Dexterity is one of those bebop tunes that immediately exposes how you’re thinking melodically. The line moves quickly, but it isn’t random — it’s carefully shaped to create long, flowing ideas over Rhythm Changes rather than short, chord-by-chord fragments.

In this lesson, Dexterity is approached the way it should be: as a melodic etude. Instead of treating the melody as something to memorize and move past, you’ll learn to practice it note-for-note, absorbing the phrasing, contour, and rhythmic placement directly from recordings.

By treating Dexterity as a focused melodic study, you begin developing the ability to create longer, more intentional lines in your own solos — one of the most important skills for improvising convincingly on Rhythm Changes.

Dexterity doesn’t rely on repeated riffs or obvious patterns to define Rhythm Changes. Instead, it uses continuous melodic motion to imply the harmony and clarify the AABA form.

In this lesson, you’ll place Dexterity alongside other classic Rhythm Changes melodies and see how different tunes communicate the same progression in different ways. Where some melodies rely on short motifs or repeated figures, Dexterity demonstrates how longer, connected lines can clearly outline fast-moving harmony.

Learning to hear how Dexterity traces the form through melodic shape — rather than explicit chord spelling — strengthens your ability to navigate Rhythm Changes musically instead of mechanically.

Dexterity is more than just a challenging tune — it’s a direct expression of bebop language applied to Rhythm Changes.

In this lesson, you’ll see how Dexterity fits into the larger bebop tradition alongside other essential tunes built on Blues, Rhythm Changes, and common standard forms. Rather than memorizing isolated lines, you’ll start recognizing shared melodic devices, rhythmic phrasing, and harmonic approaches that define bebop as a language.

Understanding Dexterity in this broader context helps you internalize bebop vocabulary in a way that carries over to many other tunes, solos, and improvisational situations.

Once the melody of Dexterity is internalized, the next step is understanding how that language expands into full solos.

In this lesson, you’ll explore essential Rhythm Changes solos and observe how master improvisers take melodic ideas similar to those found in Dexterity and develop them across multiple choruses. You’ll hear how long lines are shaped, varied, and connected over the entire form.

Studying these solos bridges the gap between learning a bebop head and creating your own flowing improvisations on Rhythm Changes, reinforcing Dexterity as a foundation rather than an isolated tune.