Level-Up Your Blues Phrasing

A big part of the bebop spirit was learning how to navigate through seemingly unrelated chords at speedy tempos. Saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker was a pioneer in the bebop movement and he combined his love of the burgeoning style with a deep appreciation for the blues. It’s easy to look at bebop in 2017 and think of it as a complicated and overly intellectual genre, but adding in a blues sensibility can make the changes a bit more approachable.

When looking at a traditional I–IV–V blues, there’s not all that much harmonic information to outline, so bop players like Parker would add chord substitutions. His composition “Blues for Alice” is an example of what’s become known as “Bird Blues.” The changes Parker used on this tune of become so accepted that other composers have written contrafacts—a different melody written on the same changes.