bebop language EXPLAINED : Charlie Parker 251 lick in Bb major

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hey Jin Jin, I'm back with my coffee.

[00:00:02]It's Sunday morning. I hope you have a little time for yourself where you can maybe sneak out and just like watch this video, get your guitar and just like practice a little bit. Today I want to show you a Charlie Parker line on a 251 and B flat major. First of all going to record like a C minor 7 F7 B flat major chord on my looper.

[00:00:55]The first of all, Charlie Parker lines are always a very good technical workout. And I would always suggest you start with the technical side of things.

[00:01:05]Just trying to play the thing in a correct way. Try to repeat it 10 times with a mistake before you start playing it faster. So this was 60 quarter notes.

[00:01:18]And then I would play the same line on 60 half notes like I always do. 1 2 1 2 3 Oh, so let's play it on 72. One, two.

[00:01:38]One, two.

[00:01:53]Now it's 90.

[00:02:00]That's nice.

[00:02:03]You can also do exercises like practicing in bursts. That's basically you start with the first two note in a rather fast tempo and then you add the next one and then the next note and see if you can have some fun with it. I love to do stuff like this. So let's analyze it on the C minor. He's playing the five, the one, the minor third, the nine, the one, the flat 7 and the five. So we can think about as a C minor patch, right, with an added nine or we can just think Dorian scale, but it's all very inside.

[00:02:52]It's all very much in the C minor 7 chord sound. The last two notes, the B flat and the G, they add as a diietonic enclosure for the A place.

[00:03:10]And you can try to hear it like this, right? Because notes point to other notes and they all have meaning.

[00:03:17]Chromatic notes all sort of guide the ears in different directions. And then we have this thing here.

[00:03:26]And that's nothing else than a diminish arpetio.

[00:03:33]Right? You can if you want to can practice diminish arpeggio with those um two notes per string.

[00:03:44]That's called chango reinhardt arpetio.

[00:03:50]And that's a very visual way of practicing a diminished arpetio because I tend to get confused with that. And like that that we have the three, the five, the flat 7, but also always the flat n.

[00:04:06]So that's what the diminished arpeggio does to the chord. And then that's basically all if you want to as mixelyian ending on the B flat and the B flat is the one on the B flat major chord one major 7 n major 7 right so very diietonic this thing and I want you to pay attention to this that's a C minor 7 arpeggio and he plays it here on the B flat major sort of imposing another chord just to have more forward motion. And as always, if you practice stuff like this, try to um transpose the line. That's really one of the best exercises for developing an understanding for Bub language. And also just take one small part of it and maybe it's the diminish arpeggio and just check out those four notes. That's always also a very good trick just to you know take a small part of the lick because it's way easier to use it in your improvisations. So that's it for this Sunday and I see you next Sunday.

[00:05:25]Have fun experimenting. Gear up.