![\"5,4,3,2](\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/files\/2015\/03\/5432-licks.jpg\")
<\/a> These licks are ubiquitous in the language of many jazz giants.\u00a0 I first became aware of this from reading Fiona Bicket\u2019s analysis of Barry Harris\u2019 solo on \u2018Stay Right With It\u2019<\/a> (included in her book The Barry Harris Approach To Improvised Lines and Harmony: An Introduction<\/a>), which shows how Harris makes ingenious use of the \u20184\u2019 lick multiple times when soloing over this B flat blues progression.\u00a0 Since then I have found a number of examples that demonstrate how 5-4-3-2 licks can be used at the beginning, middle or end of a melodic phrase (as Barry Harris says, they are useful for \u2018getting out of trouble\u2019.)\u00a0 Charlie Parker begins the last eight bars of his \u2018Shaw Nuff\u2019<\/a> solo with the 5 lick, and includes the 4 toward the end of the same section.\u00a0 Frank Morgan plays a beautiful phrase at the end of his solo on Tommy Flanagan’s Something Borrowed, Something Blue <\/a>which uses a fragment of the 5 lick twice.\u00a0\u00a0 (This phrase, and the first and last two bar phrases in the last A of the ‘Shaw Nuff’ solo, lend themselves particularly well to being transposed through all twelve keys.)<\/p>\nThe bridge of Charlie Parker’s solo\u00a0on his big band version of \u2018What Is This Thing Called Love\u2019<\/a>, where he combines the 5 lick and the 3 lick, shows one of the many ways the licks can be combined. \u00a0 They can also be used in multiple harmonic contexts, as one can see from a Parker solo on a live version of \u2018Ornithology\u2019 (from a now apparently out of print album called ‘Broadcast Performances’), where he uses a combination of the 5 lick and the 4 lick in a way that also includes the flat 9 of a dominant 7th chord.\u00a0 This combination of Parker\u2019s involves the first half of a combination that Harris calls the \u20185-4-3-2 lick\u2019, a longer lick that combines all four of the shorter licks.\u00a0 I sometimes call this the \u2018Monster Lick\u2019, as it combines a number of pieces into a working whole, somewhat like Dr. Frankenstein\u2019s Monster in Mary Shelley\u2019s classic tale:<\/p>\n As I have studied the 5-4-3-2 licks over the years I have become more aware that, even though the licks themselves are used by a number of improvisers, they are even more important as a general example of the way that improvisers in the jazz tradition use many kinds of highly potent and malleable melodic motives or \u2018licks\u2019 in multiple rhythmic and harmonic contexts.\u00a0 While the 5-4-3-2 licks are examples of melodic vocabulary shared by many improvisers, Charlie Parker developed his own personal vocabulary of licks which he either generated himself or came to \u2018own\u2019 through his masterful use of them.\u00a0 Identifying these licks as the building blocks of his composing and improvising can make it possible to \u2018decode\u2019 his personal melodic language in a way that makes it much easier to memorize and internalize his melodies, solos and melodic concepts.<\/p>\n Although I have played Charlie Parker tunes and studied his solos for many years, my interest in approaching his melodic language as a kind of code stems from a number of recent nonfiction and fictionalized accounts of the British cryptologists stationed at Bletchley Park during World War II.\u00a0 These include a fascinating article on the difference between puzzles and mysteries by Malcolm Gladwell<\/a>, the PBS series \u2018The Bletchley Circle\u2019, and the recent film \u2018The Imitation Game\u2019, which dramatizes the story of Alan Turing, a British mathematician whose creative approach to cracking codes used in radio transmissions by the German Navy made a major contribution to the Allies\u2019 victory over the Axis in World War II.\u00a0 At the point when Turing joined the British intelligence community, the German Navy was encoding messages using the Enigma machine, a kind of early code-reading electric typewriter capable of reading messages with a high degree of encryption.\u00a0 In a step beyond codes used in earlier eras, where each letter of the alphabet was simply replaced with a different letter, the Enigma machine allowed the German Navy to send messages in codes where a single alphabetic letter could represent multiple letters depending on its position in the message.\u00a0 (A video by numberphile<\/a> helped me to understand this.)\u00a0 Jim Holt writes<\/a> that Turing\u2019s approach to this seemingly unbreakable encryption was to devise a machine \u2018the size of several refrigerators, with dozens of rotating drums\u2019 which was capable of searching for \u2018logical consistency\u2019 – such as frequently used phrases – in the German Navy messages.\u00a0 Because of a ticking sound it made, Turing\u2019s colleagues dubbed the machine \u2018the Bombe\u2019.