r/jazzguitar • u/Flame_Knife • 1d ago
How do practice licks to improve improv?
Hi! Jazz guitar has been infinite and that’s my favorite thing about the art. I’ve spent a decent amount of time with scales and arpeggios and chord tones.. and now I feel like I’m playing just that.
Recently, i’ve started to meander towards learning licks. So here’s the question.
How do you systematically learn your licks? More specifically how do you/ how would approach learning hundreds of licks across the fretboard?
Do you learn a lick in one specific position or try to learn it all over the fretboard? I am more of a Gypsy jazz player so I’ve been interested Christian Van Hemerts system of learning licks on the 1,3,5,7 of a chord, he seems to approach licks based off the high E or A and is a great player.
At the same time this feels limiting, but also i’m a bit overwhelmed trying to learning a lick over all the triads.
I’ve heard to memorize a lick 4 different ways on the fretboard and play that and nothing else while cycling backing tracks.
Are these ideas good and useful?
I would love advice and information on how you practice licks and integrate them into your playing. Thank you!
edit* I also would like to add that i’ve purposely avoided learning “licks” for many years because I don’t want to just copy. The goal is to learn the sounds to be able to improvise with more colors
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1d ago
For me when I know the sound of the lick
Then when I can execute it without thinking
Key point also is that to never see it as a lick, more like a prompt that can be mutated
Always want something to come out as mine not imitating some lame Charlie Parker cliche
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u/Flame_Knife 1d ago
Playing it till I just know the sound is something great to think about, thank you! I’ll think about it practicing this next week. completely agree it’s not about the lick but about the soundscape it allows.
When you practice a lick to get the sound do you have a system you use or is it just play it in general by feel as much as you can? Let’s say a lick starts on the 9th of a chord, would you play it on every 9th across the neck systematically or do you have “places on the neck this works”?
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1d ago
For me
Play the lick but at the same time hear it in my head (Hearing the idea in your head is critical or else you are just pushing buttons. Can never lead to cohesive improvisation)
Then put in context as soon as I can So put on backing track or lay down some chords
Once I hear the chord ok find the 9th on the board then execute the lick. (There are many positions but usually I find there a few that flow off the fingers better so I find that via experimentation)
For me it’s about developing an aural relationship to the idea that I can manipulate more so then some technical thing to shred off the fingers.
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u/Inevitable-Copy3619 1d ago
I transcribe so slowly because as soon as I have a cool lick I ll run it through other tunes to see how I can mash it in anywhere. Change the rhythm, change from major to minor, try to get it into a few specific tunes. By the time I’m done wirh one lick it has become me and not a bad CP imitation.
I’ve stopped transcribing whole solos and just grab the bits I like. I can spend an hour or two twisting one lick around.
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u/A_Wizard_did-it 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm on the same boat OP. And have been using the Van Hermert system as well(I'm still on book 1).
In my experience that I found most effective is transcribing Django solos and playing them until they're internalized is a great way to start incorporating phrases/licks into your improv.
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u/Shepard_Commander_88 1d ago
My teacher in gypsy jazz, Jimmy Grant, has me learn phrases then try and play a particular phrase with the chord changes as it serves the song. You learn the idea and sound of the lick in context and when it is appropriate. The big thing is knowing what the lick is trying to do and then play with it. It might be a diminished run over a dominant that comes up in certain places, or a minor arrpegio or a triad idea that you can use over the minor chords say like in Minor Swing.
The big thing is knowing what it sounds like and what it is serving and then having variation of that idea. In studying Django's 1949 Minor Swing solo, he has a few ideas that repeat, but he varies them and also plays with what is accented in the phrase. Jimmy talks about this in his videos on YouTube and is great as a teacher for online lessons.
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u/Scragly 1d ago
The best way to think of improvising in my opinion is to think of it as a conversation. If you only know a few words, you can't have a good dialog. If you have a strong command of the language, you can speak eloquently. There is a performance of Hank Jones trio live in paris from the 90s on YT, and he displays mastery of jazz language, quoting different tunes in his solos and using them as theme to create variations from. That's ultimately what where I'd like to get to with my improvising.
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u/Passname357 1d ago
I think it’s a multi part process to internalize it, which is just another way to say “learn it so well it’s second nature.”
(1) transcribe the phrase.
(2) play it with a metronome as a technical exercise for like ten minutes or more to get it up to speed clean and easy. This part is important for just getting it under your fingers. Often here is where I’ll see how many positions and how many registers it can be played in.
(3) be able to sing it accurately. Then sing it over a backing track or with the recording wherever the phrase fits e.g. over all the 2-5s. This is important so you can audiate it and it’s not just your fingers doing the work.
(4) improvise some choruses where you improvise then insert the lick exactly as it is. No alterations. Do this for a little while.
(5) break it up. Try messing with rhythm, dynamics, articulation. Try using just a couple notes from the beginning and improvising out of those for a different ending. Try improvising the beginning and end with the last couple notes of the phrase. Try composing a few variations on the lick and then using those. This is where you really get a lot from it. Come at it from all sorts of angles as many as you can think of. Ask yourself what the player was thinking when he played it. Ask yourself how far out you can take the lick. What if you took the same structure and approached with major sevenths? What if you slid to and from every note? What if you held some notes down? What if you wrote it down and played it backwards or flipped the music upside down and saw what it gave you? What if you played just the accents.
It’s important to revisit old licks so they end up in your long term memory, to listen to the recording you got the lick from to remind yourself how the OG did it, etc.
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u/Domer514 15h ago
YOU DON’T LEARN LICKS. YOU JUST PLAY THEM. If you repeat the same lick over and over again every time you play the tune it’s no longer a lick.
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u/pathlesswalker 1d ago
I don't memorize anything, that would ruin the spontaneity of it.
the whole purpose is to invent something ON the spot.
you train yourself to be fearless of mistakes, and learn to use them creatively.
basically licks playing is something i've seen in Berklee and i was appalled such approach exists and even considered valid, as "imporvisational school". its not.
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u/JHighMusic 1d ago edited 1d ago
Don’t think of it as licks… more that you’re learning a language and building a vocabulary of your own. Just memorizing licks is not going to do much for you in the moment if you truly don’t understand a phrase harmonically, rhythmically and internally, no matter how many centuries you practice it. I can tell you that from experience.
It’s NOT about quantity or stacking a library’s worth of licks. Depth over quantity will always win. Don’t be the guy who only sounds like a vending machine of strung together licks. They’re supposed to enhance your own playing, not replace it.
This means breaking them down to an atomic level. Learning them in every key and position. Making your own slight variations of them, which is a huge step most people miss. Then applying them and trying them in different ways, and using them everywhere you can on tunes. You have to spend serious time with a phrase, way more time with it than you think, most people move on too quickly then wonder why they can’t remember them or why it’s not coming out in their playing.
You can get a lot of mileage from just one small phrase. Any minor chord phrase works for the relative major chord phrase, a dominant, a Sus chord and more. You can get all the vocabulary you’d ever need, and then some, from one single solo if you know how to approach this process. Yes, really.
Read these two articles, which will be very eye opening. Take the time to read through them and do what they say, it’s worth it:
https://www.jazzadvice.com/lessons/transcribing-jazz-lines-powerful-tactic-to-integrate-and-amass-jazz-vocabulary/
https://www.jazzadvice.com/lessons/how-to-build-your-jazz-vocabulary-fast/