Jazz Trumpet Licks

Here’s a really nice trumpet solo of Nicholas Payton on Woody N’ You. He performed this awesome Jazz trumpet solo with The Airmen of Note. I really like how Nicholas Payton makes great use of space and only does a few crazy lines with the majority of his trumpet solo being quite melodic.

I love this Jazz clip of Ryan Kisor at a jam session in London. Notice that I mentioned jam session, I wonder if he’s had a few drinks? Well anyway, Ryan Kisor, as always, sounds amazing on trumpet even if the quality of the video isn’t up to par. He nails all the chord changes to All The Things You Are perfectly.

I have to ask, was that Wynton Marsalis taking a ride before Ryan Kisor?

Here is a pretty easy dominant scale ii V7 I Jazz lick I got from a friend of mine some time ago. It simply starts on the tonic of the ii chord and goes up the dominant scale until hitting the 3rd of the I chord and then ending on the cry me a river Jazz riff. You can play the lick faster depending upon the tempo of the tune you use it over and hit the 3rd on the V7 chord like I do in the below video clip.

Here is a sound sample over the Bb Blues on trumpet:

How to memorize this lick in 12 keys:

The reason I call this a dominant scale ii V7 I Jazz lick is because it is simply a dominant scale pattern in whatever whatever key you’re currently in going up the scale. In the above example were are in C Major. What’s the 5th of C? It’s G7, so we play the G7 scale starting on the 5th. You repeat the pattern until you hit the 3rd of the I chord. In the above example that would be E. So if you know your dominant scales really well, you’ll have this lick in 12 keys really fast.

It ends with the cry me a river Jazz lick, which is something you can work on separately. For me, that lick is best learned in 12 keys simply by feel.

I hope you enjoy this lick, I also updated the look of the Jazz Trumpet Forum template making the blog and forum look a lot more similar. I should have done this a long time ago though. Let me know what you think of the new forum look.