Jazz Trumpet Licks

Want some great Freddie Hubbard Jazz licks and patterns? All you have to do is get a transcriber and slow this YouTube video of Freddie performing Cherokee at the Blue Note in Japan.

This recording took place back in the 1990s. Hope you enjoy!

I was asked a while back from a fellow trumpet player that follows the site if I could show him a Dizzy Gillespie Jazz lick and/or trumpet trick. He showed me a video, and I started working it up, but never had the time to perfect it. What I’m saying is that I’m still in the practice shed on this one.

If you ever listened to the tune Dizzy Atmosphere you can hear Dizzy perform this lick, but he played it in a lot of his trumpet solos.

In the video above Charlie Porter does an excellent job explaining and showing how to learn, practice, and get this awesome Jazz lick under your trumpet belt. So I thought I would share it with you.

Here is a pretty easy way to combine the usage of tritones on dominant chords and the playing of a diminished scale or pattern to compliment it. As long as you land on a chord tone in the next measure, you should be good to go. Take a look at the Jazz lick below:

Here is a sound sample played on trumpet:

How to memorize this pattern in 12 keys:

The easiest way to memorize this Jazz pattern in 12 keys is by simply knowing that whatever dominant chord you’re on, in the above example it is C7, just go up a tritone (#4 or b5). Once you have that established, you can do a diminished scale or diminished pattern for about one measure as long as you land on a chord tone in the following measure.

I wouldn’t try to learn this lick in 12 keys, instead I would make sure to know what my tritones are and have all my diminished scales and patterns down. Just so you know, there are only 3 diminished scales you’ll ever have to learn.