Dorian Bebop Scale

The Dorian Bebop scale is a 8-note scale in the bebop family. Dorian with a chromatic passing tone slipped between the b3 and the 4 — eight notes, so chord tones keep landing on the strong beats in a run of eighth notes. Cool, flowing, and swinging. Heard in: Bebop and straight-ahead jazz lines over minor seventh chords — Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and the Barry Harris approach. Like every scale, it is defined by the semitone distances between its degrees, so the same pattern produces the scale from any starting note. Pick a tonic below to see the notes it contains.