Jazz Trumpet Licks

Greg Gisbert takes a really nice Jazz trumpet solo on the tune Smile from his Court Jester album. When you listen to the trumpet solo at first, you’ll notice Greg Gisbert doesn’t do anything extraordinary with his trumpet solo. He just sounds really good on the solo and it’s a real catchy trumpet solo that you’ll be humming to yourself after you listen to it a few times. I would love to hear what you think of this Greg Gisbert solo, you need to own it.

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This is a cool sounding Freddie Hubbard signature lick. You hear Freddie Hubbard play this alternate fingering lick on a lot of different tunes in a lot of different variations.

Here is a sound sample played on trumpet:

With this lick, you don’t really have to learn it in 12 keys. The lick itself only works well in the above key because of the ease of use with the alternate fingerings involved. You can use this lick over C major, G7, or D minor. It works well over a lot of stuff when you run out of ideas, just kidding. Experiment with the lick and make it your own.

This is an easy pentatonic pattern to learn. This pentatonic pattern is easy to learn and use in your solos because it can also be used as an exercise as well.

Here is a sound sample on trumpet:

How to memorize this pentatonic lick in 12 keys:

This pentatonic pattern is simply going down the pentatonic scale one note at a time. You can see that each group of four notes starts on the 2nd note from the last group of four notes. Since this is a pentatonic scale, you’ll never have to worry about going out of the scale. You can use the above lick as a major pentatonic or a minor pentatonic.

If you learn pentatonics in all major keys, you are also learning them in minor keys. If you decide learning pentatonics in major is easier, then you’ll just go up a minor 3rd. Like the above example. If you are in A minor, just go up a minor 3rd and play the C major pentatonic pattern. Or vice verse, C major, go up a 6th and think A minor pentatonic.

I’ve had discussions with fellow Jazz musicians, and most think it’s more beneficial to learn your pentatonics in minor. It’s really up to you though.