NYC Jazz Guitar Masterclasses

What is a bebop scale?

What is a melodic triads bebop scale?

What do they have in common, and what’s different?

All great questions.

I’m not a scholar on the historical evolution of jazz pedagogy. How the educational styles, curriculums, norms, and sacred cows of jazz eduction evolved through one-on-one mentors, band leaders, and transcription up through printed instruction books, jazz institutions and colleges like Berklee, and now YouTube videos and online lessons… I’ll let the academics of jazz education history write on this topic.

What I am interested in is laying out the prevalence of education based around the traditional seven-note diatonic scale and how it differs from the 8-note bebop scale. Just to setup the true intention and...

You may have heard the story about Miles Davis telling Herbie Hancock not to play "the buttah" notes. But did you know that he also once told John Scofield and some of their fellow bandmates that he WANTED them to "play the buttah notes"?!

True story.

Weird, right? Why would he tell Herbie not to play the 'buttah' notes and years later tell other band members to play them? And what the hell is a 'buttah' note?

Let's be honest... with Miles... sometimes things were just cryptic. Maybe he said strange things to get people out of their comfort zone so they'd try something new... who knows?

But let's look at how Herbie and Scofield both interpreted their experiences to see if we can learn something to put into the shed.

As the story goes, Herbie was sitting at the...