bebop and jazz...

h3r3tic

Silver Member
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

Jazz is the overall genre and bebop is a subgenre that came to being in the 1940's with guys like Diz and Bird. It used smaller ensembles It was known for its faster tempos, adventurous harmonies and improvsation, and rhythmic phrasing.
 
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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

Nope it isn't a stupid question because I'd like to see answer comin in.
 
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.
 
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.

Since this forum haven't the "Thank's" option then

Thank's for detailed answer.
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
Not so. At least, not necessarily. While the ride cymbal has always been used to "ride" on, as we do today, the sound of that constant ping texture wasn't really used as much to complement a full jazz ensemble as just the open-close-open-close sound of a hihat with the jazz pattern played over it. Don't get me wrong, the ride cymbal was still used, but not with as much dynamic freedom and preference as it is in bebop and post-bop jazz.

EDIT: Ah, beat me to it...
 
The way I heard it, the first Bebop guys didn't want people to dance to their music, but listen, so they made it so that you COULDN'T dance to it.

Also, there's bebop interpretation of rhythms (particularly useful with the "Syncopation" book) in which short notes (everything eighth note and shorter) are played on the snare, and long notes are played on the bass drum (quarter notes and longer).
 
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 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.
 
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?

Hmm...in my studies, I learned that the time was kept on the bass drum while the hands played mostly on the snare. The hands would occasionally switch to the woodblock (a la ragtime or vaudeville-style drumming) or play on the several "trap" items around the kit (like cymbals, bells, Chinese toms, etc...). When the low sock evolved into the high hat, that's when cymbals started to play a more prominent time-keeping role. After the hats, larger cymbals were used to ride on to better cut through an ensemble, which were growing in size at the time.

Now, please, anyone tell me if I'm wrong, and please site sources...
 
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.


Nice article. I especially liked his outline of Jo Jones. He was really the guy who made the high hat popular. But if you listen to a lot of the music of the early period, the high hat is used a lot. So if you are really interested in knowing what the scoop is, listen to the music. don't take any ones word for it because even the master timpanist of the Austin Symphony can be wrong. My post was a referenced to Louie Bellson, so if it was wrong, you can blame him. :)
 
Would the song "Magic Flea" by Count Basie be considered bebop? We played that song last year in jazz band... and it was cool lol.
 
No, because something is fast doesn't neman it is bebop. As far as any influence bebop would have had on this piece I wouldn't know. If it had any, it would be an interesting question.
 
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.

Great thumbnail history and definition.

It seems to me like jazz started losing its place as the dominant form of pop music when bebop started to dominate jazz. Like musicians said, "Wow, this is a lot more fun to play than big band music" but on a mass scale, it seems there are more musicians making it than there are people wanting to listen to it.

Pop music in modern Western societies seems to be simple music and bebop isn't simple and is sometimes demanding to listen to. It's unfortunate that people will enjoy a demanding activity like video games but they can't transfer that to musical enjoyment, at least on a mass scale.
 
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