Just published my analysis of Charlie Parker's improvisation using computational methods on the complete Omnibook corpus. Key findings that surprised me: - Parker is "planning" entire choruses architecturally, not just reacting moment-to-moment - His most-used harmonic structures are deliberately ambiguous (low triadic content). - I also found three distinct improvisational strategies he uses: "Exploratory" (composed), "Balanced" (mixed), "Contrasting" (episodic) - Parker adds minimal new material throughout improvisation, but rather navigates tunes finding new solutions with existing material stated in heads. From an interval vector perspective, the most complex tune is "Cosmic Rays" while "My Little Suede Shoes" is both the simplest tune in the corpus and the most unpredictable (mathematically speaking) Full paper:
