Since I personally have problems with improvising over rhythm changes I decided to transcribe some
lines from bebop and hard bop masters to understand how they do it so well. My focus has
been mainly on measures 5 and 6, which might be the most interesting measures of the
A section. I will be using the key of Bb as reference, meaning the chord on
measure 5 is Bb7 (or |Fm7 Bb7|) and the chords on measure 6 are |Ebmaj7 Ebm7| or |Ebmaj7 Edim7|.
On measure 5 there is a handful of licks that can be used based on:
1. the degree of the Bb7 from which the lick starts.
2. the degree of the Ebmaj7 on which the lick lands.
The licks are the following:
These licks can be directly followed by the ones for measure 6 depending on the last note played. The licks for measure 6 can be further divided into two categories:
1. the ones that go from Ebmaj7 to Ebm7.
2. the ones that go from Ebmaj7 to Edim7.
The licks for Ebmaj7 going to Ebm7 are:
The licks for Ebmaj7 going to Edim7 are:
As you can probably see there are a lot of repeating or very similar ideas, but this is exactly what the masters do
too, especially Sonny Stitt. After all we are dealing with relatively fast changes, which is why relying at
least in part on muscle memory is not to be seen as a bad thing.
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