Jazz Trumpet Licks

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.

This is one of my favorite Freddie Hubbard Jazz trumpet solos. It is full of good Jazz licks and ideas. It is off his Hub-Tones Album. I just love listening to this trumpet solo because Freddie Hubbard is so creative and plays pretty aggressively throughout the whole solo.

**Note: Audio has been removed from this post.

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This is one of my favorite Freddie Hubbard Jazz trumpet solos. It is off his album Ready for Freddie on the tune Birdlike. One of the reasons I’m impressed with this Freddie Hubbard trumpet solo is because it lasts for about 4 minutes and Freddie Hubbard never fails to run out of good ideas, let alone Jazz chops. There are a lot of great licks in the trumpet solo to take advantage of.

Notice how Freddie Hubbard messes around with a lot of motifs in this trumpet solo and how he is able to build off them to make even more creative ideas.

**Note: Audio has been removed from this post.

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