The bebop musicians took the 4/4 time signature of ring and added a plethora of new rhythmic accents it, with drummers such as Kenny Clarke (1914-85) id Max Roach (b. 1924) preferring to 'ride' their 'mbals and mark strict time with their hi-hats, rather Lan state a regular beat on the bass drum. That crucial rtythmic development went hand in hand with a new cus on extended harmonies, using much more complex substitute chords and chromatic intervals as Le basic building blocks of improvisations. It afforded eat scope for melodic, harmonic and rhythmic convention that was fully exploited by musicians such Parker, Gillespie, Bud Powell (1924-66), Thelonious Monk (1917-82) and others.
That harmonic expansion was a fundamental strength of bebop, but also its built-in weakness. The musicians tended to use chord structures based on standard tunes or blues as the basis for their new .melody lines, and bebop evolved as a musical style of ?eat sophistication built on a repetitive and limited structure, which ultimately led to musicians exploring Lore experimental areas a decade later.
New York City, specifically Harlem and midtown om 42nd Street through to 52nd, was very much the ?ucible for bebop, and musicians gravitated to the city om all over. Bebop also travelled outwards, notably ) the West Coast, where musicians including Dexter Gordon (1923-90), Art Pepper (1925-82), Howard IcGhee, Hampton Hawes and Charles Mingus 1922-79) made their own contributions to the /evolving form in LA's Central Avenue clubs. As in the new era, live radio broadcasts from venues such as the royal Roost in New York remained an important aspect of Bebop.