Do we really need to learn jazz guitar licks?

[Charliee]

I suck at jazz improvisation so I thought that learning licks would be usefull but I don't really think that Charlie Parker used to learn licks in his practice sessions. Do you think that "masters" learned from licks?

Oh, and by the way, how do you keep record of your licks? Do you just write them down?

[Patrick2]

My opinion; . . do we need to learn them and use them? No. Is it helpful? Yes. Depending upon what you do with the licks you learn. If you just regurgitate them in place of your own improv . . then I believe they're a detriment to your learning and your playing. If you use them sporadically, tastefully and if you alter them to make them your own . . . they're priceless.

[Cunamara]

It's not about learning licks. It's about learning the vocabulary of jazz. You move beyond the licks to phrasing.

[mr. beaumont]

Absolutely. Parker had tons of licks!

You gotta get out of this rock player "lick is set in stone" idea. That's not how licks work in jazz...they're flexible. A lick is an idea...and a good player can tweak these ideas in real time to make them sound new and fresh.

Do you have to write them down? You could...I've done it, but it didn't help me internalized anything...know playing works for me...see what works for you.

Jazz players practice "situations." That's all licks are...possible solutions to situations. You have ideas on how to get from point A to point B, you practice them enough that you can pull them out of your subconscious, and alter them on the fly to fit the situatuon.

Don't fool yourself. You need licks...you practice until they don't sound like licks...you recombine info on the fly.

[TheAficianado]

Transcription, the act of learning solos and chords that are not already transcribed by Wolf Marshall is a very important step in the evolution of musicianship, because it trains your ear, it trains your staff reading, and it makes you look at many different fingerings to see which is the most facile. By working on transcription, you are not at the mercy of the materials already available to other guitar players and musicians. By training the ear, you have an increased capacity to immediately subconsciously respond to fast changes on the bandstand.

While one might want to start immediately with Charlie Parker or Monk, Charlie Christian's several versions of "Airmail Special" available on disk are easy to understand and digest solos over a fairly easy but impressive tune.

By the way, I absolutely think Charlie Parker used pet licks, if you consider small phrases over changes "licks." This is a great book:

Building a Jazz Vocabulary

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Jazz-.../dp/0793521610

as is this:

The Listening Book

http://www.amazon.com/Listening-Book...listening+book

as is this:

The Advancing Guitarist

http://www.amazon.com/Advancing-Guit...cing+guitarist

These books keep you from sounding like you are playing licks, even when you are.

TheAficianado

[coolvinny]

It's funny - I only have one lick that I consistently apply in nearly every song I play. It's from the head of Confirmation, at the last bar of the bridge...just a V7(b9) to I lick...many of you would recognize this. But I study licks and what I find is that they inform how I practice other things, such as scales. Within my world of practicing scales (only major and all its modes + melodic minor and all its modes...still haven't tackled HW, WH, etc) I never practice them up/down...I always make a phrase based on the scale, and my phrases are very much the product of what licks I've been shedding. If not in note selection then in rhythm. Actually, I think studying licks primarily helps my sense of rhythm and my rhythmic ideas.

I see that TheAficianado mentioned the Mike Steinel book. Has anyone worked through it? It's not a lick book at all - more a book of melodic building blocks. It's very challenging. Definitely hard work. I spent a few months on it and then put it away, but have been meaning to get back to it.

[jalapeno]

I learn licks, there I've said it ! Helps me learn positions and to always have something to fall back on when I get a brain fart* while improvising. *= That "Whhhhhaaaaaaa - I have no idea what I'm doing" feeling. Which is ok while it sounds great, but eventually a clam always pokes it's way in

[jzucker]

I suck at jazz improvisation so I thought that learning licks would be usefull but I don't really think that Charlie Parker used to learn licks in his practice sessions. Do you think that "masters" learned from licks?

Oh, and by the way, how do you keep record of your licks? Do you just write them down?

Spend 15 minutes transcribing him and analyzing his music. You will see that like every other jazz musician he had tons of pet licks he strung together. HE OBVIOUSLY PRACTICED LICKS.

[mr. beaumont]

To be fair, the OP doesn't claim to be an expert. But yeah, dig in there OP...plenty of licks.

[jzucker]

What do you think a riff is? He even wrote tunes with the word RIFF in the title. BOP was all about riffs.

[kenbennett]

Everybody has licks. Along with tone, that's one of the main ways we distinguish one artist from another.

I suppose lick and riff are informal names for motif and figure. They can be copped, composed, or made up on the fly. The ones made up on the fly tend to be variations of ones we already "know".

[kenbennett]

Everybody has licks. Along with tone, that's one of the main ways we distinguish one artist from another.

I suppose lick and riff are informal names for motif and figure. They can be copped, composed, or made up on the fly. The ones made up on the fly tend to be variations of ones we already "know" (in quotation marks because sometimes we don't consciously know some of our own licks).

