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These 7 free guitar lessons are from Sheryl Bailey’s Bebop Dojo Essentials, an accelerated, intuitive learning experience designed to impart essential Bebop skills, techniques, insight and improvisational methods. Sheryl will show you how to develop a strong eighth-note feel, and demonstrate how to create melodic ideas using common tones within the arpeggios to form Charlie-Christian-like solo templates. You’ll learn how to employ syncopation to make your lines come alive with that exciting rhythmic push of Bebop.

Bebop Dojo Essentials Lesson #11: Bebop Comping

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Now we can add a passing chord on beats 2 and 4. It creates a more dense texture, but it embellishes a very simple texture and gives it forward motion and swing.

Bebop Dojo Essentials Lesson #20: Arpeggios (7ths)

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And last, but certainly not least, the 7ths. The 7th is the other most important chord tone, along with the 3rd, so spending time seeing and hearing this chord tone will really be the icing on the cake!

Bebop Dojo Essentials Lesson #23: Voice Leading

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Voice-leading means what it sounds like – connecting the voices of the chords in stepwise motion, or in the smoothest motion possible. This avoids awkward leaps and makes your lines smooth and flowing. You need to know your arpeggios in and out so that you can be seeing and hearing ahead into the upcoming chord change. Chords are moving objects!

Bebop Dojo Essentials Lesson #37: Bebop Lick #2

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Using syncopation and voice-leading, here is another typical bebop style II V I lick in major.

Bebop Dojo Essentials Lesson #45: Bebop Lick #3

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This line starts on the upbeat of beat one. It’s a little more sparse but is effective. I also land on an E natural on the Gmin7 for a strong Dorian sound!

Bebop Dojo Essentials Lesson #51: 2-5-1 Major and Minor

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Let’s put them all together to have some fun on our chord template.

Bebop Dojo Essentials Lesson #54: Bonus Performance #2

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Another go around here with my band: Joe Strasser on drums and Gary Wang on bass.

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