\u00a0 Holt hints that a change occured in Turing\u2019s demeanor during the time he developed this machine; while he was \u2018solitary\u2019 and \u2018ascetic\u2019 in his earlier academic life at Princeton and Cambridge, during his time at Bletchley Park he \u2018impressed his colleagues as a friendly, approachable genius, always willing to explain his ideas.’ \u2018The Imitation Game’ also dramatizes Turing as a reluctant but well-liked group leader.\u00a0 Both the \u2018Bombe\u2018 and a later, more elaborate computer which Turing began designing in 1945 are now acknowledged as the forerunners of the modern personal computer.<\/p>\n There are a number of noteworthy correspondences between Turing\u2019s life and the life of Charlie Parker.\u00a0 Both men had a genius for working with patterns; as a Japanese website <\/a>has shown, Parker \u2018encoded\u2019 his melodic lines with not only his own melodic phrases but those from sources including classical music, folk music and opera; and Turing\u2019s greatest success came from developing a machine that used electrical current to identify patterns in encoded messages. There are also parallels in the way their work evolved chronologically: in 1945, the year that Turing began developing his plan for a more elaborate computer, Parker had his first recording session as a leader, which included his classic tune \u2018Anthropology\u2019.\u00a0 (When one considers that Turing\u2019s 1945 computer design, following his work leading the group at Bletchley Park, ultimately led to his being appointed deputy head of the computing laboratory at Manchester University, one can see that Turing and Parker were rising to leadership positions in their respective fields at around the same time.)\u00a0 The original title of \u2018Anthropology\u2019, \u2018Thrivin\u2018 On A Riff\u2019, is a clue to the way in which it is a repository of multiple patterns that figure prominently in Parker’s personal melodic code.<\/p>\n A number of commentators on Parker\u2019s music, including Lawrence Koch and David Baker, have pointed out how the last phrase in the bridge of \u2018Anthropology\u2018 is identical to measures 7-8 in \u2018Ornithology\u2019 (and nearly identical to measures 9-10.)\u00a0 None of the analysts and biographers of Parker I have consulted so far, however, have pointed out that the A section of \u2018Anthropology\u2019 contains four smaller motives, comparable in size to the 5-4-3-2 licks, with clear connections to other places in Parker\u2019s work: in order, they are the first five notes of the tune (which Parker reuses with a different rhythmic placement as the first five notes of \u2018Dexterity\u2019); the last five notes of the first measure, which are re-used with a different concluding note in measure 6 of \u2018Ornithology\u2019; measure 7, which takes the melodic pattern from the second half of measure 8 of Billie\u2019s Bounce, extends it rhythmically by half a beat (i.e. an eighth note pulse) and simplifies it melodically by removing one note; and measure 8, which is a slightly altered version of the second half of the \u2018Cool Blues\u2019 motive which formed the basis of one of Parker\u2019s B flat blues heads (and which he stated with a signature-like clarity in his solos on ‘Yardbird Suite’ and ‘Dewey Square’.)<\/p>\n Of these four tunes, three were recorded after \u2018Anthropology\u2019, while one (\u2018Billie\u2019s Bounce\u2019) was recorded the same day.\u00a0 Parker analysts and biographers do not generally agree that the order in which he recorded his tunes was also the order in which he composed them, so it may be futile to try and establish whether the composition of these four tunes came after their themes were encapsulated in \u2018Anthropology\u2019, but in any case, the musical relationship is clear.\u00a0 Whether ‘Anthropology’ was composed before or after the tunes it references, it is a summation of some of his most potent ideas, much like Turing’s ‘Bombe’ and the post-war machine for which it was the prototype.<\/p>\n On a more abstract level, the rhythmic pattern which is heard between beat 2 of measure 7 and beat 1 of measure 8 in Anthropology is also an important element both of Parker\u2019s melodic code and the elements of melodic language that he and Dizzy Gillespie shared.\u00a0 It can be heard multiple times in \u2018Moose the Mooche\u2019 (including between beat 4 of measure 5 and beat 3 of measure 6 in each A section, and three times in the bridge), and it forms the opening lick of Gillespie\u2019s hit \u2018Oop Bop Sh Bam\u2019<\/a>, which Parker performed on at least one occasion with Gillespie and his big band.\u00a0 In the version of \u2018Moose the Mooche\u2019 by Joe Lovano and his quintet Us 5<\/a>, the rhythm section dispenses with traditional bassline-and-chords comping and plays a single-line accompaniment based on this motive.\u00a0 Their accompaniment to the A section is based on a rhythmic motive heard in measures 1 and 3 of each A section and the last two bars of the second and last A sections.