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>> knotty and jazzwee - please note well I said "IMO".
but you also said "obviously"

The music of Bird is dated because of the quality of recordings for the most part.
Bass players and drummers have also changed a lot.

As far as Bird himself, to this day, few can with such ease, melody and love of music. There's a good reason most jazz students study Bird today. If you decide to dig into Bird, you will discover many new and beautiful things.

But I said "IMO" FIRST. HAHAHA. Ok, I'm just playing. I'm new so I just want to make sure you know I'm not taking anything too seriously.

Modern influences: Lovano, Redman, Danillo Perez, Osby, Mehldau...those are probably the major players. I'm mostly/heavily influenced by that "young lions" group that came up in the early 90s.

I'm certainly willing to admit I'm wrong. But I still hold to the belief (at least for now) that Bird's playing fits a certain era, that if one of the above-mentioned saxophonists took a transcribed solo, and played it over the same changes, it would sound out of place.

I forget what we were even talking about. Technique? I am in favor of technique.

Jazwee,

If you are studying Giant Steps be sure to study Coltrane's solo on it. He used the same three devices over and over on it.

McCoy employs the same 3 devices a lot too. Easy to manipulate them at fast tempos. Coltrane played the same 3 devices on his solos on Giant Steps and Countdown and Moment's Notice.

Let's see -- Coltrane's devices are arpeggios. I studied his solos and it is repetitive. But his phrasing is fast-fast-fast, then a sudden long note. On Giant Steps, it appears to be mostly chord tone based.

McCoy - his favorite device of course is to voice in fourths and then play this quartal intervals in various combinations and eventually can sound outside. Now beyond that, I don't know what the other devices are. Please add some more.

Please discuss, this is really interesting.

Did you ever hear Kenny Werner's solo on Giant Steps? He's very good at stringing some long melody that fits the changes. I guess he worked it out in advance. Mixing it in with fast arpeggios and scales, it sounds really different.

scotpgot, there are clearly different sounds between bebop style and more modern sounds. Bebop is actually pretty structured. It doesn't fit some more modern music like Naima. Neither would I think of playing bebop style in Cantaloupe Island.

I was talking to my Sax Player in my band and was surprised to find out that she was not influenced by Bird. Now I thought all horn players were influenced by Bird but I guess that may have changed after Coltrane. Coltrane doesn't sound like Bird.

Although I know what Bebop sounds like, it's probably harder to state what a non-Bebop style is. My teacher is definitely non-Bebop but doesn't particularly influence me to go his way or not.

My favorite player is Brad Mehldau and he really went into a different direction from Bebop but he is clearly heavily 'informed' by it as he states himself. I think the subtlety of styles between Modern and not is hard to describe and probably comes out more from the influence of a teacher. My teacher is very heavily modern jazz based and he has his own unique sound. He was trained by the same Bebop masters but he doesn't sound like them.

Bebop to me has a lot of chromatic approaches to target notes and maybe more linear, and follows stricter rules of chord tones on downbeats. Harmonically it is more predictable. There's also an up and down shape to it that's distinctive and heavily repeated in melodies. At least that's my perception of it.

I think it is useful to understand the difference and be able to switch styles, particularly if I'm playing standards.

100% agree.

Funny, I hear a LOT of Rollins in modern players (Coltrane, too). But not early Bird-influenced Rollins; post-"Bridge" Rollins. Of course, that's who me and MY friends listened to in high school. So, of course that's what I'm going to hear.

Man, I love this <stuff>.

>> Bebop to me has a lot of chromatic approaches to target notes and maybe more linear, and follows stricter rules of chord tones on downbeats. Harmonically it is more predictable. There's also an up and down shape to it that's distinctive and heavily repeated in melodies. At least that's my perception of it.
we should take a snapshot of an ominbook page and see if this tule applies. You might be surprised.

The cool thing about jazz is that you study all of these styles (and I assume everyone would agree that any serious student of jazz needs to study Charlie Parker and bebop), and then get to see what comes out of you when you improvise. You learn a lot about yourself when you improvise or compose. I love listening to Bird and sight reading through solos in the Omnibook, but I think my playing is more influenced by Evans, Hancock and Corea.

Coltrane's 3 main devices on Giant Steps, Countdown, Moment's Notice, etc.

