Bebop Minor

The passing note between the two thirds

Two thirds a semitone apart is the feature of the bebop minor scale and the thing that makes it sound like the style rather than like a mode. E♭ and E sit next to each other in the middle of the scale, and a line running through them arrives at F with a chromatic push that plain Dorian does not have.

The natural third is a passing note and nothing more. Held over a C minor chord it turns the chord major; played on the way from E♭ to F at the speed the music actually moves, it is heard as a chromatic step and not as a third at all.

Which chord tones land on the beat

Counting in eighth notes from C, the notes on the downbeats are C, E♭, G and A — a C minor sixth chord. That is the same relationship the bebop major scale has with C6, transferred to minor, and it is the reason the scale exists in this exact form.

It means the scale belongs on minor sixth and minor seventh chords where the sixth is available: a tonic minor in a jazz standard, or the ii chord of a minor two-five where the line has to keep moving. Over a minor chord with a flat sixth in the key, the A will fight the harmony.

Two scales, two names, one common mix-up

The label bebop minor is used inconsistently in print. Some books apply it to these eight notes — Dorian with an added natural third — and others to Dorian with an added natural seventh, which is a different set: C D E♭ F G A B♭ B. Both are real scales and both are used; only the names move around.

Our catalogue keeps them apart by note content and gives the second one its own page as bebop Dorian. If a book or a teacher gives you a scale by name, count the notes before deciding which one is meant — the eighth note is the whole difference.

Practising it against Dorian

The bebop minor scale is best learned as an alteration of something already known rather than as a new shape. Play Dorian, then add one note between the flat third and the fourth, on the same string or with the same finger, and keep the fingering otherwise identical.

The exercise that pays off is running the scale in eighths from each chord tone in turn — from C, from E♭, from G, from A — and stopping on a chord tone at the end of every bar. What is being trained is placement, not speed, and it transfers straight to lines over minor chords.

Frequently asked questions