Lick Of The Month #7

Our last lick of 2012 is here, and it's a whopper!! It's a 3 bar long triplet assault played by Joe Henderson on Horace Silver's 'Song For My Father'.

The lick can be heard on this version of the song at about 4:20 over 3 bars of F-7.

The Dave Liebman Approach

I recently found Dave Liebman's website which has got a great article on how to get the most from the transcription process. It goes into great detail on how to really get into a solo once you've transcribed it. 

I've applied this approach to a Hank Jones lick, rather than a whole solo. The sheet music for these examples are below although I highly recommend doing this whole process yourself and just use anything from this post or from Dave's site as a starting point as the real benefit comes from when you've put the hours in yourself.

Lick Of The Month #4

September's Lick Of The Month is one of Cannonball Adderley's from Freddie Freeloader. I chose this lick as I love the way he approaches the change from the last Ab7 of the tune back to the first Bb7. Here's the lick, skip to 7:25 to hear it.

Lick of the month #3

Welcome to LOTM number 3! This months lick is a 2 for 1 special using some nice ideas I've pulled from a transcription of 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' I was working on but shamefully got defeated by! There are some monstrously quick runs in this solo which I'll hopefully finish off one day when my ears catch up with the sax shredding on display. But waste not, want not, here's some of the licks I did manage to get my chops onto.

I've wrote these licks up to work over an Eb blues. The first bar starts around the 9th and then descends an Eb- arpeggio. The second bar is based around F# major, the relative major of Eb-. The G that sets off the second lick is a major 3rd  of Eb- which gives us a nice bit of tension before resolving the lick on an F#, the minor 3rd.

Lick of the month #2

Our second LOTM is another ii V i from Autumn Leaves, but this time it's a minor ii V from the bassist, Sam Jones.

This is a great lick with some simple but effective tricks in it. Here it is in the original key and then in two more keys, moving through the cycle. This lick should be practised in all keys even though I've only wrote it out in the first three!

The opening bar plays root, natural 9, 3, root. The natural 9 is used as a tension note between the root and the third as it is out of the key but still fits quite nicely. The second bar starts on a chromatic run down to the root, practise this as it is a great way to get out of the habit of jumping straight onto the root for beat 1! The last beat in this bar is a chromatic note leading to the root of the i chord. This lick is finished off with a simple R 3 5 3 arpeggio which helps to reinforce the harmony of the chord sequence after a bar of almost all chromatic notes.

As you can see from the example above, you may have to tweak these licks to take them through all 12 keys but the ideas are still the same - the A-7 arpeggio in the final example is ascending rather than descending.