Jazz Trumpet Licks

A tenor sax player friend of mine back in Japan showed me this bebop scale exercise. This is not a lick, it is simply an exercise or calisthenic that will help develop your overall bebop playing. It’s very important to learn this exercise in 12 keys to really develop your technique.

Here is a sample of the bebop exercise played on trumpet:

How to memorize the bebop exercise in 12 keys:

Notice that the exercise just starts on the tonic of whatever bebop scale you are working on. It then just goes up the the chord tones to the 11th and then down the bebop scale landing on the 3rd, 5th, b7th and tonic chord tones. After you reach the octave, the exercise just repeats itself and goes backwards landing on the , b7th, 5th, 3rd and ending on the tonic.

This is the easiest way to memorize the exercise in 12 keys. Just know that you will never go outside the bebop scale you are currently working on.