Hey guys!
Here;s something that has been confusing me a lot...
What is the difference between jazz and bebop?
Sorry for my ignorance but I'm still a noob in this style of music/drumming
Hey guys!
Here;s something that has been confusing me a lot...
What is the difference between jazz and bebop?
Sorry for my ignorance but I'm still a noob in this style of music/drumming
I am no expert, I just like jazz. Jazz is a form of music dating from about the 1890's. Jazz has many different styles including; Ragtime, New Orleans music, Swing, Dixieland revival, and Bebop. Other forms of Jazz include Cool Jazz, Free Jazz, Latin Jazz, Jazz fusion.
Bebop was started around the late 1930's by the recording of "Body and Soul" by Colman Hawkins. Later Artists in the 1940s who played BeBop were Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk.
There are a lot of books out there on Jazz, a visit to the library or searching the web would be a good place to get some good samples of Jazz and Bebop.
For us drummers the significant innovation, mostly attributed to Kenny Clarke, was moving the time from the hi-hat/kick to the ride cymbal.
I'm confused. I thought time was played on the ride since very early days and was later moved to hi-hat after modern hi-hat was invented (hence our unergonomic x-handed playing)? I think playing time on the hi-hat and kick is the signature of rock, which came after jazz?
No, those earlier drummers played the high hat a lot. So the convention for jazz now came right out of bebop.
In NO and swing, the drummer would play the bass drum on all four to keep the tuba and later bass in line. With Bebop the faster tempos made it more difficult to play the straight four so drummers began to "drop bombs, not playing the bass drum constantly but intermittently to accentuate the horns and move improvisation along. So that is a significant innovation that came with bebop, and influenced jazz in general. From that perspective, taking the original question into consideration, for a lot of guys there is no difference.
I'm confused. I thought time was played on the ride since very early days and was later moved to hi-hat after modern hi-hat was invented (hence our unergonomic x-handed playing)? I think playing time on the hi-hat and kick is the signature of rock, which came after jazz?
I heard that a defining feature of bebop that differentiated it from the big band drummers is that in bebop, time is kept on the ride and hihat (with the foot) and that both the snare and kick are primarily for accents, as in "dropping bombs" .
HOWEVER, for a definitive paper called "the Evolution of Bebop Drumming" by Tony Edwards (Tony Edwards is currently the Principal Timpanist for the Austin Symphony Orchestra,Principal Percussionist for the Britt Music Festival, Assistant Principal Percussionist for the Austin Lyric Opera, and Principal Percussionist/ Timpanist for the Texas Philharmonic.), check out this link: http://perc.music.utexas.edu/pdf/Bbop.pdf
It is a great article about the history of jazz drumming starting in the 1890s.
Bebop is the result of big band musicians getting together to jam, to give a simplistic explanation. These were players who knew their stuff from years of playing, and different players contributed different musical innovations. For us drummers the significant innovation, mostly attributed to Kenny Clarke, was moving the time from the hi-hat/kick to the ride cymbal. That, and the way-faster tempos that bebop was played in. Independence around the kit became the thing, rather than just keeping a danceable beat going.
These days bebop is pretty much the standard for jazz. That's because its focus is on small-group playing instead of big-band stuff, and it's expensive as hell to keep a big band going. Also, any group of competant jazz musicians can get together and play bebop, without ever having met each other. Someone calls a tune and bang, you're off and running.
All student jazz players will study bebop improvisation regardless of what instrument they play. Some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time came directly from the bebop movement. You could safely say that everything in jazz led to bebop, and that bebop led to almost everything that's happened in jazz since.
Anyway that's my little take on it.