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Double Bass to Be Bop or not to Be bop

G

Gawpatron

Apr 18, 2006
17
0
Southampton UK
#1
right, I still new to walking basslines and i still don't quite know what is fundamentally different between swing music and bebop.

I realise that the basslines seem to be busier in bebop but i haven't analysied all that many songs yet.

or is it something else.

my frame of reference is early django stuff for swing
and sonny rollins/miles davis stuff for bebop.:hmm:
 
#2
It might help if you think of Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Cab Calloway , Benny Goodman as being swing. Nice easygoing dance music to some extent. I would think that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie would be the epitome of bop. Faster, alot more technical and maybe more texturally sophisticated?

What I never understood is the hard bop, bebop, post-bebop categorizations. It just all sounded like great music to me. :confused:
 
#4
From CELEBRATING BIRD - "I remember one night … I was jamming in a chili house on Seventh Avenue between 139th and 140th. It was December 1939. Now I’d been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used at the time, and I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it. Well, that night I was working over "Cherokee," and as I did I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive."
Charlie Parker
 
#7
Not higher REGISTER, higher INTERVALS. Most swing soloists were connecting the basic triads of the chord changes, certainly in some extremely creative ways, but still the "basic" chord. What Bird (and a multitude of others at around the same time - Dizzy, Don Byas, Charlie Christian, Biddie Fleet etc.) was doing was taking the upper extensions of the chords, b9,#9, b13, #5, b5 etc and using the chords and progressions implied by THOSE notes as a basis for improvising.



And doing it about 20-80 bpm faster.

That's not so wishy washy. But it's not so cut and dried either, these guys were mostly playing concurrently (Prez and Bird were on some JATP tours together and Coleman Hawkins recorded with Monk and Sonny etc.) so it's not like you have some guys who are speaking modern Italian but some who are speaking Latin and they can't really understand each other. It's mostly a different aesthetic and some vocabulary that may have sounded somewhat dissonant to those who didn't listen to a lot of the new music. See if you can dig up the BANDS FOR BONDS recordings, it has some dixieland to swing players AND some swing to bop players playing over the same tunes (and hearing Bird and Lennie Tristano tear up TIGER RAG is really something), that might give you a better aural handle on what was shared and what was not.
 
#10
Hi Gawpatron. Remember that talking about music ls like dancing about architecture... you've gotta go and listen to the music!

IMO Bebop and swing shade into one another (like Mr Fuqua said). There's other things going on in at the same time like the demise of the big-bands, night-club law changes, WWII etc that make the period intensely interesting.
 
#11
TroyK said:
Ed, do you think about those upper extensions when you're walking, soloing or both?

Something I've struggled with conceptually.

Troy
Click to expand...

I don't think it has so much impact on bass players - apart from the burning fast tempos - but Jazz educators who are Sax player that I've worked with, have mentioned how you can think of a bebop scale which has 8 notes rather than 7 and which helps you develop lines in this style when soloing - so it's about fitting these upper extensions of chords into rhythmic patterns and this scale gives more of a symmetrical feel ....?

Also when you start the bebop scale on the beat there are nothing but chord tones on the beats and tensions on the off beats. Helps make long phrases.....?

I don't know if the pros or 'greats' used this concept - but it may be a "way in", for those new to Bebop - what do others think...?

EDIT - here's a link :[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
#12
TROIKA - I try not to think at all when I play. I try (and sometimes I'm more successful than others) just to respond in a musical fashion to my immediate aural environment. If I hear a note as part of a line, I don't try to determine WHAT it is, I just try to play what I'm hearing. I feel that I'm most successful when the group I'm playing with is less playing the tune and more playing with each other (within the framework of the tune). I'll have to send you some of the sessions I been doing with Jon Easton, he gets SO deep inside the tunes and pretty much hears how ANYTHING can work. We get to points that we are pretty far out, but still within the form of the tune. Not substitutions or alternate changes, just following the line.
 