[MarkRhodes]

This video, "The Lick," has been posted before but is worth another listen in this context.

[nosoyninja]

Oh, and by the way, how do you keep record of your licks? Do you just write them down?

I keep a binder with my vocabulary. I write it out in Muse Score and write in the starting interval. The more I use it the less I need it, since the vocabulary begins to get internalized.

But it really helped me, at first, to have it neatly written out and organized. Less chaos when applying it to tunes. It's easier to keep track of what you have used, what context, etc.

But that's just what has been working for me. You may find it easier to do things a different way.

K

[TheAficianado]

coolvinny brought up a point "It's not a lick book at all - more a book of melodic building blocks." What is a lick if not a melodic building block? What is a grip if not a chord? Usually licks are great ideas that make someone-- usually ourselves-- go "Whoa! That sounds cool!" But often times when we respond to 'licks" in the negative, the 'lick does not represent how we want to sound at all.

What is the difference?

I quickly move two steps to the left to better make my point: documented individual practice sessions with Robert Fripp- probably from his own articles in Guitar Player magazine. When the student came into the private lesson- probably an expensive one- Fripp states that he simply has the student sit with him quietly for like a minimum of 5 minutes. For those who never involved themselves in any form of meditation, this may seem like a colossal waste of time. However 5 minutes is an awful long time to simply sit. Classical pranayana meditation for 5 minutes is a bit of an achievement. At the end of the quiet period, Fripp asks the student: "Are you in your body?" "Are you in your hand?"

I figure some are going to ask what the hell I'm talking about in a lick thread at this point.

Consider, when you speak, how often do you use the vocal placeholders: "Um," "Awwww," "uh," "well," or "hmmm?"

Consider, when you speak, how often do you use slang: "Aw dog," "That's sick," "Shut up!" "Man," "Dude," "Cool,"?

It is interesting to do a self-diagnostic and count how many placeholder words one uses before he gets his or her information out of the mouth. Although I consider this technique to be a very excellent diagnostic to see what level of capability one actually has (rather than one believes he or she has), to convey information vocally, if you try and tell someone else to do the exercise and they take the idea negatively, the situation can become hostile.

People's thoughts are defined verbally, and deliberate thought can define language and redefine an entire reality. Psychological proof of this is found in the Worf-Sapir Hypothesis where vocabulary literally determines how reality is perceived. For instance, Inuit had some 26 different words for different types of snow, whereas most English speakers have one or two. Therefore, snowy reality is more meaningful for Inuit and they can necessarily speak with more clarity about snow because they have more words to define their reality.

So how big is our musical vocabulary and where can get more words and sentences?

But the same point that Fripp makes above holds here: "Are you in your body?" "Are you in your hand?" "Do you control your own speech?" "Do you control your own muscle movements?"

The implicit question arises, "If you are not controlling your own mind, body, or speech, then who is?" This is a basic point of Buddhism as well. For instance, if you say to yourself, "I am reading this post right now on the Jazz guitar online forum." Then the next question is: "Who is the 'I' that can state 'I am reading this post right now on the Jazz guitar online forum?' and then adding yet another level of abstraction- "Who is the 'I' that can state there is an 'I' when 'I am reading this post right now on the Jazz guitar online forum?'" Immediately we see that internally, we have a mental or consciousness-based mechanism implicit in attention that allows for an infinite regression of abstraction of consciousness- no matter how many times we ask who is the "I", we find yet another questioning self in our consciousness.

Considering this point, it becomes far less weird for Fripp to ask the question: "Are you in your hand?"

Now considering all that was just written above, when we speak to another person, we generally want to belong, to be accepted, and to make sense. We want to be understood. When we use words as placeholders like, "um," which do nothing but delay the listener from receiving the information-- if we do it too often-- the listener stops listening and believes we have nothing to say.

So then what is a "pet lick?" A pet lick is an involuntary response to a musical situation, which may or may not be appropriate. In the long run, it is often better to have several public disasters with a pet lick so you realize they are not to be depended on.

So maybe there is a major difference between the "pet lick" and the "basis of a musical vocabulary." If you try to build a musical vocabulary you may make a mistake such as using a word that sounds the same but means something different (vocally what would be termed a phonetic mistake), musically this may be a run on the wrong scale but that you tried because you thought it would be harmonically appropriate. That's being adventurous and you are probably being attentive even if it doesn't work out. If you are thinking at the time, you can quickly move to a resolve.

Which leads me to point two. Don Mock from GIT in the book TEN (Ten: Ten Top Guitarists Offer Their Insights to Guitar Artistry.: Howard Roberts, Larry Carlton, Joe Pass, Joe Diorio, Ron Eschete, Don Mock, Robben Ford, Les Wise, Jay Graydon, Eddie Van Halen: Amazon.com: Books ) suggests you deliberately play something wrong as long as you know which notes to resolve to which he calls "Target Tones." Basically they are tones in a chord like the 3rd or 7th to which you can successfully resolve, even if you were way outside before. By this, I mean to say go use your lick at the absolutely worst place possible and then find your way back by resolving at an "in" note in the chord structure and you've probably just played a jazz solo.

