Do we really need jazz guitar licks?

[quyuanleo]

I found that most of the licks on those websites sounds like shit to me, I tried to learn those licks anyway, but it turn out that I never use them, they never come to my mind when there's chord behind. Not to mention it's really difficult to memorize.

Actually, I never thought about licks when I improvise, if i think about licks, that licks might comes in a color that I dont want at all, or it just disturb my concentration. Those licks seems never satisfied me when improving, I have my own logic and feeling, just like I never say "Hey dude", I alway say "Hey yo". So "Hey dude" is a lick, and it seems unnatural from me.

What do you guys do? Do you learn the licks you don't really like? How often do you put a lick in your improvisation?

[jordanklemons]

I have very rarely in my life ever felt moved to learn or play licks. It just didn't feel right to me. And while it took me a very long time to find my voice, it is unbelievably gratifying to play a gig and have musicians come over afterwards and comment on how impressed they were that they didn't hear me repeat a single riff.

Well it's not that I'm not repeating riffs. It's just that, for the most part, I don't function that way. It works for some people. Just never vibed with me personally.

That said, I've had the great opportunity to study with some of the best guitar players on the planet...and many (if not most) of them are open to learning riffs. But they have a very different approach to it then most of the rest of the riff learners.

None of them seemed to learn riffs out of books, and none of them seemed to learn riffs they didn't like out of some self-impose feeling of obligation or requirement.

It was more like they were listening to a record and heard something that they fell in love with. So they rewound it and figured it out.

But then it didn't stop there. All of them would go to the next step of playing around with the riff. Cutting it open and figuring out what's going on inside it. Analyzing it. Coming up with variations. Learning to twist it and turn it and find countless other ways to utilize it. Rather than memorizing 1000 stagnant riffs and trying to force them in at just the perfect time when they'll fit...they might learn 10 or 20 riffs, but find 100 different ways to use each.

It's not something I used to do growing up. But after seeing all of these guys talk about having a similar process with the development of their language, it is a practice I've tried to take up. It requires a lot of focus and determination, but at the same time a lot of creativity, playfulness, and willingness to explore.

[quyuanleo]

Thanks Jordan, I love the "Find my voice" you said .

[grahambop]

Learn them from records, not from books. You've got to hear them like little melodies in your head before you can play them. Then when you play them, change them.

[Jonah]

I guess it is a special mentaity when someone plays strictly with licks he learnt...

it's like marco - micro relations...

You have a lick (fixed melodic phrase) that is associated with certaint harmonic turnaround or chord changes...

Whe you have a set of learnt licks it brings to the point where a lick becomes a minimum melodic unit...

So improvizing you think not in terms of melody, motivic development, triads, scales - whatever... you think in terms of the licks which stay kind of 'unchangeble' inside...

playing purely with licks to mey mind one should have a solid vocabulary of ready licks and take time to develope language of it - meaning combinations of licks...

Obviously this way of thinking contradicts many other approaches..

For example you develope a motive from the head of a standard... and suddenly it comes to you that there's a chord changes and you know a lock for it and you insert it.... most probably for youself it will break all the creative logics of improvization...

Form me a lick is usually a practical realization of some concept.. so I can learn it but already during learning I split it mentally into motives and see what's behind it, what's making it interesting for me
And finally what I incorporate in my playing is not the exact lick but the concept used to make it...

Like for example this simple but very cool and sophisticated lick from Peter Bernstein...

For me it became a lesson how you can treat movement in voicings with extended harmonies, look how melodic notes realte to chords behind (not the ones written but the subs or extentions he uses - I think different concepts could be used to explain it).. and how they move horizontally... making almost polyphonic 2 voiced texture

Another way to use licks is to play very fast phrases that has less melodic than rythmic accent or harmonic importance...

[henryrobinett]

I never learned licks. Not saying that's s good thing. It lessened my vocabulary. But o never did.

[Sam Sherry]

"Licks" are a mechanism by which someone pastes noise into what would otherwise be a musical setting.

[MarkRhodes]

Geez, guys, Charlie Parker played licks. Lester Young played licks. Charlie Christian played licks. Wes Montgomery played licks. They did alright.

