When learning how to play jazz guitar, one of the big concepts many players tackle is learning licks from famous players and classic solos.
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When doing so, you can learn the lick as played on
When learning how to play jazz guitar, one of the big concepts many players tackle is learning licks from famous players and classic solos.
When doing so, you can learn the lick as played on the recording, but you also can work the lick around the bar rhythmically in order to give you variations that you can apply to your soloing ideas as well as the original lick. In this lesson, you’ll learn a fun and cool technique you can use to take one lick and make it sound like eight licks by displacing it around the bar.
Though this approach is associated with sax player Lee Konitz, who taught this to his students, it also fits well on the guitar and is worth spending time in the woodshed to bring into your playing today.
Lick 1: On the Beat
To begin, let’s take a classic-sounding jazz lick you can learn starting on beat 1 of the bar, then we’ll start to vary this lick in the next two examples. In order to make sure you can quickly grasp those variations, make sure you memorize this lick and get it comfortable under your fingers and in your ears before moving to the next two sections of this lesson.
Lick 2: Anticipated
The first variation we’ll look at is taking the exact same lick, but starting it on the "and" of 4 on the bar before the progression starts. This creates a sense of anticipation in your line, and gives you a quick and relatively easy variation for the original lick that you can use in your solos without sounding repetitive or monotonous with the same lick.
Lick 3: Delayed
As well as starting the lick an 8th-note early when playing it over a ii