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4 Effective Bebop Scales

Fingerings
June 8, 2016 by Marc-Andre Seguin
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In this lesson well be covering the essentials of bebop

scales for jazz guitar. Well explore four useful, relevant
and fun bebop scales fingerings. As a result, your playing

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132

will be enhanced by more jazz-like phrasing using several

natural and flowing fingering patterns.

Jazz Guitar
in 4 Steps Start Here!

Why Bebop Scales?

Jazz Guitar
Chord Chart
#1

Well, at some point in their development, jazz improvisers

usually get tired of fitting the right scales over chords, like
13

Dorian, Mixolydian, and major scales, and you long for a

more chromatic approach to soloing.
After we can easily fit the right scale over the right
chord, we often need some sort of new puzzle or new
concept to keep things interesting. But how do we add
more notes other than the plain inside diatonic ones?
Where should we start? Fortunately with bebop scales,
the right notes become the starting point of our
chromatic adventure. Well be adding outside notes to
familiar scales, so you most likely grasp 95% of this
concept already.

Effective Bebop Scales: Download this First!

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Heres is the PDF file with the exercises from this lesson.

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What is the so-called Bebop Scale?

First, what is the so-called bebop scale? Theres an older
video on YouTube titled, The Bebop Scale Demystified,
in which I explain the concept. In a few words, the main
idea behind the bebop scales is adding one note to a 7note scale to make it fit the bar of 4/4. Obviously, a scale
that has 8 notes is better suited for 4/4 time signature
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than a scale that has only 7 notes. For instance, the C

major scale:

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Technically, you could be adding a passing tone

randomly (anywhere) within a scale you already know.
But in reality, we add a bebop passing tone in a scale by
making the important notes, the chord tones, following
strong beats.

Lets Play!
All the theory in the world wont make you play better, so
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lets just look at these four important guitar fingerings for

the bebop scales. Refer to the PDF please for all the
notation (with TABS).

How to Sound
Jazzy with
Altered
Dominants

First, lets look at the major bebop scale. The major

bebop scale has a passing tone in between the 5th and
6th degree of the scale. Here is the fingering for C major
bebop scale:

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Be careful with the fingering here, though. Notice that the

first 3 notes of this scale are played with the fingers 1, 2,
and 4, and not the fingers 1, 3, and 4. The reason for this
is its much easier to stretch between the index and the
middle finger, better than stretch with the pinkie, right?
Note that we just had a 1-octave version of this scale. We
could have a 2-octave version like this, or we can even
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could have a 2-octave version like this, or we can even

start with a C root on the 6th string here, instead of the
5th. Those possibilities are all noted in the PDF.

Minor Bebop Scale

Closely related to the major bebop, we have the minor
bebop scale. All we have to do is lower the 3rd note of
the scale, so instead of C, D, and E, its going to become C,
D, and Eb. And thats it!

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Be careful, once again, with the fingerings. This one is
played with the fingers 1, 2, and 3 to start the scale.

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Some Theory: II-V-I

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Before going any further, we need a little bit of musical

theory. The last 2 bebop scales in this lesson the

bickert how to play

jazz guitar ii-V-I

D Dorian bebop and the G Mixolydian bebop scales.

improvisation

Why those choices? And not, for instance, C Dorian and C

jazz
guitar

Mixolydian? Well because we want to be ready to play on

the II-V-I in C major.
The progression is a follow: Dm7 G7 Cmaj7.
Also recall that the scale of choice for this D7 is the D
Dorian scale containing the notes D, E, F, G, A, B, and C,
and that the scale of choice for G7 is the G Mixolydian,
containing the notes G, A, B, C, D, E and F. Note that both
the D dorian and G mixolydian are still only using notes
from the C major scale. Just the white keys on the piano,
basically. We call them modes from C major scale. If none
of this is familiar to you, please refer to the theory section
here.
And now lets add a bebop passing tone to both the
Dorian and Mixolydian scales.
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standards jazz

D Dorian Bebop Scale

Heres the Dorian bebop scale.

