Improv: How do i apply licks to my solo playing?

[SymmetricTone]

Hey folks.

I'm a pianist who's having a hard time incorporating licks in my solo playing. It's not a challenge when it comes to playing them, but I'm having trouble with making them sound relevant to my solo.

I recently saw a clinic with Gary Burton on youtube where he talked about improvisation being a way of telling a story. You start out with a theme and then develop it, expanding it into a "story" or a "broader picture". And I completely agree, that is how I think when I solo.

But then I saw a clinic with Hal Galper, where he talked about licks being necessary for a musical vocabulary. That they are vital for building phrases and expressing your own sound. And of course, this also makes very much sense.

But how do these two relate? How do you use licks in a way that makes them fit in with what else you are playing?

[iguessso]

One thing that is often said is to always keep in mind the context of where the lick came from. If you took the lick from a ii V progression then start playing that lick every time a ii V comes up in the tune you are working on. Apply it to other tunes as well. This will also naturally force you to play it in different keys which is important.

break the lick down to get an understanding of how/why it works. Look at which notes are on beats 1 & 3 in relation to the chord.

[Tarquin1986]

It really doesn't seem to be acknowledged enough that applying licks is a skill in itself. Learning the licks themselves is the easy part.

Anyway, regards telling a story, my approach is to learn licks in sets. Everything I know isn't just floating around together, I have my blues bag, and my flowing lines of eighth notes bag, my outside bag and so on. So, to simplify, If you play from one bag for the first chorus, and another for the second, you've already got a rudimentary story right there.

What iguesso says above is fundamentally important: Harmonic context and tempo are crucial factors.

[jazzman1945]

When people talk about licks, they usually mean the phrasing of bebop. But this is only part of the melodic elements, in addition, there are riffs based on the pentatonics or blues scale. They can be licks, but You can also invent them. We can just combine riff and lick - at the beginning or at the end.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?myfiles#c26y51jzkeaf0hv

[engelbach]

Learn to recognize passages in a head melody that suggest amplification with particular licks. Sometimes just surrounding a melody note with approach tones will generate a familiar lick.

Generate your licks on specific melody notes so that we can hear that they are related to the melody.

Invent our own licks using the method in the first paragraph.

Burton and Galper are not expressing different ideas. Telling a story usually involves starting simply and then becoming more complex, eventually coming to some kind of conclusion. Licks come in all degrees of complexity, the differences between of which you can use to gradually build your story/solo.

And you link them with notes that are proximate to both of them.

[Making Music]

Great question! Here's an animated video we did the other day, on improvising on piano using the blues scale. The blues scale's a great jumping off point for soloing, and can provide fodder to fill that space in between your licks... How to Improvise on Piano Using the Blues Scale

[Mr BC]

Take a lick you like (transcribed from a solo or your head) and get to know it cold from memory and be able to do that in all 12 keys. In practice, cram it in a solo everywhere you can think of. Such as a 2-5 lick, use it every where there is a 2-5. You can do this and exclude all other notes, as in, you are only playing your 2-5 lick. Then add approaches to it. maybe 1 or 2 note approaches and work up to filling in the non- 2-5 space (so to speak.). this is only a general idea, I usually don't do it exactly like this. I try to also work with the melodic contour of the head at the same time.

Another thing is (which can be done after you work with the above idea for a bit) to vary the lick. Add approach notes, omit notes, change some note values, add accidentals, play it retrograde, play it inverted, etc. There are lots of ways to introduce variation. You just have to pick one or two and start and see how it goes. You can see how just 1 or 2 licks can give you a wealth of derivative material.

I highly recommend the "jazz advice" website. It is, in a word: awesome. Here are some articles pretty germane to your post.

http://jazzadvice.com/the-difference...-and-language/
http://jazzadvice.com/the-stages-of-jazz-language/
http://jazzadvice.com/getting-more-f...scribed-solos/
http://jazzadvice.com/how-to-apply-t...e-transcribed/

Another cool thing to try is, thinking of the melodic contour of you base lick, broaden your focus beyond the measure. Say you have a short, quick ascending passage followed by a more gradual descent in to the next measure, you could try to apply the same contour across a (for example) 4 or 5 bar phrase. Think of it as shifting your focus from the trees to the forest. Not that I've tried to do this yet. I've just thought of it a few times. I can't even think of a specific musical example right this instant. I'm pretty sure I read about something similar in Paul Berliner's book "Thinking in Jazz," which BTW is a tremendous book. He collected years of interviews from jazz musicians from back in the 50's an onward (at least). I forget exactly now basically, I you weren't around during the heydays of the jazz club scenes in NYC, and able to talk to the original masters as they came off the bandstand. Berliner's book is about the closest you can come. Anyhow, these were just a few ideas. You might have already thought about them...

[jazzman1945]

Originally Posted by Mr BC

I'm pretty sure I read about something similar in Paul Berliner's book "Thinking in Jazz," which BTW is a tremendous book.

Mr BC,thanks for mentioning this book; I already ordered it.

When we apply licks, we actually use the musical quotations, so we must first learn not phrases of bebop, but quotes from popular tunes.
In other words, we first learn how to cite , and quote from bebop or other style will appear later.
It should put quotes of hook melodies , and they should have a good fall on the harmony of selection. Here's an example:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?myfiles#afrmyj8e2v6bdo7

It remains only to be linked to the melodic line in the beginning and end of the quote.