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When learning to improvise in the bebop idiom guitarists usually encounter tricky fingerings,
harmonically dense progressions and fast tempos.
All of these require a fair amount of technique on the instrument compared to say using one
mode to improvise over one chord for four bars at a medium tempo.
This article features 6 bebop etudes that use perpetual motion and help develop some of the
techniques required for playing bebop.
Each bebop etude can also be used to warm up at the beginning of a practice session to help
you take your improvisation chops to the next level.
Though the etudes are not written to sound completely musical, each of the four note patterns
found with each example can sound musical when mixed with other jazz licks and rhythms.
So besides developing your technique, you are also expanding your jazz language.
Each of the etudes is applied over a cycling dominant progression starting on G7, but you can
throw in these patterns over rhythm changes or any bebop workout that feature descending ii-Vs.
The tab fingerings are only suggestions and I recommend starting from a different place on the
neck when you have played through the positions I wrote out.
You can also try mixing the patterns up in different bars by starting a new pattern in each as
demonstrated in the example below.
To show how these bebop etudes patterns can be musical heres a lick I composed using the first
and second patterns as a basis.
I used rhythmic, chromatic, and chord type subs taught in my Introduction to Jazz Improv
eBook to make the line sound musical.
If you want to apply any of these patterns to a regular ii-7, V7, and I major 7 change the four note
patterns to fit the chord type.
You could also try starting on a different dominant 7th chord within the cycle.
I have only scratched the surface of each of this practice technique to keep the lesson to a
reasonable size but you could experiment with any four note grouping be it triads, 3-9 arpeggios,
or even normal arpeggios.