#14
Ed, dig it. Thanks for the thoughts. I'm not quite there, but I have my moments. There are tunes that I've kind of turned loose of the changes on and just play, especially when someone pushes them to another key. I try to get there as well and it's actually been a good year for me in that regard, but, I'm still thinking changes largely.

Bruce, thanks for your thoughts too. Every once and a while I look at something like BeBop Scale, but what I really get out of it is that I can acomplish a similar thing from simply adding some chromatisim to my lines (and trusting my ear as to where and when).

The upper extension stuff, I really like to think about when composing/arranging or when I'm looking for an idea in a solo (usually when I'm practicing). When I'm soloing, mostly I'm trying to just play music. Sometimes, it comes out more musical than others, of course.

But, what I was getting at with my question is I can't really process upper extensions in the context of walking lines. It just doesn't work for me. To my ear, the bass line needs to be closer to the bottom of the chord if people are counting on you to throw the changes down and can be whatever if they aren't. Maybe on something modal, I could think about some 9ths, #11s, and 13ths in a walking line, but outside of the woodshed, I don't think that I would.

Was curious what some of you heavier cats had to say about it.
 
#16
I find the difference between bebop and swing bass lines are the chord substitutions in progressions and the use of chromaticisms (b9 #9 b5 #5 #11 b13) in chords for extra tension and resolution.

Swing chord progressions are pretty standard as far as using standard chords and leading in a way the doesn't surprise my ear too often.

To me bebop is pretty no holds barred. Surprise and imagination are the rule. The songs chord progressions may or may not lead where you'd expect them to lead. The way one chord in a single line leads into the next may not get there in a way your used to playing. And the chords themselves can be altered in the most colorful ways - altering minors into half diminished, subbing minors under dominant 7s, etc etc - using tones totally outside the "normal" diatonic chord-scales and resolving them in a (meaningful, thoughtful, intelligent, creative = what's the word I'm looking for?) manner.

And I'm not even talking soloing here. I'm talking about the information that goes into building a supportive bassline backing up what the ears hear the other players playing.
 
#17
Ed Fuqua said:
It's still the difference between trying to use a b13 in a walking line and playing a (for example) a Db pitch in a comp line because you hear it in the context of your quarter note melody.
Click to expand...

Of course. For me, though practicing something gets it into my ear, which helps me regoginze it when I hear it and helps my inner muse suggest it to me in the throws of walking.

I may play all kinds of hip upper extensions when I'm walking, I really don't have an inventory once it's over. I've been listenned to (and plotting transcriptions of) some Ray Brown lines where he's putting some big intervals in his walking. I want to get that stuff in my ears and under my fingers, but it's just not there yet.

-tk
 
#18
Bruce Lindfield said:
I don't think it has so much impact on bass players - apart from the burning fast tempos - but Jazz educators who are Sax player that I've worked with, have mentioned how you can think of a bebop scale which has 8 notes rather than 7 and which helps you develop lines in this style when soloing - so it's about fitting these upper extensions of chords into rhythmic patterns and this scale gives more of a symmetrical feel ....?

Also when you start the bebop scale on the beat there are nothing but chord tones on the beats and tensions on the off beats. Helps make long phrases.....?

I don't know if the pros or 'greats' used this concept - but it may be a "way in", for those new to Bebop - what do others think...?

EDIT - here's a link :[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Click to expand...

This is along the lines of what my teachers taught me in beginning improv/jazz theory classes as building blocks for bebop and soloing. Of course, this is an analysis; it's purely academic. What you actually play on the tune is up to you.
 
#19
are based on the changes of earlier 'swing' tunes w/chord substitutions, new melody and tempo.

As far as basslines - you just get more creative, both harmonic motion and rhythm wise. Approaching chromatically, playing fewer tonics, perfect 5ths, 4ths, etc.

Then you get to the bassists who went further, namely LaFaro first. Much less steady 8ths, more syncopation, skips, rests while playing the chord extensions in contrapuntal figures.:hyper:
 

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