Jazz Trumpet Licks

You may have heard this easy Jazz lick before while listening to your favorite Jazz artists. It would be nice to know if you have heard the lick before, if so, please leave a comment on this post. This really is an easy lick to incorporate into your Jazz trumpet solos, no third valve required!

Here a sound sample played over The Theme by Miles Davis:

How to memorize this lick in 12 Keys:

To be honest with you, I’ve never learned this lick in 12 keys. I usually only use it in a couple keys like C7 and G7, that’s it. You can also play this lick in C Major and G Major as well and it sounds about the same. If you feel motivated enough to learn the lick in 12 keys it can only help your trumpet technique in the long run so have at it.

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I just had to share this video with everyone. Jon Faddis is really something else. How he got his trumpet chops to be so strong, I will forever wonder. Anyway, this awesome Jazz video of Jon Faddis taking a trumpet solo in the presence of Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, and Jon Henricks.

The thing I like best about this video is being able to watch Jon Faddis adjust his embouchure to go into the upper range. I notice a lot of trumpet players do this.

What do you think?

Here is a fairly simple exercise that will help you develop and incorporate the use of diminished arpeggios into your Jazz trumpet solos. Diminished arpeggios, whether you use them in full or partially, are a great pattern to have under your belt as they kind of go hand in hand with the bebop scale in keeping your Jazz lines going.

Here is a sound sample of the diminished exercise on trumpet:

How to work this diminished exercise in 12 keys:

I find it best to think in stacked minor 3rds. It really doesn’t matter what note you start on. It’s best to get in the full comfortable range of your horn. All you are doing is going down 4, half step down, up 4, half step down, down 4, etc…

To get every key both up and down you’ll just want to go up or down a half step from where you started in the first exercise and do the same thing over. Now you are alternating the diminished arpeggio both up and down.

Make sure to use a metronome on this exercise, I apologize for not doing so myself. Once you got the pattern down, try to start incorporating it into your Jazz playing. A good start is on the V7 to I chord. Start on the 3rd of the V7 chord and land on the 5th of the I chord. You’ll get the b9 involved and it sounds really hip.

If you haven’t seen this Jazz video of James Morrison on You Tube yet, you’re in for a real treat. There are a whole bunch of cool things James Morrison (an Australian trumpet player/trombone player) shows off on. Switching back and forth between trombone and trumpet, multiphonics at the beginning on trombone, using a trombone trigger to play a bunch of Jazz licks on trombone, and of course a lot of high notes. He goes up to a high G, but mainly does it one handed while making it look very easy. The blues changes are of the tune, “Things Ain’t What They Used to be”.

I would like to show you an easy way to use the cry me a river Jazz lick over a ii V7 I chord progression. There are many ways to incorporate the cry me a river lick into your Jazz solos, but this is one of the first ways I learned how to do so and I’ve been using this technique ever since.

Here is a sound sample on F blues progression with trumpet:

How to memorize the cry me a river lick in 12 keys:

For this ii V7 I Jazz lick, the only important chords are the V7 going to the I chord. All you have to know is you are starting on the flat third of whatever chord the V7 chord is. In the above example, F natural is the b3 of the D7 chord. You can play whatever your heart desires on the ii chord. After you play the cry me a river Jazz lick, your goal is to land on either the 3rd or 5th chord tone of the tonic chord. You’ll notice in the above example, I used an enclosure going to the 5th of the I chord, this is optional, but enclosures always sound great.

As far as memorizing the cry me a river lick, for me this Jazz lick was memorized easiest by feel. This is because it usually goes by pretty fast and it’s a little bit easier to memorize in some keys better than others.