Learning to improvise music without beating yourself up over the right notes or fumbling for the right fingering is something we all work towards when learning to solo over chord changes. Some musicians are uncomfortable with the idea of using licks because they fear it will inhibit their creativity.
But learned correctly licks can enhance your improvising and make your ideas smoother. The idea is not to utilize them note for note and rhythm for rhythm but use them to express something you’re already hearing. And what you’re hearing will be right under your fingers.
Think of the process as improvising by puzzle pieces. Each short melodic sequence is a piece of music that you’ve practiced until it feel like a single unit. You’ve worked out the notes and the fingering, and you can play the whole lick. Then you simply insert these licks or puzzle pieces one after another to create the whole picture. You’ll get the most out of this if you learn each lick in twelve keys.
You can develop melodic content and create your own licks. Find a short chord progression to play at a medium slow tempo. It could be a ii-V7 Or, it could be an eight bar section of a tune. When you’re ready, start scatting over the chords then record about 2 or 3 minutes of your singing. Afterward, listen to what you recorded. After you have become familiar with what you sang, write down several excerpts. In particular transcribe sequences you especially liked and also some patterns you sang repeatedly. These little pieces of melody represent your musical personality. When you first try this exercise you may decide that you really don’t like anything you sang. My advice is to not let that stop you. Just find patterns that you hate the least and proceed.
Where else can you find licks? You can transcribe licks directly from recordings. or find them in books. You can also ask someone who is a music teacher or another friend who plays music. One huge volume for licks is Nicolas Slominsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns.
Once you found a lick that you like, you need to process it. Work out the best fingering and practice it until it sounds and feels like a complete thought and not a bunch of notes stuck together. Analyze the shape of the lick , for example, Is it wide intervals or scalar or chromatic? What is the relationship of the notes you are playing to the chord. Once you have a good grasp of the lick in one key then play the lick in all twelve keys. You could use a program like “band in a box” to play the chords while you play the lick. Band in a box is great because you can then tell the software to play the same chord progression in another key and presto, you have a rhythm section playing in another key with no mistakes in timing. Practice playing the lick in all twelve keys with little or no hesitation in between.
The next step is to decide how the lick can best be used over chords. Having a good understanding of theory will help you figure out the relationship of each note of the lick to a chord. You’ll soon find out that you can use that same lick over different chords then you start to realize the power of licks.