1) The 4 note cell : 1235 (ascending) or 5321 (descending)
(Not always played from the root of the chord)

2) Arpeggio: 1 3 5 7 or 3 5 7 9 ; or just a basic triad arpeggio 1 3 5 8 or 8 5 3 1

3) Descending scale (major scale harmony); less often ascending


Usually targets chord tones on beat one.

Well Corea and Hancock are examples of two players who deviate from Bebop for sure. Bill Evans is heavily bebop based IMHO but his voicings have become the mainstay of modern jazz. However his solos are completely within the idiom in my observation.

Knotty - My description is very general and it not all encompassing. But clearly when I hear you play, it sounds completely bebop. When I intend to play in a bebop style, I feel like I alter my mindset and think more like Bird. When I play like myself, I don't sound like I'm doing bebop.

Does Thelonius Monk sound like typical Bebop? Now here's an interesting one. Although Monk is one of the founding fathers of Bebop, he actually doesn't sound like anyone else.

Then when Dizzy introduced the Afro-Latin style after Bird then it may have been altered again because he highlighted the rhythmic phrasing differently.

Can I actually describe Bebop accurately? Absolutely not. But when my teacher switches from Bebop to non-Bebop (which he has demonstrated to me a few times), it is clear that the devices I mention exist in it. And Modern jazz uses less of those devices.

To add to some characteristics of Bebop -- Bebop is heavier on triplets. Modern Jazz is not. Although chromatics is common in Bebop, it's the specific use of the "enclosure" of a target note that's heavily used. Non-bebop is heavier on quartals/pentatonics/intervallic playing that's just more unpredictably shaped.

There's a whole bebop vocabulary that one learns in licks. It is perhaps the fact that I was not trained to follow licks that I don't use those recognizable devices so much.

Bebop syncopation is a bit different. Now syncopation is somewhat of a personal style but to me the syncopation used by Hancock and Coltrane are very different from that found in Bird.

Now all I'm trying to state here is my recognition that there are stylistic differences if you listen to it.

I do think that learning Bird's phrasing is integral to learning jazz. I heard Wynton Marsalis describe what Bird was doing, and I was truly impressed with the explanation and it was based on how Bird introduced the seemily unstructured phrasing that was not encountered in prior early jazz.

Absolutely. I buy that. He also often does the pattern of reversing the direction of the last note in the arpeggio.

It's his phrasing though that is quite something to listen to when he suddenly interperses the long notes.

Now what else does McCoy use? The Quartal devices that Lot2Learn duplicated so well is of course the main one.

I was working on soloing at 240bpm yesterday and came to a realization that I just needed to conserve motion when playing a series of eighths (stay in place more and avoid leaps). Do the leaps in the spaces. Is that a compromise or is it just facing reality?

Jazzwee, that is very practical. imo. McCoy does a lot of 4 note Trane cells, they lay right under the fingers. Listen to McCoy's fast solo on "Fly Little Bird Fly", all tight range stuff , the longer piano solo is actually later in the track at 4:04 which I transcribed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8kJ43O1-0U

And fast repeat actions actions make all the difference in the world, imo. Digital pianos actions are generally not as fast, imo.

My dp has a much lighter action than my acoustic, but note repeat isn't any faster (as far as I can tell). Either way it doesn't make me sound like McCoy or help me play meaningful music at a faster speed. I need a faster brain I think.

Well, note repeat isn't so much of an issue for me at least. I'm not one with a tendency for trills.

But thanks Jazz+ for your comments on 4 note cells. That's reassuring.

Beeboss, you don't buy that? You play the same phrase shapes at 240 as you do at 150?

Note repeat speed indicates how fast the keys will move. McCoy is using the 4 note motif extensively and in different inversions.

They have a several Steinway grands at the school I teach at and the performance one which got about a $44,000 rebuild by the master is lightening fast and effortless to play. The other Steinway grands are in the practice rooms and play sluggishly in comparison, they are way harder to play fast.

I don't know. I try to improvise phrase shapes so they come out different each time but the stuff I have played most comes out more. at a faster tempo I lose the shape more and some little inaccuracy in the fingers spoils the rhythmic flow more frequently. I find when I go on autopilot sometimes the stuff I don't like comes out more, I think its the subconscious doing the thinking for me.