\u00a0 This motive is extended to three repetitions in m. 1-3 and 11-12 of Billie\u2019s Bounce, and is truncated to a single statement in measure 2 of \u2018Anthropology\u2019.<\/p>\n As I hope to continue demonstrating in future posts, the more one becomes aware of Parker\u2019s use of patterns, the more one comes to see that while his work does include a fairly large number of tunes, there is a somewhat smaller vocabulary of key melodic and rhythmic phrases that recur throughout the tunes.\u00a0 I believe that one could demonstrate the same kind of thematic unity in the work of Thelonious Monk, whose interest in variation through repetition can be found in many tunes, or Billy Strayhorn, whose best work shows his interest in altered harmony and dominant-cycle chord progressions.\u00a0 I would question whether the an equally identifiable melodic style could be found in the best-known tunes of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, two undeniably masterful composers, performers and bandleaders who, according to recent scholarship, were also skilled at appropriating themes or whole songs from another musicians (quite often those less experienced at the particulars of copyright law) and asserting themselves as the composers.\u00a0 Terry Teachout\u2019s recent biography Duke<\/a> mentions that the main themes of \u2018Sophisticated Lady\u2019, \u2018Don\u2019t Get Around Much Anymore\u2019, and \u2018Do Nothin\u2019 Til You Hear From Me\u2019 were all the creations of lead players in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and a long list of composers have credibly claimed they authored tunes on which Davis\u2019 name appears as the composer: \u2018Four\u2019 and \u2018Tune Up\u2019 (Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson), \u2018Solar\u2019 (Chuck Wayne), \u2018Dig\u2019 (Jackie McLean), and \u2018Blue In Green\u2019 (Bill Evans).\u00a0 I welcome and encourage comments on this blog post either supporting or challenging these claims.\u00a0 Using charts in The Real Book and original recordings as a resource, see if you can find common themes or approaches among the tunes of Monk, Strayhorn or other jazz composers – or find thematic unity in the tunes above attributed to Miles Davis or Duke Ellington.<\/p>\n The correspondences between the lives of Charlie Parker and Alan Turing also unfortunately include the fact that both died tragically early, leaving the advances they had made in their respective fields to be continued\u00a0 by others, sometimes without attribution.\u00a0 Countless improvisers, both contemporaries of Parker and those from later generations, have assimilated his melodic language; the extent of his influence is indicated by Charles Mingus\u2019 tune title: \u2018If Bird Had Been A Gunslinger, There\u2019d Be A Lot of Dead Copycats.\u2019\u00a0 Holt notes that the well-known mathematician John von Neumann, who had contact with Turing at Princeton, was \u2018credited with innovations in computer architecture that Turing himself had pioneered.\u2019<\/p>\n Before my interest in Turing and the Bletchley Park cryptanalysts, what first got me re-interested in analyzing Parker\u2019s use of patterns was studying the improvised solos of Ella Fitzgerald.\u00a0 In Fitzgerald\u2019s soloing, the bebop practice of combining two to four bar patterns, which can be hard to detect when players like Parker or Bud Powell are using largely \u2018private\u2019 patterns (as in Powell\u2019s \u2018Tempus Fugue-It\u2019 solo), is made easy to understand by Fitzgerald\u2019s tendency to make ingenious use of patterns from what might be called a \u2018public\u2019 melodic language, as in her \u2018How High The Moon\u2019 solo.\u00a0 In some cases, as Catherine Cartwright has shown with Ella\u2019s \u2018St. Louis Blues\u2019 solo, Fitzgerald constructed entire solos completely from familiar patterns.\u00a0 In a follow-up blog post, I will discuss how Charlie Parker, and\/or Benny Harris, who either composed or co-composed the tune, used Bird\u2019s melodic code in \u2018Ornithology\u2019, as well as\u00a0 one of Ella\u2019s \u2018How High\u2019 solos.<\/p>\n ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Thanks to Alex Stewart, for introducing me to Barry Harris (in the early days of the Flynn Summer Jazz Camp) and encouraging me to base the improvisation class on his concepts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my Theory and Practice of Jazz Improvisation class at UVM, we study some building blocks of the bebop melodic language which Barry Harris has assembled and codified as the \u20185-4-3-2\u2019 licks.\u00a0 They are four short licks of between four … Continue reading ![\"5-4-3-2](\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/files\/2015\/03\/5-4-3-2-lick.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Anthro](\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/files\/2015\/03\/Anthro-breakdown-791x1024.jpg\")
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