Wow, we’ve had a busy year in 2008, with lesson collaborations between me and Michael Angelo Batio, Rusty Cooley, Aurelian Budynek, and Angus Clark. Don’t you worry, 2009 will be just as jam packed with great guitar lessons and collaborations with some of the biggest names in guitar.
This month's lesson is a thrill ride into some melodic and technical depths that we’ve haven’t reached before. Let’s talk about the Mixolydian/dominant Bebop scale. The Bebop scale is commonly used in jazz improvisation and originates from the modes of the major scale. There are three types of Bebop scales: the Bebop dominant, the Bebop major, and the Bebop Dorian. Each has an extra chromatic passing tone. Bebop scales consist of traditional scales with an added passing tone placed such that when the scale is begun on a chord tone and on the downbeat, all other chord tones will also fall on downbeats, with the remaining tones in the scale occurring on the upbeat. Let’s focus on the Bebop dominant where the passing tone is a natural 7, between the b7 and the root and goes great with dominant 7th chords. Off we go…
|
All of these examples are written in the key of G and progress linearly up the fretboard covering five positions and then repeating at the octave. Learn each example as an individual scale and then practice linking them together up and down the fretboard linearly on each string. |
| |
|
| |
Example 1:
|
Listen
|
 |
| |
|
| |
Example 2: |
Listen |
 |
| |
|
| |
Example 3: |
Listen
|
 |
| |
|
| |
Example 4: |
Listen
|
 |
| |
|
| |
Example 5: |
Listen |
 |
| |
|
| |
Now link them together ascending and descending covering all five positions. |
| |
 |
Whew! That’s a workout. When practicing these examples, strictly alternate your picking, use a metronome and a clean tone at first. The Bebop scales offer new challenges to the picking and fretting hand and can greatly improve your ability to implement chromatic passing tones into your soloing. Remember, many heptatonic (7 tones per octave) scales may be modified by the addition of an eighth passing tone to accomplish this same effect; however, the term "bebop" is reserved to indicate those scales most frequently used and popularized during the bebop era. See you next month!