etc. His "How to Play Bebop" books are for beginners, and I think the idea behind learning these scales is to learn some of the characteristic tools used by great improvisers in that idiom. He's trying to help you learn some vocabulary, and train your ears to hear some of these passing tones. These books were really helpful for me to get started playing jazz. Obviously, there is a lot more work to be done after you get a basic understanding of this stuff.

Vkat, you said, "What I want to hear from you is something like this: 'Everyone who tries to speculate on a well-established Bebop Dorian scale with the natural 3rd is ultimately wrong.'" That's just weird. Respectfully, I would say that if anything, you are wrong. I'm already writing way more than I wanted to, but obviously there are no "right" or "wrong" notes in music. However, I understand how you're approaching it. You want to try to play bebop. The thing is, even if we analyze this material up close, the passing tone between 4 and b3 is technically correct, even in the most conservative sense. Baker explains how this can make lines smoother (yes, the passing tone would need to be on an upbeat). I guess you ignored that part. There are lots of other reasons he chose to teach it this way, but I don't want to get into it. I have heard this note played on minor chords countless times by "jazz greats." Like others have said, this has a lot to do with minor 7th chords frequently being "related ii" chords, i.e. part of "ii-V" progressions. You should read the whole explanation of this material, and accept it for its (somewhat) limited purpose. It isn't an ending, it's a beginning.

The only other thing I would say is play the scale descending. It may sound more natural to you then (also noted by Baker). Sorry if I sound a little defensive, it just seemed like you were missing the context in which the material was initially presented.

-Billy

[christianm77]

Man, if the Baker books are for beginners, I'm still a beginner! I find they contain a wealth of information, and in conjunction with transcriptions are very useful.

[pamosmusic]

So, when you hear(see) someone offering a Bebop Dorian with the natural 3rd - is that a good or bad wheel to apply over 'ii min7'?

That's a pretty simplistic way of trying to analyze it. I really don't care for bebop scales period but to try and say they're just bad or just good is a little weird. Don't use it if you don't like it.

Are there places you can use a natural third on a minor chord? Absolutely. Framing the 11th. Passing between the flat 3rd and the 11th. etc. Is the "bebop dorian" scale objectively good or bad? *shoulder shrug*

[christianm77]

I agree very much with what you've posted.



I've always thought it was weird that bebop which was started as a vehicle for more adventurous playing and for pushing the limits of what a soloist could do has to have certain rules like outlining the chord tones, playing certain notes on strong and weak beats and whatever else rules there are...
I've always thought the rule was "if it sounds good it is good".



I really have no use for the scale cited in the OP.
I think it is used to explain a moment in music but not much else.

If it helps other people make music and they feel better knowing and trying to use such scales then so be it.
But something like that scale has no value to me.
I use the chord changes and the possible extensions that can be used along with the melody of the song to help me make my note choices.

"if it sounds good, then it is good"

I don't disagree - horses for courses. I am tired of scale practice atm, I think I need to do something else for a bit. But I do think it was worth doing for me. I'm a subscriber to the view that you should practice what interests you.

I'm transcribing a Clifford Brown solo right now. It has more stepwise movement I think then the Parker things I have looked at, but no examples of bebop scales so far. Once, he plays a scale beginning and ending on the root on beat 1, but quite simply deals with it by playing a quarter followed by seven eighth notes. Does the same job.

So bebop scales? Hmmm. I think the David Baker books are well worth checking out, but are essentially libraries of stock material.

I play with a guy who is a really nice bop player who just learned by transcribing Charlie Parker and never looked at any of the 'How to play Bebop' books or anything else.

He is interested in learning more about the Barry Harris approach though.

One thing he mentioned was that he learned bebop as a very lick based music (which is how I learned it) but the amazing thing about the players from Barry Harris school (and Barry of course) is that they are able to play bebop fluently and inventively without the pat cliches or licks that often infest this type of music. That to me the value of a concept distilled from study rather than simply copping licks and playing them through the keys, not that that isn't valuable work. As discussed above Barry's approach is more sophisticated than simple bebop scales, and pretty exacting..

Another guy who shares this view is Mike Longo who teaches lines from the perspective of voice leading but discourages students from playing licks. Another concept is the Hal Galper Forward Motion thing, I'm sure we could think of many others. You may have your own approach.

I think all of these theoretical approaches home in on the same things from different angles, but they are all concepts distilled from studying solos analytically rather than simply putting lumps of half digested music into ones playing. The idea I guess is that you analyse, practice what you have analysed and then internalise (eventually.)

In contrast, there's also the Tristano slow improvisation thing which aims to be a more intuitive, meditative approach. AFAIK while Tristano students practice scales (meter work for example) and sing solos, the aim is to be able to make an improvised line up in an intuitive and ear-based way. (Any true Tristano-ites please correct me if I am wrong!)

I'm interested to know what your thoughts are about this process.

[vhollund]

Bebop Dorian R-2-b3-3-4... a flawed idea?

It's a very limited idea without much of a concept

[Rsilver]

I hear the major 3 as a passing tone as one travels north from the m3 to the 4 note.

i think that these "scales" we're the result of transcribing bebop solos such as by Charlie Parker or Sonny Stitt and then trying to extrapolate an underlying "scale" to justify what is a perfectly good sounding melodic run. It may not be a scale, but it sounds good when handled properly in a bebop solo.