Bebop

The fast, harmonically rich jazz style of the 1940s, whose melodic vocabulary and tempo set the standard for jazz improvisation.

Bebop raised the technical bar for jazz players by adding chromatic passing tones, substitute chords and rapid chord changes at tempos that leave no room for hesitation. Its vocabulary, built from enclosures and arpeggios rather than scales, is the foundation of most jazz improvisation teaching even now. Guitarists approach it in the upper register with a clean tone, and its demands make it one of the best disciplines for developing genuine fluency rather than shape-based playing.

Example: A solo at a very fast tempo full of chromatic approach notes over a standard chord progression is bebop playing.

Bebop

See also