Your licks are too long (Video)

**Mick-7** · 03-22-2024, 09:05 PM

"My kids told me ‘you can’t use that word anymore old man’ "

It's a topsy-turvy world when the kids are lecturing the adults on what is politically correct.

**JazzPadd** · 03-24-2024, 10:36 AM

Thank you for the video, and please keep posting if possible.

This one resonated with me. When I don’t know a tune well and it gets called at a jam session, I’ll fall into playing continuous 8th notes, cause I’m just trying to keep up with the changes. It sounds a bit neurotic, or like an exercise. But as I begin to internalize the tune, after many, many moons, I find I can play less and less.

**GuyBoden** · 03-24-2024, 01:44 PM

As part of my practice sessions, I use new short licks, altering them and playing them all over a whole song, I've done this for as long as I can remember. Sometimes the lick stick my memory, sometimes is doesn't, why?, I don't know.

Sometimes these licks become all encompassing and it's everywhere in my playing. So, beware.

**JazzPadd** · 03-24-2024, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by GuyBoden

As part of my practice sessions, I use new short licks, altering them and playing them all over a whole song, I've done this for as long as I can remember. Sometimes the lick stick my memory, sometimes is doesn't, why?, I don't know.

Sometimes these licks become all encompassing and it's everywhere in my playing. So, beware.

Beware, how true it is! Once I started messing around with major triad licks with the 4th added, I couldn’t escape it, and for a while started nearly every ad-lib with some or another variant or transposition. Useful and infectious!

**jzucker** · 03-25-2024, 01:56 PM

There are tons of jazz tunes which have harmonic structures that allow lines to be really long. Players like Martino, Benson, Coltrane, bird routinely played sequences with dozens and dozens of notes.

Martino specifically worked on VERY LONG lines culminating in things like the classic solo over Sunny.

How many notes is this? At least 64