30 Day Music Day 7 Bebop!

Day 7 of the 30 Day Music Challenge is Bebop!

Every saxophonist alive today owes some debt to Charlie Parker, one of the original bebop artists and arguably one of the most innovative.

I was attending Indiana State University when I first heard this tune and it quickly became kind of a theme song for me and a friend from the music department. We would drive around Terre Haute in her old beater car whose radio didn’t work. But that didn’t stop us from hearing some great music.

One of us would turn the radio dial on and then punch one of the station buttons. Then we would both launch into “da de-ba dot-en de-ba dot-en doo-dat…” Ornithology.

Take a listen and you’ll hear what I mean.

Additional fun fact

This tune is a contrafact.

That’s where you take the chord changes of an existing tune and write a new melody over it. Ornithology uses the chord changes to How High The Moon. Two tunes in one!