improvisation jim
hall joe pass kenny
burrell lesson
lessons major scale pat

metheny
pentatonics pentatonic
scales

Practicing
recordings
rhythms scales

This one really is the easiest when we start with the

pinkie of the fretting hand to start the scale. Also see the

soloing top-5

PDF for extra materials, fingerings and ideas.

voicings wes

truefire

video

montgomery

Mixolydian Bebop Scale

And lastly, lets explore the Mixolydian bebop scale. This
scale applies to dominant chords, obviously, and its
usually called just the bebop scales, or an old-school jazz
player will tell you bebop scale when referring to the
Mixolydian model of bebop passing tone. Heres the G7
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bebop scale:

Fingerings for the Mixolydian bebop scale can become

really tricky when playing it on more than 1 octave, on 2
octaves. My personal rule of thumb is start with the
pinkie or start with the 3rd finger, depending, and shift
using the 2nd finger on scale degrees 3 and 4. Of course,
you can always see the PDF for full fingerings and tabs of
this. Heres what I mean with two octaves:

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More modes of the bebop scale?

Now we saw 4 bebop scales. Can we use this bebop
scales concept on other scales and modes? Yes,
absolutely. But youll have to explore these avenues on
your own. Check out the video titled, Bebop Modes on
the YouTube channel.

A Note on the Fingerings

Did you notice that all we have covered does not fit the
regular scale position on the guitar? This is not an
accident.

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The fingerings that suit bebop scale best are so-called

diagonal fingerings. Its a combination of playing across
the strings and across the fretboard at the same time.
From personal experience, diagonal fingerings are great
for genuine jazz-like phrasing on the guitar.
Notice that the aim of using such diagonal patterns is to
get identical fingerings on subsequent octaves. The
fingers to ears relationship is strengthened. You can play
the same musical phrase an octave higher by having the
same fretting hands finger produce the same
sound. How great is that if you can find a way to fit it on
the guitar?

Chromatic Notes
The last note about the fingerings, the chromatic notes
are grouped on the same strings. As I just played a part
of the D Dorian bebop, so we group the chromatic notes
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within the same string. Its just a personal preference. I

dont like to have to change string in the middle of a lick,
especially when the notes are all consecutive on the
same string. Whatever works for you is fine, but this is
very practical for me.

Applications: Bebop Scale

In conclusion, let me answer some of your questions and
that before they even arise. The typical question is
always:

Where do I apply bebop scales?

My answer is almost always:

Dont.

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I mean, sure obviously you can use a C major bebop on a

C major chord, and a D Dorian bebop on a D minor 7 and
so on, but the aim of this whole endeavor is to have you
play more chromatically, to have more chromaticism into
your playing. Remember, this is not to learn to connect
the dots once again and plug in the right scales onto the
right chords. We outgrew the fit the scale over the chord
concept, and were looking for better, fluid, lines.
I strongly believe that you should build a deep technical
proficiency with those exercises before attempting to
consciously apply them on chord progression while
improvising. You need to develop at least some degree of
muscle memory before jumping on applications.
Plus, its a fact that forcing cerebral ideas into your
music is simply bad news. I mean, when youre soloing,
the left part of the brain should stay put and not attempt
to plug in some intellectual concepts into your lines.
In summary: just learn the materials and have faith that
these ideas will show up into your playing when your
fingers and ears are ready for it. You just have to believe
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that its going to happen, and you have to believe me to

some extent.
Practicing bebop scales is like lifting weights and running
a treadmill when you want to get better at sports.
BUT the training is not the sport itself.
So rehearsing your bebop scale exercises will prepare you
to play nice jazz lines when you are under fire, while you
are improvising for real. That is, when theres no more
time to think anymore. My advice is go ahead and lift the
weights, run that treadmill. Then simply let your
unconscious mind do the job. Its much easier this way,
and its really much more fun.
I highly recommend Podcast #21 and Podcast #5 here.

A Blast from the Past

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Side note: this video was published as part of a fivelesson series published on TrueFire in November 2014 in
the context of #TNTGI2014. These lessons have been republished on this blog for your viewing pleasure.

The third lesson is about jazz guitar comping (and how to

play better jazz guitar chords) here

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