Here's a lick Sheryl Bailey teaches in her "50 Essential Bebop Licks" DVD. If you don't already know this, it's worth learning. You can do a lot with it.

[MarkRhodes]

And here's what Sheryl calls the "Microcosmic Bebop Line". ("From the small to the all.") Another very good lick to know.

[srs]

Are these lines notated onscreen or in a pdf for those who purchase the dvd?

And here's what Sheryl calls the "Microcosmic Bebop Line". ("From the small to the all.") Another very good lick to know.

[Patrick2]

"Licks" are a mechanism by which someone pastes noise into what would otherwise be a musical setting.

C'mon sam . . . do you really believe that? Are you saying the some of the licks created by master improvisors are just noise? Are they not music, when created by those masters? Are they not music to those of whom may have never heard those licks before, such as fans of jazz who aren't students or players of jazz? Do we only play jazz improvs for other jazz musicians who might be listening carefully to see if we are really improvising or just regurgitating a musical phrase that we might have taken in to the melting pot?

Anyone here who frowns upon the idea of learning licks and incorporating them into a true improvisation, please name me one highly respected jazz artist who doesn't quote while blowing.

[MarkRhodes]

Are these lines notated onscreen or in a pdf for those who purchase the dvd?

Yes. The pdf is on the DVD. You can print it.

[henryrobinett]

Geez, guys, Charlie Parker played licks. Lester Young played licks. Charlie Christian played licks. Wes Montgomery played licks.

So what??????? Geez us this is what frigging drives me crazy. The frigging me too club. Can ANYONE DO ANYTHING OR THINK ANYTHING FOR THEMSELVES???!!!!

[mrcee]

Geez, guys, Charlie Parker played licks. Lester Young played licks. Charlie Christian played licks. Wes Montgomery played licks. They did alright.

Here's a lick Sheryl Bailey teaches in her "50 Essential Bebop Licks" DVD. If you don't already know this, it's worth learning. You can do a lot with it.

Could a person thrive on a riff and a lick?

theory - What is the difference between a riff and a lick? - Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange

[destinytot]

I have an English actor friend who knows two sentences in Spanish, but people over here warm to him because he uses them - fearlessly - to humorous effect. He wiggles his eyebrows when he says them. adding a little something of one's own goes a Very Long - er - Weigh.

[reventlov]

Some folks like to use licks, some don't. Both approaches can work, I don't see any reason for people to get upset because other people use a different approach from the one they use themselves. I suspect that most jazz players know lots of licks - if you're gigging and you're a little off form, they give you something to fall back on to help you through the gig.

Those people who don't learn licks and don't use them have my respect for their integrity but the belief held by some (but not all!) that somehow this is a superior approach is snobbish and frankly, can be extremely impractical if you're on the bandstand when the leader points at you for a solo and you are feeling a bit uninspired. I can't think of a single major jazz musician who doesn't / didn't play licks; having listened to some musicians who said that they don't, my observation is that in fact they do. They may well not practise and learn them, but if you improvise regularly, there will inevitably be phrases that come into your playing that you have played before; that constitutes 'playing a lick' whether you like it - or admit it - or not.

'This is how I like to do it' is a reasonable and fair thing to say; 'this is how it should be done' is not.

[henryrobinett]

Playing licks is totally fine. But insisting I have a hard time with.

[Jonah]

Licks are live vocabilary of jazz... it's all in the licks in practical realization.


So for me it's fun to learn it - it's like I get how this guy thoght how he felt from inside...
but I do it in a way I mentioned above..

I think in general understanding of jazz practice changed...
so learning licks gives more reference to learn language of old days...

[destinytot]

Licks can be seen as 'phraseological units' (from a language point of view).

[eh6794]

I like to copy something I hear, then play it over and over and over until it sounds completely different than what was on the record.

A lot of times, when I sit down to transcribe something, I press pause after a couple bars, and I have an image in my head of what I just heard. Usually that image isn't what I heard, but I go with it, then expand it with a new melody a get in my head. After doing that for 15 minutes, I realize I forgot I was trying to transcribe something. A.D.D.

