Lick of the Week #3

In the first installment, I spoke pretty loftily about the importance of going beyond transcription to make licks an organic part of your playing...

Well, I realize that I should walk my own walk that I talk. So I won't just leave it up to you, but also share my process of working through these licks and internalizing them. I figure, the goal of these posts are to encourage me to work through new vocabulary, so might as well do the most important part too.

This week, let's take a look back at the Wes Montgomery licks from last week. I've been having fun playing with a riff from Bar 3, that also shows up in the last two beats of Bar 1.

If we look at a simple riff like this, we can see that it has a melodic structure and a rhythmic structure. One of the things that I love about this is how swings so hard while emphasizing the downbeats, and 1 and 3 no less. While I usually think of swing emphasizing upbeats (both in terms of 8th notes and quarter notes (beats 2 and 4)), but when Wes plays it still has that upbeat swing feel.

Some terminology: (4n = Quarter Note, 8n = Eighth Note, _(interval) "Go down interval", ^(interval) "Go up interval", R 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Intervals Root Half Whole 3rd ...")

Rhythm

• 4n 8n 8n
• Starting on downbeats 1 or 3

Melody

• R _3 _3
• ^2 and repeat

The first thing we can do is just to take the pattern and continue it (Rhythmic Extension).

If we start from different notes, it becomes more versatile (Melodic Shift).

Just as we can do a melodic shift, we can also start on different beats (Rhythmic Shift). If we start on an upbeat, it really changes the feel.

We can also change the scale that we're playing, and/or play over different chords (Harmonic Shift). Let's shift to an altered scale over the V in a ii-V-I.

Lick of the Week #2

This week, I decided to go for a Wes Montgomery lick from his tune Four On Six (1:15-1:35). Actually a whole chorus...

There's a lot of great stuff in there.

• He starts with the arpeggio, and descends with a repeating figure.
• Bars 5 and 6 see him repeating a similar min6 shape (or dom9 shape depending how you think of it), and the rhythm has that quarter note stop on the fourth beat repeated.
• This creates a rhythmic expectation that gets betrayed by the following long phrase that carries over the half-chorus mark and only ends on bar 12.
• And after the ride through 3 tonal centers (or 4 if you count the Bb relative major), he plays some blues to end the chorus, tailed with his favorite rhythmic phase (Bar 15).

Lilypond code is available here.

Lick of the Week #1

Something I've always found to be true is that no matter much experience I have playing guitar, the fastest way to learn is always to listen to people playing the music I like and learn to play what they play. Ah, yes Transcription!

Unfortunately, it always can feel like exercise for me. You know it's good for you, you know you should do it, but somehow, you never find the time. To help me with this, I thought I would try to keep myself to honest by holding myself to the modest goal of transcribing one lick each week and sharing it here on my website.

Of course, the real value of transcribing comes from taking a lick and really making it your own. Dissect it, pull it into it's different parts. Change them, permute them, swap in something of your own. Play it in different keys, play it in different time signatures, play it over different chord progressions, play a whole chorus by just varying it. I leave that up to you to do the personalization :).

To make this accessible for everyone, I hope to only use audio from youtube and transcriptions using lilypond software. Also, for learning transcriptions off youtube yourself, you might find it helpful to loop and slow down the video.

So, to get us started let's take a look at a snippet from one of my favorite jazz solos of all time, Clifford Brown, Pent-Up House. I decided to look at a lick that he starts his solo off with (0:40-0:50).

This lick really sets the stage for the rest of the fluid lines in his solo, and starts with an embellishment of the hook to the original melody. It's also a great example of swinging through a ii-V-I with alteration of the V chord.

Three things to note:

1. (second half of bar 5) The classic approach from root of the ii to 3rd of the V
2. (second half of bar 6) The very classy approach tone sequence
3. (first note of bar 7) The way he plays really behind the beat. I think that really captures his "flying forward yet leaning back" feel.

I've also included the lilypond code below. There was a bit of work to get this looking okay, so I wanted to share it in case someone else finds it useful. I also found the frescobaldi IDE to be very helpful. To get the nice jazz fonts, you have to follow the link here and install the fonts inside the lilypad app Applications/LilyPond.app/Contents/Resources/share/lilypond/current.

\version "2.18.2"

% Use LillyJazz Font
\paper {
  #(define fonts
    (set-global-fonts
      #:music "lilyjazz"
      #:brace "lilyjazz"
      #:roman "lilyjazz-text"
      #:sans "lilyjazz-chord"
      #:factor (/ staff-height pt 20)
  ))
}

% No initial indent 
% No string nums in staff
\layout {
  indent = #0
  \omit Voice.StringNumber
}

\header {
  title = "Pent-Up House (0:40-0:50)"
  composer = "Clifford Brown"
}

the_lick = \relative c'' {
 \key g \major
 \time 4/4
 \numericTimeSignature
 \tempo "Med Up Swing" 4 = 200
 | r4 d2.
 | r8  b-. r \appoggiatura cis d bes4 r8 \appoggiatura cis d
 | a1\2
 | r4 r8 \< a\2 b\2 c\2 d e \!
 | g e c\2 a\3 e4-.\4 g8\3 e\4 
 | fis a c d  f c cis e
 | d-! bes r b d fis, r a
 | g d2
}

the_chords = \chordmode {
    a1:min7 d:7 g:maj7 g:maj7
    a1:min7 d:7 g:maj7 g:maj7
}

\score {
  <<
  % Only print chords when they change
  \new ChordNames {
    \set chordChanges = ##t
    \the_chords
    }
  \new StaffGroup 
    <<
      % Add line breaks every 4 bars
      \repeat unfold 2 {
        s1 \noBreak s1 \noBreak
        s1 \noBreak s1 \break
      }
      % Add the staff
      \context Staff {\the_lick}
      % Add the tab
      \context TabStaff {
        \clef moderntab
        \set TabStaff.minimumFret = #9
        \set TabStaff.restrainOpenStrings = ##t
        \the_lick
        }
    >>
  >>
}

Welcome

Welcome everyone to my website. There's not too much content on here right now, but I hope to put up some interesting things eventually. For now, feel free to learn more about me and my research.