I am unsure how good this link is for the entire book, but many of the concepts just mentioned should be readable for free here Don Mock's Target Tones, which was the crux of the GIT article: Don Mock - Target Tones

So my first point is: if we do not know we are stuttering, pausing, and not conveying our information accurately, then we have no empathy with the audience and we do not know what they are hearing. One must be able to both play and listen to himself and everything else at the same time, which is like juggling and chewing gum and jumping up and down at the same time.

One good solution is recording yourself practicing. Not recording yourself for production and public listening- practicing. You will find many things you hate, especially if you are a vocalist. But the upside is you are forced to hear what the audience hears, you will see when you did not convey what you wanted to convey, when you paused and then rushed through a phrase.

You will begin to see when you were deliberately playing your instrument and when you lost attention and how you either found it or did not find it. You will also have a record of unintentional good sounding mistakes/ideas that can then be used intentionally for the rest of your life.

Were you in your hand?

The concepts in the Steinel "Building a Jazz Vocabulary" are very much similar to the vocal idea presented above: first learn words, then sentences, then paragraphs; and then play them without musically saying "uh" or "shit." People like Parker play 64 bar paragraphs, I suggested Airmail Special in an earlier post because those are words and sentences. A B.B. King vibrato note is a word. You guys are practicing the different vibratos, right?

Realize that these were all individual shedding techniques. One really begins to make a lot of progress when one can play with other people something as simple as playing a two octave Bb major scale up and down together in time with attention. In classic bee-bop, there are often several 64 bar solos going on by as many as 4 players interweaving and contrasting where they hit resolve notes- target tones- together as the solos progress.

Also, in the Western tradition, we have a formal hierarchy that states that being the soloist is the best and highest ideal. In Eastern and African traditions, being able to play rhythm forever is considered even better.

So whatever you are playing, always try to use a metronome. Also, listen to the metronome when you are not playing and just doing housework.

Just my 2 cents.
TheAficianado

[Charliee]

Thanks people!

[mr. beaumont]

It's also important to understand you might be learning licks without even trying. Hopefully, if you're trying to learn to play jazz you listen to a ton of it...that stuff will seep in. Trust me. If it doesn't, you're not listening enough.

I may have never sat down and transcribed, say Herb Ellis. But I've listened to a lot of Herb Ellis, and I know I have things in my playing took from him, even if it wasn't voluntary!

[kenbennett]

It's also important to understand you might be learning licks without even trying. Hopefully, if you're trying to learn to play jazz you listen to a ton of it...that stuff will seep in. Trust me. If it doesn't, you're not listening enough.

I may have never sat down and transcribed, say Herb Ellis. But I've listened to a lot of Herb Ellis, and I know I have things in my playing took from him, even if it wasn't voluntary!

Interesting... From one of my friends who was a student I heard of a college professor who says that you don't have a right to claim someone as an influence until you have transcribed 5 (I believe was the number) of their solos.

I agree with you and would take it even further. You could be influenced by Player A if you listen to Player B who was influenced by Player A even if you have never heard Player A.

[mr. beaumont]

My guess is I wouldn't like that college professor.

Statements like that just reek of "listen, dumb young shits, I am espousing wisdom!"

But he has a point, too.

[MattC]

This is an interesting thread.

Interesting... From one of my friends who was a student I heard of a college professor who says that you don't have a right to claim someone as an influence until you have transcribed 5 (I believe was the number) of their solos.

I agree with you and would take it even further. You could be influenced by Player A if you listen to Player B who was influenced by Player A even if you have never heard Player A.

Also agree and think that prof's statement is pretentious and not useful. If the prof wants to tells students "Hey, if you really dig player A, I highly recommend you transcribe several of his solos", then that's potentially useful and meaningful advice. I took a lesson with a pro bass player friend of mine and he recommended something similar-focus transcribing on a limited number of artists who really speak to you. Transcribing can be a long term, time-consuming project, especially if you are going to do a lot. You might as well focus of players/solos/ideas that really touch you rather than just stuff you're "supposed" to transcribe or play.

But to say "you don't have a right to claim an influence..." is just idiotic. Reminds me of a prof I had in music school who was great on some topics and just came off like a pretentious, judgmental blowhard on others. To me, saying you're influenced buy something is not a big deal. I mean, you're influenced by everything, including stuff you don't even like.

Anyway, sorry for straying off topic.

[MattC]

Just my 2 cents.
TheAficianado

That was a lot more than 2 cents, but interesting none the less.

[teok]

I've heard jazz described as a big game of musical telephone. I hear Miles quoting Dizzy lines, especially in his blues playing. I've heard so many guys quoting Parker and Coltrane licks.