[Horszt]

I like to copy something I hear, then play it over and over and over until it sounds completely different than what was on the record.

A lot of times, when I sit down to transcribe something, I press pause after a couple bars, and I have an image in my head of what I just heard. Usually that image isn't what I heard, but I go with it, then expand it with a new melody a get in my head. After doing that for 15 minutes, I realize I forgot I was trying to transcribe something. A.D.D.

In my opinion, that sounds nice. Some sort of inspiration. You could try the same with a piece of art (movie, photograph, painting)... Take a line, look at a painting and try to change the line so that it expresses what you feel while looking at. Could be a more relaxing part of a long free day practice routine...

Personally, I think learning licks is in a way necessary, but is not doing the whole job.

[Irez87]

I could never get into learning licks out of a book. Hearing the articulation, the accents, the dynamics, you need to go to the source. I've found it's not the lick that interests me, it's how it's played. That's why I lick Fishman's stuff, he makes everything swing on his sax. Mike Longo goes into the idea of touch and rhythmic vocabulary.

How about practicing the following instead of endlessly drilling bebop vocab all the time:

1. Get a drum machine

2. Set it to click every two measures or four measures

3. Practice playing a phrase, anything, but the line has to end with the click

Licks are great, but we often focus on the notes too much. The rhythms, the accents, and the space are of equal or even more importance in making that stuff groove.

[Patrick2]

[QUOTE=Irez87;553805]I could never get into learning licks out of a book. Hearing the articulation, the accents, the dynamics, you need to go to the source. I've found it's not the lick that interests me, it's how it's played. That's why I lick Fishman's stuff, he makes everything swing on his sax. Mike Longo goes into the idea of touch and rhythmic vocabulary.

The rhythms, the accents, and the space are of equal or even more importance in making that stuff groove.

Very true. But, that's what we tend to do (or, more appropriately what we should focus on doing) once we've got the lick under our fingers. That's what helps to make the lick less of the original and more of our own. We do that when we stay true to the melody while improvising too ... don't we?

[jordanklemons]

I could never get into learning licks out of a book. Hearing the articulation, the accents, the dynamics, you need to go to the source. I've found it's not the lick that interests me, it's how it's played. That's why I lick Fishman's stuff, he makes everything swing on his sax. Mike Longo goes into the idea of touch and rhythmic vocabulary.

How about practicing the following instead of endlessly drilling bebop vocab all the time:

1. Get a drum machine

2. Set it to click every two measures or four measures

3. Practice playing a phrase, anything, but the line has to end with the click

Licks are great, but we often focus on the notes too much. The rhythms, the accents, and the space are of equal or even more importance in making that stuff groove.

I briefly studied with Tony recently. I did all this stuff from the video with him in a group over a blues for like an hour. He REALLY knows how to take you out of your element and force you into new territory quickly! You gotta really focus, count, think, listen, and plan ahead with him doing this stuff.

He also happens to be one of the nicest and most compassionate guys too...but man he will kick your @$$! hahaha

Great find man. Thanks for sharing.

[Irez87]

[QUOTE=Patrick2;553806]

I could never get into learning licks out of a book. Hearing the articulation, the accents, the dynamics, you need to go to the source. I've found it's not the lick that interests me, it's how it's played. That's why I lick Fishman's stuff, he makes everything swing on his sax. Mike Longo goes into the idea of touch and rhythmic vocabulary.



Very true. But, that's what we tend to do (or, more appropriately what we should focus on doing) once we've got the lick under our fingers. That's what helps to make the lick less of the original and more of our own. We do that when we stay true to the melody while improvising too ... don't we?

I can only speak for myself, but in the past I often messed with the rhythms of a lick without really understanding how the rhythms not only held the original phrase together, but gave it that forward momentum. Instead of messing with the rhythms, maybe reduce the lick to one note and see where the rhythms hit within the phrase. That stuff works really well for hardbop lines as well.

You start with the whole strong beat weak beat thing, but there are so many other subtitles to the rhythms and how they create tension and release just like the notes that inhabit them.