Free Jazz Rocklicks

Free Jazz Rock & Blues Licks and Jam Tracks

The licks on this page have been compiled by John Robson to show a cross section of the type of thing he regularly gets asked for in his lessons. They also give a good impression of what can be heard on his albums "Never Learned To Dance" & "Elbow Grease". Excerpts from these albums are available by going to the CDs page.

Guitar Lessons

John Robson has a limited number of vacancies for new students of all levels of ability. If you live in the Teesside area of the North East of England and would be interested in booking some lessons with an experienced professional guitar teacher, then go to the "BOOK A LESSON" page for more details. Meanwhile, here's the free licks. Just click on the TAB to hear the lick being played. You can also download FREE jam tracks to try the licks out over. Simply click on the track of your choice to download the mp3 music file. The chord sequence/tab for each jam track is available by clicking on the "tab" link for each track. It is strongly recommended that you take a look at the tab for each track before using them - especially in the case of the jazz tune. Rock Jam Track: |Music| |Tab| Blues Jam Track: |Music| |Tab| Jazz Jam Track: |Music| |Tab|

This lick uses the notes of The G major scale (G A B C D E & F#). It would be particularly effective in either an E Aeolian or A Dorian context.

A lick using the A minor Pentatonic Scale (A C D E G). Watch out for the right hand taps (indicated by "T").

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A sweep picked arpeggio starts this one off. Try to play the whole sweep with one flowing movement of the pick. The rest of the lick uses the A minor Pentatonic with an additional Eb passing note. Watch out for the tapped A note after the sweep.

Another tapping lick, this time using the A Dorian Mode (A B C D E F# G) with the addition of Eb as a passing note. Each time you move to a new string, you should do so with a hammer-on using your 4th finger.

A simple A minor arpeggio with the addition of chromatic "neighbour tones" - simply approach each chord note from a semitone below.

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A good old fashioned blues scale lick in the style of Gary Moore. Nothing unusual about this one, just aim for fluency & the speed will take care of itself.

Another lick using the G major scale. The main technique shown here is the use of "legato" - a smooth flowing sound created by repeated hammer-ons, pull-offs & slides. The tonality of this lick is based around Am, making it Dorian, but you could quite easily use it in other contexts without too much modification.

Another Dorian lick. However, it could be used in a D Mixolydian or E Aeolian context by simply shifting the focus away from the final A note.

Another Gary Moore "blues scale" lick. This is just the A minor Pentatonic scale with the addition of the Eb passing note. Once again, aim for fluency.

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A simple A minor Pentatonic lick using trill at the 12th fret. Follow the instructions & you should be OK.

This lick (along with most of the other blues licks shown here) uses the combined scales of A major Pentatonic (A B C# E F#) and A minor Pentatonic (A C D E G). By adding these two scales together, you can access the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G) and the A Mixolydian Mode (A B C# D E F# G), which are also popular scales used in the blues.

A BB King inspired lick using the A Mixolydian mode as it's basis.

A major + A minor Pentatonics again. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Just watch out for that double bend at the start.

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A hybrid picking lick (pick & 3rd finger of right hand). The notes used are from both pentatonics & are arranged in 6ths.

Once again, A minor + A major Pentatonic scales. The only other note here is the additional Eb passing note (8th fret, 3rd string).

An A minor Pentatonic lick with, once again, the addition of Eb as a passing note. Notice how the C notes are bent slightly towards C# (the major 3rd of an A or A7 chord - the most likely tonality to use the lick over).

A Robben Ford inspired lick. This one uses the A Mixolydian mode as it's basis.

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A mixture of both A major & A minor Pentatonic scales again. The first part of the lick uses a chromatically descending shape. This type of thing is often found in country music. The 7th - 8th fret double string bend should be done with the flat of your 3rd finger.

Yet another example of A minor + A major Pentatonic scales. Nothing here to worry about.

Another A minor pentatonic lick. Once again, notice how the C notes have been bent up towards the C# - the major 3rd of A.

A lick which can be used over any type of chord, this uses a technique known as "sonic shapes". The principle is that you take a repeating pattern (in this case; 1 fret + 2 frets) and repeat it across the strings. As long as you resolve it to a strong chord note, it will work over ANY chord. Both Eddie Van Halen and Alan Holdsworth have used similar ideas to this.

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A widely used scale in jazz is the Melodic Minor. Here you can see the 7th mode of Bb Melodic Minor (Bb C Db Eb F G A) being used over the A7#5 chord. When used in this context, the Melodic Minor Scale is known as the "Superlocrian Mode".

