Book Presentation (30 Minutes) Abstract

Our book, Learning Jazz Improvisation through Historical Voices: Roles, Rhythms, and Routines, forthcoming with Oxford University Press, presents an approach to improvisation through historical voices. In contrast to mainstream theoretical approaches based on chord-scale and harmonic theories, authors Brian Levy and Keith Waters develop methods for listening and developing melodic and rhythmic vocabulary. We present two chapters from the book that theorize an idiomatic bebop jazz vocabulary.

Chapter 6. Descending Pathways and Underlying Thirds regards Charlie Parker’s solo on “Move,” an extended improvisation. In it, Parker fashions even one of his most inspired performances out of a limited vocabulary of melodic ideas. We emphasize a melodic (rather than a harmonic) perspective on Parker’s lines, and use a short excerpt from the beginning of the solo as a prototype line. This line reveals common patterns and subtle variations elsewhere in the solo, providing an efficient way to learn idiomatic bebop vocabulary and to gain fluency. The sheer quantity of repetition in such an inspired solo as Parker’s solo on “Move,” challenges our intuition—it suggests that Parker’s spontaneity relies on similar melodic pathways, ones freely revisited.

Chapter 7. Techniques for Connecting and Expanding Melodies illustrates how lines shape and elaborate chains of melodic thirds. We focus on five common techniques for expanding descending lines and underlying chains of thirds, using written and performance exercises for each. These techniques help shape lines that sound like those of Parker, Sonny Rollins, Bud Powell, Clifford Brown, and others, lines that form the basic fabric of bebop vocabulary. Finally, we use the underlying thirds to see how lines and harmonies are complementary: the underlying thirds can imply harmonies. Or to put it in a slightly different way, there is a reciprocal relationship: lines arpeggiate chords (in time) and chords abstractly represent (out of time) those arpeggiations.