How to Extract the Juice Out of a Bebop Melody: Part Two

What are you going to do whenever you’re learning a Bebop melody? How are you really going to extract the juice out of it? For this case, let’s use the intro from “Confirmation” by Charlie Parker.

First thing you want to know is a bunch of language and associate that with the triads. Nothing new here, but we’re going deeper. If you look at the melody in “Confirmation,” it’s actually in F major. Notice how it transitions with this note, which is the third. You can associate it with this triad.

Now, can you play that an octave lower?

You’re not just learning a phrase; you can see the melodic function within that triad. When you move here, this is just an example: F major going to the third of the next chord, which is an E diminished. You can locate that E diminished using this second inversion diminished.

If you can’t associate those yet, you need to work on the fundamentals – understanding all those triads, how to add materials to them, and how to introduce language into them. That’s how you really learn to improvise. It’s not enough to just learn the basics; you need to associate creative materials with them. This is exactly what Galactic Modern Guitar is about.

After the diminished chord, we get this:

This is the 7th, flat 5, and 3rd of the same diminished triad. You’re associating materials. Take time to appreciate each melodic function. A pianist always does this: they play the chords with one hand and appreciate the melody with the other. As guitar players, we need to do the same by associating melody with a given chord.

Second inversion of F – lovely, right?

Same thing if we play that over here. Here’s our movement into the third. Even just appreciating the concept of moving into the third is valuable because you’ll apply this to other triads like C major. You want to appreciate that movement, so you can incorporate those fragments into any chord you play. This is something I dive deep into in the Galactic Modern Guitar series.

Here we talked about that and then we have:

That’s an easy one – you can literally see a first inversion triad right there. What’s cool about that? Skipping notes and not playing the note in the middle, skipping notes, and then we have the chords like D minor. In jazz, we play them with shell voicings or drop twos.

If you just want to get the essence of the melody, invite those melodies into the triads. Associate fundamentals with creativity. Keep doing that – learn the fundamentals, add creativity, learn more fundamentals, and keep adding creativity. Develop your own sound by learning from others and incorporating their materials into your fundamentals. Practice this repeatedly in your sessions.

We can also play it over here and invite the same movement, associated with this triad. Then we have a second inversion of the E diminished chord, exactly the same chord and movement going to the 3rd.

We have this first inversion A and then we can resolve it into this second inversion D minor.

Let’s summarize what we have today. The whole point is: don’t be afraid of the fundamental elements because they will set you free with awareness. If you want to build a car of your dreams, you need to understand the fundamental elements of how a car is put together before you start connecting things. The same applies to music.

Maybe you can come up with better analogies in the comments below. What are some examples where learning the basics and adding creativity helped you excel in other subjects besides music?

I invite you to check out Galactic Modern Guitar in the description of this video and enjoy connecting foundations across the fretboard and unleashing your own creativity.

In this lesson, I focused on triads, but what about motif development and telling stories with your solos? Check out the video right over here where I talk about developing a storyline within your solos for creative phrasing.

01 Associating a Bebop melody with chords and how this can help guitar players improvise and find their own voice.

So, how do you associate a Bebop melody, or any melody for that matter, with chords?

It all starts with learning the fundamentals of triads and chords and appreciating the melodic function of each chord. For example, when you play the melody of “Confirmation” over a G minor triad, you’ll hear the tension and dissonance that comes from playing the 7th and 9th of the chord. This tension can be resolved by playing the melody over a C major triad, which creates a sense of resolution and stability.