This lick uses the principle of approaching a chord from it's 5th. In this case, the Am7 chord has been "approached" via E major. The E major arpeggio played over the top of Am is an idea dating back to Django Reinhardt.

A II V I chord sequence (Am - D - G) is another opportunity to use the melodic minor scale. This time the scale being used is A Melodic Minor (A B C D E F# G#).

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The diminished scale is used here. This is a scale consisting of alternating tone & semitone intervals. Starting on a G, this gives: G A Bb C Db Eb E Gb. This is an ideal scale to use over any A7 C7 Eb7 or Gb7 chord. Due to the symmetrical nature of the scale, the same fingering will repeat every three frets on the guitar.

Once again, the A Melodic Minor scale used over a II V I (Am - D - G) chord sequence.

The Whole Tone Scale is exactly that: - a scale made up of whole tone (2 fret) intervals. Starting on an A note, you get A B C# D# F G. This is a great scale to use over any chord with a raised 5th (A7#5, or A+ for example). Just make sure that the root of the chord you're playing over is one of the notes in the scale you're using & you should be fine. This lick ends by hanging onto a 9th (E) of the underlying Dm7 chord.

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Similar in principle to Rock Lick No.5, this one simply uses chromatic "neighbour tones" to approach the notes of the underlying Am chord.

Chromatic licks always sound exotic & jazzy, if done right. The secret is to ensure that you resolve to a strong chor d note (in this case, a C - the minor 3rd of the Am7 chord) when ending.

Another Melodic Minor lick. This time we're using the 4th mode of E melodic minor (E F# G A B C# D#) to get something called the A Lydian Dominant Mode (A B C# D# E F# G). This scale is particularaly effective when soloing over static dominant 7th type chords.

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PAUL NELSON Master Guitar Class - Part 1 Making sense and practical use of music theory! The Ionian Scale, Soloing and Chord Substitution. Let's start with the major scale otherwise know as the Ionian mode. First of all, there are 12 notes in all of music called a chromatic scale this allows you to build 12 different majors scales from each note using what's called a step pattern. (See example 1) Every type of scale has its own unique step pattern. Western music, (not country music), is based on a 12-note system, Eastern music uses 24. Musicians also work with what's called the number system. Each letter in the major scale has a numeric value labeled from 1 to 7. The first note in the scale is labeled number 1, second note 2, and third note 3, and so on up to the number 7. A major scale we can say then consists of 7 natural numbers (uneven division of the chromatic scale). Any other scale would either have a flatted number or a raised number in comparison creating different step patterns which in turn effect the tone centers Major, Minor, Dominant and or their colors. Chords are built from major scales by taking every other note and stacking them in thirds. The next step is to analyze (or measure) the distances between to find out if the chord is major, minor, or dominant, etc., within the key. This is called the Chord Order. There're two types of chord order voicings, triadic (3 note) and seventh chords (4 note). Seventh chords are the more jazzy of the two and are chords stacked in thirds, four notes deep from each note in the scale. Triads are in thirds from each note in the scale three deep. So what that all comes out to be, if I do the work for you is what's known as the harmonized scale. (See example 2) Lets look at everything in the Key G, its a good key to work in on the guitar because you can play the entire key without it being interrupted by the neck stopping. Your chord forms and all the scale positions line up neatly in a row up and down horizontally. The key of G contains the letters G, A, B, C, D, E, F# and G again, following Ionian's step pattern. That's why you have separate sharp and 1

