Modular lick compendium

[GuyBoden]

Well, last night I recorded a train-wreck of an improv over Blues For Alice for my upcoming lesson. I realised the Turnaround was particularly bad, so I just had a quick go at composing a lick slowly:

(I seem to be at the stage when I can compose half-way decent lines, but can't for the life of me play anything decent or flowing in the moment.)

A very nice Bebop line, with the obligatory diminished arp. Good stuff.

[ragman1]

The minor melodic scale - it is very simple.

Yes, the notes are simple but the point was about the fingering.

I got a lot of licks from mel.minor over alt dominant.

You need to post them here. We want to steal your licks!

[ragman1]

Many thanks, I like that line a lot, my sort of thing, so I've put it into my collection. It's now in my practice routine, I hope if it sticks.

It probably will. It's very useful and goes easily with a lot of tunes.

[ragman1]

If Jeff will forgive me, I think the idea is not to post fairly straightforward licks that most of us can do already but rather something unusual, attractive, or ear-catching that we might not have thought of.

I thought this morning that the idea of a lick or line can be extended to include lines that are simple enough over a chord that would be diatonic to the lick but have a more interesting effect over other chords which are not diatonic to them...

Like Fm licks over a D7#9, for example. I'm thinking of the licks/lines used for All Blues. That kind of thing.

[mr. beaumont]

Nope, just licks. More the merrier.

The key is flexibility.

[pamosmusic]

Here is one I posted a few weeks ago on that Charlie Christian thread.

I like to take ideas like this and sequence them through scales to see if the ideas still work at different pitch levels.

To make the kind of chromatic passing thing work, I used a Barry Harris idea. Jens Larsen does a really good explainer on that right here.

[pamosmusic]

Fingerings -is easy.
I use second finger/left hand/ for two notes/Eb & B/...

For what it’s worth, debating whether a lick is easy or hard is kind of five ways of beside-the-point.

The point is whether it’s useable and variable.

At least by my reading.

[ragman1]

Here is one I posted a few weeks ago on that Charlie Christian thread.

]

Bit of Hank Williams there, maybe :-)

[ragman1]

Nope, just licks. More the merrier.

The key is flexibility.

What do you mean by flexibility?

[mr. beaumont]

What do you mean by flexibility?

Just the idea that a lick is really an idea, or a sound. It's not a group of notes set in stone with one way to play them. A good lick can have variations.

Got a lot of checking out to do this morning! Nice!

[mr. beaumont]

Also, for the purpose of this thread, no lick is too simple, or complex.

[pamosmusic]

Okay … apologies for length, but I thought maybe a demonstration of what makes a line flexible or not might be helpful.

I used the little altered line from earlier.

Caveat 1: lots of ways to change that altered line that I didn’t do here.

Caveat 2: really great way that lines can be flexible that I didn’t get into would be rhythm and shape. Donna Lee would be great with both of those, but I left that on the table.

Caveat 3: my idea of what makes a line flexible might be different than others, which I think is the entire point of the OP asking to hear a lick *and variations*

The bottom line *for me* is that it can be changed meaningfully by making small alterations to the line, so that it’s useful in loads of contexts. One line becomes many.

[pamosmusic]

And for an example in the wild … this is Jim Hall with Paul Desmond. Jim’s solo starts at 1:46 and it’s almost like a compulsion. It’s like he can’t play an idea without hearing all these other ideas branch off of it.

[ragman1]

There's flexibility in that sense (nicely played) and there's also flexibility in the sense that melodic minor licks can be played over a myriad of different sounds.

I've used the same lick over all these to save myself time but any Ab melodic minor lick would have done. These are the chords behind the lick. They range from the most obvious, Abm7, to the most unusual, BM7#11 and BM7#5. It's possibly tedious but it's only 1.51 long :-)

And, yes, you can play melodic minor over a diminished chord.

Abm7
Abm6
Abm/M7
G7
G7alt
Go
Db7
Db9#11
Eb7
Fm7b5
Fm9
Fm11
Fo
Bbm7
Bbm6
Bbm69
BM7#11
BM7#5

[frabarmus]

I'll contribute with just two more,from my “archive” of self-teaching (more or less recent) “woodshed-videos”.


One is based on the H-W Diminished scale; the other one has a minor-pentatonic/bluesy/chromatic flavour.


These are examples of ideas that came to me during practice sessions, some of them are rather raw (?),mechanical, (perhaps even a bit “cold” ?) and often relate to fretboard exploration. Still, I want to go back to them, turn them around in various ways, apply them to different chords, rhytms, tunes etc. (as some of you have suggested) and, ultimately, try to make meaningful statements if/when incorporating them into my improvisation (that's the toughest part of the game, I guess!).

