Jazz Trumpet Licks

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”.

Here is a cool sounding pentatonic pattern I got from a really good trombone player I used to work with. This pentatonic lick starts off with a minor pentatonic scale, then you go down a Major third, outside the key and do another minor pentatonic scale. You can play whatever pattern or notes that you want to, the example is only to give you an idea of what you can do. This lick fits really well over modal tunes like So What.

Here is a sound sample played on trumpet:

How to learn this pentatonic lick in 12 keys:

You aren’t really learning a set pattern with this lick. You want to think in minor pentatonic, then go down a Major third and play in that minor pentatonic. In the above example you start off in E minor pentatonic, then you go down a Major 3rd to C minor pentatonic, finally, you go back to E minor pentatonic.

The best way I found to learn this lick is to just mess around with it in all the keys. Some keys will be stronger than others, but that’s OK. Once you feel comfortable enough, start using the Jazz lick in your solos either live or with Aebersolds and Band in a Box.

I got this rhythmic diminished lick listening to a good trombone player friend of mine. It’s a real easy diminished lick to incorporate into your improvised Jazz solos. You don’t have to play this diminished pattern how it is written, be creative and come up with your own variation of the lick.

Here is a sound sample played on trumpet:

How to memorize this diminished lick in 12 keys:

Since this is a diminished lick you’ll only need to learn the lick in 3 keys depending on which note you start on. As you can see, this diminished lick is just going down in half steps a minor 3rd apart, but it skips around a little bit. The stacked minor 3rds in the above example are C, Eb, F#, and A. The easiest way to memorize this diminished lick then is to think in stacked minor 3rds throughout the whole lick knowing that you are just going down a couple half steps between each minor third.

This is a well known Jazz lick you hear a lot of Jazz artists play in different variations. A trombone player I used to work with in Seattle was kind enough to show me this easy lick.

Here is a sound sample played on trumpet:

How to memorize this ii V7 I lick in 12 keys:

This lick starts off with an A minor arpeggio starting on the 5th and ending on the 5th. So whatever key you are in just know that you will start on the 5th of the ii chord. Then I think of what key I’m in knowing I’ll be hitting the raised tonic then down to the 5th again then the regular tonic with a half step into the 3rd of the V7 chord. Know that the first 3 notes of the V7 chord is just diminished going up until you hit the tonic of the V7 chord and go to the b9 down the G scale and landing on the 3rd of the I chord.

I know this sounds kind of confusing. I really don’t think of all those instances when memorizing this ii V7 I lick. This is the short version of memorizing the lick. Think minor arpeggio starting on the 5th, know it goes to the raised tonic, then up diminished to the b9 and down the scale ending on the 3rd of the I chord.