Bebop Scales 124 Bebop Scales and Their Application

Bebop Scales 124 Bebop Scales and Their Application

Bebop Scales 124 Bebop Scales and Their Application works with 124 Bebop scales but is also an overview of other octatonic courses.  Bebop scales are some of the most commonly known octatonic scales and are one of the techniques used by jazz musician to create a “Bebop Sound.”  They are used in a very specific way so they are in a special class of octatonic (eight note) scales. 

Most musicians are familiar with a small subset of Bebop scales.  This course looks at the common Bebop scales as well as many more. You can see from the Table of Contents below that many aspects of Bebop scales are covered as well as an introduction to some of the future courses which cover; “Segmenting Bebop Scales” and Segmenting Bebop scales with Approaches.

The other courses mentioned above will really help you to see all the applications of Bebop scales and are very important concepts to grasp their full potentials. Overall this is a great course to get started learning Bebop Scales, understanding their use and seeing future ways that you can practice and apply them.

Excerpt from Bebop Scales 124 Bebop Scales and Their Application

Bebop scales have traditionally been a collection of eight note scales where a chord is spelled out on the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th position in a scale. For example, 1,2,3,4,5,b6,6,7 is a Major Bebop Scale. You can see that the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th position in the scale spell out a Major 6th chord.

There are 495 possible octatonic (eight note) scales. After the 330th scale you have eight note scales that do not contain the root. Many of the 495 possible eight note scales have the characteristic where every other note spells a common chord form, as I referenced in the first paragraph. Traditionally there have been approximately 10 Bebop scales that are not commonly used. I’ve listed these and a few others on page 2 of this course.

I would recommend starting with these if you are new to Bebop scales. If you already use these scales, feel free to look at the 124 Bebop scales that I’ve included in this course. Most of these 124 Bebop scales have the same characteristic where the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th position spell out a common chord. (See page 3 for common chord types.)

If you consider chords that are not built in 3rds as your criteria for creating a Bebop scale, that opens up a whole new world of possible scales. I’ve included some of these in the 124 Bebop scales and made a note of their uniqueness on page 8-9. If you would like to explore other possibilities there is a list of all 495 scales found in this course as well as a folder with these scales in all keys.

Bebop scales have a specific way that they are usually played, which I discuss on page 1 of this course. But there are actually many other ways to use Bebop scales. I’ve created other courses using eight note scales where you can explore such things as the chords derived from these scales, as well as common ways Bebop scales are applied in a jazz idiom.

All of the 495 possible octatonic (eight note) scales can be reduced down the 29 prime forms using pitch class set theory. I’ve include references to these throughout this course and you can find a breakdown of these relationships on pages 66-68.

Read more about this course and see example pages at Bruce Arnold’s Blog