Jazz Trumpet Licks

Here is a ii V7 I lick that uses the bebop scale for pretty much the entire lick.

Here is a sample of the lick played on trumpet:

How to memorize this lick in 12 keys:

If you just think about the C bebop scale throughout this entire lick, you’ll learn it very quickly in 12 keys. This lick simply starts on the tonic of whatever bebop scale you are playing, but on the 5th of the I chord. So for a G ii V7 I, what bebop scale would you play? That’s right, the D bebop scale, because it is a 5th above the I chord.

So you start on the tonic of the bebop you are playing and go down the bebop scale until you hit the 3rd. Once you hit the 3rd, you just go up a diminished arpeggio which will hit the b9, then finish out the bebop scale however you would like to and land on a chord tone of the I chord. In the above sample, the lick ends on the 3rd of the I chord.

Here is an awesome Jazz trumpet video I thought you would enjoy. The video is of pretty poor quality, but how these Jazz trumpet giants play, I don’t think you’ll mind. This Jazz video includes Jon Faddis, James Morrison, Wynton Marsalis, and Arturo Sandoval.

Arturo Sandoval kind of takes the group of Jazz trumpet players up another notch by taking a short ride on trumpet without using a mouthpiece. Arturo Sandoval also finishes out the video with a really high scream. Who knows what he was playing up there.

This is a nice sounding whole tone lick I heard Claudio Roditi play. It simply goes down the whole tone scale with the same pattern repeating over and over again.

Here is a sound sample played on trumpet:

How to memorize this lick in 12 keys:

Since this is a whole tone pattern, you’ll only need to memorize this lick in two keys depending on which note you start on. Whatever note you start on, just know that you’ll be going down a Major 3rd down from it. Then two chromatic notes. The next note will be a whole step lower from the first note you started on. After that, everything just repeats itself over and over again.