Banjo Fills With D# Dorian Bebop

D# Dorian Bebop runs 8 notes to the octave. Below it is laid onto this chair's GDGBD fretboard with every D# marked, because what a fill needs mid-song is not the pattern — it is where the root is when the chord changes under it.

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.

A banjo fill is usually still a roll, with the melody notes pushed to the top of it — the scale says which notes the fretting hand can put there, while the open strings and the high drone on the short fifth string keep ringing underneath.

Play it slowly against the audio until the shape stops being a shape, then take it to a song in D# and let the melody pick its own notes out of it.