Sometimes I get a little annoyed at how some musicians seem to view bebop’s requirements. They learn a few licks and exclaim, “Ok, and that’s how you master bebop!” To be sure, you can pick up some bebop clichés and incorporate them. But there is really more to bebop than just learning some arpeggios, enclosures and a dash of triplets, and calling the problem solved. At least, if you truly want to master the art from the original creators of the style. In the 30th year since Jimmy Raney’s passing, let’s dive into some key bebop concepts of one of the first bebop innovators on guitar.
‘Taint whatcha do it’s how you do it
It’s not that the bebop language itself is overly complex. More recent jazz probably uses more complicated harmony, song forms and complex meters. What is more complicated about bebop is its usage: the overall phrasing requirements, it’s rhythm and the general architecture of well constructed solos. But while phrasing is more complex, clarity ia the key if you want to do it right.
One notable right of passage seems to be fast tempos which reached new heights during the bebop era. This is something Jimmy Raney excelled at and he was without peer on the guitar. Most jazz musicians, at some point, have been taught to handle fast tempos by breaking them down as if they were a slower tempo. “Hear it like a ballad,” is frequently offered as advice.
The problem is I’m not convinced too many jazz soloists really hear this way, as evidenced by their playing. Many can play impressively fast, but often relying on technique without much rhythmic subtlety or thought. On the other hand, underplaying the tempo without playing anything challenging to further the energy of the tempo isn’t quite the point, either.
Playing Fast and Loose
It’s the freedom of being relaxed in the tempo, being able to think clearly (or at least projecting that feeling to listeners), and jumping in or accenting anywhere in the bar and keeping your place. And also using space to accentuate the spots where you do play a longer string of notes, making the tempo “pop” with a mixture of phrasing approaches. This subtle dance is way harder to do then it seems.
Take the beginning of Jimmy’s solo to this blistering up tempo version of “Strike up the Band” from 1954. Note the sequence of phrases that relate to each other developing both the line and the rhythm. No long string of notes here, he even ghosts a note or two (like the “B” resolution note on the G7 chord).
Note how the phrases create a feeling of a bigger pulse, by starting the 1st phrases successively later. Even the little dotted quarter rhythm in bar 4 helps propel the final 3rd phrase’s energetic longer string of eighth notes that follow and resolve to the tonic. The perception created is that of a gradual lengthening of phrases that builds up and releases energy. There is a discussion of this topic in Chapter 9 of the Jimmy Raney Book in the section titled, “Set-up Phrases”
A similar approach is taken later in the solo, where a rising sequence of short downbeat oriented phrases are paired with a longer complex finishing phrase with more syncopation. This one really cooks!
(The full transcription of this solo is my transcriptions page. Please consider donating to help support the Raney Legacy site)
Think big and grow rich
To my ears, current day rhythmic approaches involve superimposing other pulses against the existing pulse. Which is cool too, but this type of approach feels more like metric modulation conceptually. What I’m talking about is grouping of eighths and quarters into larger metric units across measures.
Thinking in bigger terms is something that my father really took to heart when absorbing Charlie Parker’s playing. I have mentioned many times how Jimmy was blown away by the ending outro section of “Koko”. Parker was clearly thinking about 4 measure units and – more or less ignoring the bars in between the “big anchor points”.
The first challenge is hearing beat one. Max plays it on the snare drum with Parker starting after on beat 2. Parker’s approach here is what I like to call a multi-measure syncopation. If you count the 8 measures in 2 groups of 4 big beats (in 1/2 notes) it essentially feels like 5 + 3 .
Caution: Nerd alert…🤓)
To get a feel for this, do the following. On the slider below, change the speed to 1/2 or 3/4 speed (the 3 little dots). Once getting a feel for the half note pulse, start counting simultaneously with hitting the play button.
In half notes count, “1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3”… “1,2and, 1,2and, 1,2,3”. The 123 group should start on bar 3, beat 3 on E of C9. The first “12AND…” should sync nicely with the accented triplet on Bb (Bar 2, beat 2) and the final “1,2,3” starts on the note D of F7 (bar 3, beat 3). Practice it a few times and don’t get thrown by Max and Charlie’s strong accent on beat 3 of the final bar!
But I thought “2 and 4” was the thang?
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Jimmy tapped fast tempos on beats 1 and 3 in 2 feel (aka cut time). I hear this approach clearly in his solo flight on “Stella by Starlight” from Live in Tokyo. He is really playing lines without a net here, freely soloing in a fast tempo without the aid of the rhythm section. Just making the whole thing cook by himself. Granted it may not be quite as fast as the previous examples, but it still clocks in at a brisk ~280 bpm.
His “thinking in 2” anchors the pulse but allows him to play against it creatively and freely. This “big beat” approach definitely reflects Jimmy’s absorption into Parker’s rhythmic concepts discussed because he is not enslaved to little 4 beat “boxcars”.
Jimmy is clearly defining the harmony changes where he wants to within the measures. Even more continual shifting accents occur over the same changes later:
A study of these solos and concepts is gone into in depth in the Jimmy Raney Book, in chapter 7.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it
Bebop was trial by fire for anyone seeking to be part of the movement some 80 years ago, even Jimmy Raney. As he described it, when he went up and sat in with Bird, his hands were literally shaking. To my ears it still is trial by fire, but maybe since it doesn’t feel that way because there are so many different styles of jazz to choose from these days. And maybe it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But all the same, if you really want to dive in to the style, examine it a bit more in all of its subtlety and listen carefully to the best practitioners of the art who were really making it happen for the rest of us.
As Jimmy once said to his students during a lesson demonstrating these concepts:
“These are the subtleties of playing actually… These are the things that really are the hardest to get in your head and what makes the difference between an average player and an interesting player… This is it! If we’re really playing, that’s what separates the men from the boys, so to speak…“
Happy Birthday, Jimmy Raney!
We hear ya!
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