Pathways to Parker

The ink never drys on Charlie Parker books. Decades after his passing, the vastness of his contribution to modern music is still being examined, reexamined, contemplated, and desiminated. His music was the "Big Bang" of modern jazz and continues to expand in all directions without limit. To truly understand the theory of "general creativity", it helps to start from the quantum level; one and two bar phrases.

This book was created to catalog the melodic pattern material performed by Charlie Parker for over sixty of his transcribed solos. It also comes with an APP called Pathways to Parker. The APP mirrors the book to make it convenient for students to download onto electronic devices.

The teacher may use these patterns in a number of creative ways:

• Instrumental sight-reading material.
• Composition ideas
• Examples of what musical ideas will work over an existing chord change.
• Starting point for students to creatively connect the patterns in order to expand their music vocabulary.
• Starting point for the development of written solos within the developing jazz band.
• Analysis of the most widely-used key and chord centers in Charlie Parker’s repertoire.
• Abstraction and insertion of Charlie Parker’s vocabulary into existing solos to create new ones.
• Provide new source material for the professional musician who would like to expand their jazz vocabulary.

All patterns are one measure in length. Patterns may be joined together as the improviser sees fit, however, proper voice leading and chaining of patterns will produce more musical ideas.