Jazz Trumpet Licks

You’ve probably heard a Jazz musician play this diminished pattern before, am I right? Anyway, this diminished pattern has a simple pattern to it, but I found this particular diminished Jazz pattern to be a little difficult in terms of finger flexibility. You’ll have to try the Jazz lick out for yourself to see if you are experiencing the same thing or not.

Here is a sound sample played on trumpet:

How to memorize this diminished lick in 12 keys:

Since this pattern is diminished, you’ll technically only have to memorize the lick in 3 keys depending on which note you start on. As you can see in the above example, this diminished lick repeats the same pattern over and over again going up one scale degree at a time on the diminished scale.

The best way I’ve found to memorize this diminished pattern in 12 keys is to think I’m doing a variation of the diminished scale which is: (1 2 b3 4 2 b3 1 2 b3 4). Basically every other minor 3rd of the diminished triad is played in this diminished pattern. Of course, I don’t think in scale degrees to memorize this pattern. Instead I think of the diminished scale in general knowing that I’m repeating the same thing over and over again.

Find the best way for yourself to get this lick down in all the keys, feel free to comment what works best for you.