The Bebop Dominant Scale
Levi Clay
Hello and welcome to my first column for Guitar Break.
Today we will be dipping our toes into the scary world of “jazz” with a look at the aptly named “bebop dominant scale”. I decided to jump in with this less common topic as there are a multitude of sources on the internet covering most aspects of playing, but this, sadly, is an under exposed subject. From the start I will point out that this article isn’t exclusive to jazzers, so if you are a rock player looking for some new sounds, I urge you to read on. For those of you who already play a bit of jazz and understand the basics and want to move forward then this column will give you new ideas to experiment with. You may want to hunt down columns by Shaun Baxter on note targeting, and more recently Pete Callard’s columns on chromaticism.
Jazz is a rather broad term usually associated with smoky clubs and self indulgent solos, but when it comes to the actual sound of the music the genre ranges from the big band swing of artists like Duke Ellington all the way through to the more harmonically venturous efforts of Allan Holdsworth. The key element for jazz, in my mind at least, is the instrumentalist’s abilities to outline the harmonic movement implied by the rhythm section; this comes from a firm grasp on arpeggios and the targeting of chord tones, this takes the rock players more scalar ideas and leaves you with a more intervallic style.
This is where the term “bebop dominant scale” can be quite deceptive, as it’s not actually a scalar approach but actually a methodical approach to arpeggios.
If we take a look at the C mixolydian scale (The scale used to play over a C7 chord C E G Bb)
C D E F G A Bb
Then play this as a stream of constant 8th notes through 2 octaves and you will see that the notes that fall on the strong beats are
C D E F G A Bb C D E F G A Bb C
And although this sounds fine, as it’s a scale it doesn’t contain the seemingly random chromaticism contained within a Charlie Parker or Bud Powel solo. When you look at solos by these pioneers of bebop the thing that really strikes you is the harmonic strength the solos have, even with the heavy chromatic alterations. One method of introducing sophisticated sounds like this is the use of bebop scales.
A bebop scale is a traditional seven-note diatonic scale with an additional chromatic passing note added in order to leave only chord tones on the downbeats. In the case of the bebop dominant scale we add a major 7 leaving us with
C D E F G A Bb B C
Lay this out as before and suddenly we have introduced more chromatic sounds but at the same time added harmonic strength
C D E F G A Bb B C D E F G A Bb B
Now, the beauty of this almost mathematical approach to improvisation is that you can start the scale on any chord tone then wander up and down the scale to your heart’s content, and as long as you stick to straight 8th notes (ideally swung) you will always have the chord tones on the strong beats.
From here the next thing you need to internalise is how to execute these scales when starting from non-chord tones because after all when you’re improvising you can’t be restricted to only being able to start a lick from one of 4 notes. There are 12 at our disposal after all!
I have laid out the basic rules in the following diagrams so you can experiment. I wouldn’t want to show you how to do everything when the experimentation will certainly lead you to your own applications of this particular approach.
On the following pages you will see the Bebop Dominant Scale in the 5 positions of CAGED, followed by four licks, two jazz ideas and two rock/fusion ideas. Download the PDF pages here >>
For further reading look no further than David Baker’s fantastic series “How To Play Bebop” volumes 1, 2 and 3, all contain hundreds of example lines (without tab).
Also check out the Charlie Parker Omni book (again this book lacks tab).
And CD wise I urge you to hunt down the wonderful Jazz Metal by Shaun Baxter to see how a rock player can use these ideas and of course Guitar Break’s own Guthrie Govan and his beautiful CD Erotic Cakes - better yet, come see the bloke with his fusion act the The Fellowship (Bath Spa Uni, Newton St Loe 6th August). You won't regret it.
Levi Clay
Levi Clay is a young up and coming teacher based in London. As a student of several of Guitar Break's current teachers Levi has risen quickly in profile since his first appearance on one of Dario's Guitar Break classes, and has since landed work as a transcriber, player (even playing in an opening slot for the legendary Pat Martino), and having his own class at the International Guitar Foundation (IGF) Youth Rock event. Levi puts this down quite simply to "the fantastic tuition offered by Guitar Techniques, the ICMP and Guitar Break. Currently Levi filling his time with a BMus(Hons) from the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) and being blown away by Guthrie's antics with the Fellowship!