[James W]

Thanks for starting this thread, Jeff. Not only have you made me practise one of several licks I composed three years ago, but also I've spent the last hour getting to grips with my loop pedal, something that was on my to-do list, and which I am pleased to have finally got round to doing!

I guess I should compose more licks. This one I've chosen is a II-V-I in A flat. Unfortunately because youtube has decided it's a 'short' I can't embed it onto this forum post. Oh yeah, and I guess anyone can read the other licks I wrote that you can see in the photo...

II-V-I in A flat - YouTube

[pamosmusic]

There's flexibility in that sense (nicely played) and there's also flexibility in the sense that melodic minor licks can be played over a myriad of different sounds.

I've used the same lick over all these to save myself time but any Ab melodic minor lick would have done. These are the chords behind the lick. They range from the most obvious, Abm7, to the most unusual, BM7#11 and BM7#5. It's possibly tedious but it's only 1.51 long :-)

And, yes, you can play melodic minor over a diminished chord.

Abm7
Abm6
Abm/M7
G7
G7alt
Go
Db7
Db9#11
Eb7
Fm7b5
Fm9
Fm11
Fo
Bbm7
Bbm6
Bbm69
BM7#11
BM7#5

Nice. Some of these aren’t altogether obvious to me, which I think is another characteristic of a flexible line.

[ragman1]

I think we might be fooled a bit because it's an Abm line. Put everything down a semitone to G mel and the notes of the lick in order are:

G A Bb C D E F#

The relation to the chords is then pretty obvious:

Gm/Gm6 (G Bb D E)

F#7 (F# Bb C# E) (alt)

C7 (C E G Bb)

D7 (D F# A C)

Em (E G B D)

Am (A C E G)

BbM7 (Bb D F A)

The rest is just window dressing, aka 'jazz' :-)

[pamosmusic]

I think we might be fooled a bit because it's an Abm line. Put everything down a semitone to G mel and the notes of the lick in order are:

G A Bb C D E F#

The relation to the chords is then pretty obvious:

Gm/Gm6 (G Bb D E)

C7 (C E G Bb)

D7 (D F# A C)

Em (E G B D)

Am (A C E G)

BbM7 (Bb D F A)

The rest is just window dressing, aka 'jazz' :-)

Right. I was referring to a few that almost fit but not quite — Abm7, Fmin9, Bbm6/9, Bmaj7#11.

Thats one of the benefits of a strong melody, is that it can skate over some minor disagreements.

[ragman1]

Like I say, 'jazz'.

There is, technically, one clash and that's the Bb over D7. But that's the #5 which makes a lovely altered sound.

The 7 of Gm7 is F and there's a B in Am69. They don't matter. Did you notice them on the recording? Not that the recording was much good, of course.

The 9 of Em9 is F# and the #11 of BbM7 is E. They're both in the lick.

Mel m over a diminished chord might be considered dubious but I've never minded it in the right places.

[pauln]

There's flexibility in that sense (nicely played) and there's also flexibility in the sense that melodic minor licks can be played over a myriad of different sounds.

I've used the same lick over all these to save myself time but any Ab melodic minor lick would have done. These are the chords behind the lick. They range from the most obvious, Abm7, to the most unusual, BM7#11 and BM7#5. It's possibly tedious but it's only 1.51 long :-)

And, yes, you can play melodic minor over a diminished chord.

Abm7
Abm6
Abm/M7
G7
G7alt
Go
Db7
Db9#11
Eb7
Fm7b5
Fm9
Fm11
Fo
Bbm7
Bbm6
Bbm69
BM7#11
BM7#5

Brilliant!! Also works with augmented chords.
I always think of that as Db Lydian Dominant.

[ragman1]

Also works with augmented chords.

Quite, and therefore m/M7's.

[pamosmusic]

The 7 of Gm7 is F and there's a B in Am69. They don't matter.

Love it.

A good line cures all that ails.

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

I suppose it’s picking nits but I think of licks and lines as being two kinds of things. There are really no hard rules…. but;

I think of a lick as being very motivic and memorable, perhaps even singable. Leaves a strong impression in the mind, and is frequently- but not always - relatively short.

I think of a line as being longer, though not necessarily long,and also smooth and flowing. May be memorable but not as attention grabbing and motivic as a “lick”.

But back to the fun.

[pauln]

I suppose it’s picking nits but I think of licks and lines as being two kinds of things. There are really no hard rules…. but;

I think of a lick as being very motivic and memorable, perhaps even singable. Leaves a strong impression in the mind, and is frequently- but not always - relatively short.

I think of a line as being longer, though not necessarily long,and also smooth and flowing. May be memorable but not as attention grabbing and motivic as a “lick”.

But back to the fun.

I kind of agree, but "longer/shorter" might be more or less notes or seconds...
Which would be longer, 16 notes in two seconds, or 8 notes in four seconds?