flat Ionian keys. The chords for G Ionian are G Major 7th. The second A Minor 7th. The third B Minor 7th. The fourth chord is a C Major 7th. The fifth chord is D7. The sixth chord is an E Minor 7. The seventh chord is an F# half-diminished or Minor 7th flat 5, (we use both terms). We now end up with what appears to be a scale with 7 different chords and this is usually where most schools of thought end in their analyzation. Everyone usually begins by learning arpeggios that outline each chord. This becomes totally frustrating because everything sounds so contrived. The real deal is that those 7 seven chords, if you take things a step further, are divided into two separate groups. Chords which contain the fourth (Suspended) degree of the scale (The forth degree of the Ionian scale is the key to all of music's tension and release) and those chords that don't or what I call resolved and unresolved. If you can control the movement of that one note alone, you can play effortlessly through changes. If you were to play G Major scale notes individually over a G Major 7th chord you'd find that, you can't sit on the fourth degree of the scale (the C note) for to long. It has to be resolved either down 1/2 step to the third degree or up one whole step to the fifth degree. Every other note in the scale is a color or chord tone, which sound fine over the Gmaj7th chord. We can now divide the G Ionian scale into two categories: those chords which don't contain the C note in their tone centers (1357) and those chords which do. Chords that don't contain C in their voicing are in the resolved category and those that do have the C either in their root, third, fifth or seventh are in the unresolved category. (See example 3) You can condense that thought further by calling the resolved column R and the unresolved column U. In the resolved column the chords are: I, which is a G Major 7th chord, III, B Minor 7th, then VI E Minor 7th. In the unresolved column, (those chords which contain the actual C note in them in the key of G) are the II chord, A Minor 7th. (The C is the flatted third of the chord.) The C Major 7th, (C is the root) the IV chord. The V chord is the D7th (C is the flatted seventh.) And the VII chord (C is the flatted 5th). (Roman numerals are commonly used symbols to analyze chords) The beauty of this separation of columns is the realization of there being only 2 sounds not 7 chords in the key (also known as tension and release, or yin and

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yang or whatever else you want to call it). The fact is that all the chords in each individual column are interchangeable within themselves. They're substitutes for each other resolved with resolved and unresolved with unresolved. So just for the purpose of comping (playing various chords behind something) ideas begin to flourish, not to mention the soloing possibility end of it. If you saw a progression that said G Major 7th to A Minor 7th, that could be the same as B Minor 7th to A Minor 7th. It could be the same as E Minor 7th to A Minor 7th. It could be the same as B Minor 7th to F# min7b5. It also could be the same as G Major 7th to C Major 7th. There all the same thing! (See example 3) Say you were to write a melody for the chord progression / G Major 7th (Resolved/R) / A Minor 7th (Unresolved/U)/, you could "Sub" a different harmony to the same melody by simply substituting U chords and R chords and that's just for chord substitution. Now let's look at the soloing possibilities as far as arpeggiating. Take the G Major 7th to A Minor 7th again. You could sub an E Minor 7th arpeggio or a B Minor 7th arpeggio or both over the Resolved G Major7th chord and all you'd be doing is adding the new color of a ninth or sixth depending on the arpeggio you played. The rule of thumb would then be never play what's defined to open up the sound! If you see a G Major 7th chord, don't play a predictable G Major 7th arpeggio! When the A Minor 7th chord hits play a C Major 7th and you'll have an A minor 9th. Ex: 1 Key of G Major Ionian Scale Step Pattern: G w A w B 1/2 C w D w E w F# 1/2 G

back Ex: 2 Harmonized G Ionian Scale: Triads:

7ths:

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back Ex: 3 Chord Substitution Chart Ionian Scale: Resolved (R)

* Note that the V chord in it's triadic state does not contain the C

Unresolved (U)

back The first thing that players start doing is practicing and solo playing their arpeggios in a row! 1,3,5,7 etc... This is the killer mistake, when you play an arpeggio like this it sounds like your practicing even when youre improvising. Go from at root to a seventh, to a third to a fifth or just play a root and a fifth. DO EVERYTHING TO AVOID PLAYING IN A ROW BOTH UP AND DOWN! That's all you have to think, and the same holds true with your scale patterns. "I can't get anything out of this scale. Everyone else plays the same thing and I cant figure it out!" Its because your playing it like an exercise. MENTALLY AVOID PLAYING NOTES (ASCENDING OR DESCENDING) IN A ROW. SKIP STRINGS, PLAY INTERVALS, SEQUENCES, AND OR ANYTHING ELSE YOU CAN THINK OF. NOT SOUNDING LIKE A SCALE OR ARPEGGIO EXERCISE IS THE KEY! Good Luck… —PAUL NELSON PAUL NELSON is a recording artist and top session player touring with

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countless international acts his guitar work has been heard nationally on NBC, WWF, TNN, UPN television and has been featured on countless CDs along side today's top guitarists. Studying under Steve Vai, Steve Khan, and Mike Stern early on he has recently performed as part of the Johnny Winter group as well as writing for and playing on the Rock/Blues Legend's upcoming Virgin records release. His highly acclaimed solo CD (Guitar World, Guitar One, Vintage Guitar) entitled "LOOK" has been released worldwide. Paul is an endorsement artist for Ernie Ball and DiMarzio products. For questions, comments and more visit: http://www.paulnelsonguitar.com Printed by permission courtesy of theshredzone.com

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