Free Jazz Rock & Blues Licks and Jam

Tracks
The licks on this page have been compiled by John Robson to show a cross
section of the type of thing he regularly gets asked for in his lessons. They
also give a good impression of what can be heard on his albums "Never
Learned To Dance" & "Elbow Grease". Excerpts from these albums are
available by going to the CDs page.
Guitar Lessons
John Robson has a limited number of vacancies for new students of all
levels of ability. If you live in the Teesside area of the North East of England
and would be interested in booking some lessons with an experienced
professional guitar teacher, then go to the "BOOK A LESSON" page for more
details.

Meanwhile, here's the free licks. Just click on the TAB to hear the lick being
played. You can also download FREE jam tracks to try the licks out over.
Simply click on the track of your choice to download the mp3 music file. The
chord sequence/tab for each jam track is available by clicking on the "tab"
link for each track. It is strongly recommended that you take a look at the
tab for each track before using them - especially in the case of the jazz tune.

Rock Jam Track: |Music| |Tab| Blues Jam Track: |Music| |Tab| Jazz Jam
Track: |Music| |Tab|

This lick uses the notes of The G major scale (G A B C D E & F#). It would be
particularly effective in either an E Aeolian or A Dorian context.

A lick using the A minor Pentatonic Scale (A C D E G). Watch out for the
right hand taps (indicated by "T").

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 A sweep picked arpeggio starts this one off. Try to play the whole sweep
with one flowing movement of the pick. The rest of the lick uses the A minor
Pentatonic with an additional Eb passing note. Watch out for the tapped A
note after the sweep.

Another tapping lick, this time using the A Dorian Mode (A B C D E F# G)

with the addition of Eb as a passing note. Each time you move to a new
string, you should do so with a hammer-on using your 4th finger.

A simple A minor arpeggio with the addition of chromatic "neighbour tones"

- simply approach each chord note from a semitone below.

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 A good old fashioned blues scale lick in the style of Gary Moore. Nothing
unusual about this one, just aim for fluency & the speed will take care of
itself.

Another lick using the G major scale. The main technique shown here is the
use of "legato" - a smooth flowing sound created by repeated hammer-ons,
pull-offs & slides. The tonality of this lick is based around Am, making it
Dorian, but you could quite easily use it in other contexts without too much
modification.

Another Dorian lick. However, it could be used in a D Mixolydian or E Aeolian

context by simply shifting the focus away from the final A note.

Another Gary Moore "blues scale" lick. This is just the A minor Pentatonic
scale with the addition of the Eb passing note. Once again, aim for fluency.

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 A simple A minor Pentatonic lick using trill at the 12th fret. Follow the
instructions & you should be OK.

This lick (along with most of the other blues licks shown here) uses the
combined scales of A major Pentatonic (A B C# E F#) and A minor
Pentatonic (A C D E G). By adding these two scales together, you can access
the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G) and the A Mixolydian Mode (A B C# D E
F# G), which are also popular scales used in the blues.

A BB King inspired lick using the A Mixolydian mode as it's basis.

A major + A minor Pentatonics again. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Just
watch out for that double bend at the start.

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 A hybrid picking lick (pick & 3rd finger of right hand). The notes used are
from both pentatonics & are arranged in 6ths.

Once again, A minor + A major Pentatonic scales. The only other note here
is the additional Eb passing note (8th fret, 3rd string).

An A minor Pentatonic lick with, once again, the addition of Eb as a passing

note. Notice how the C notes are bent slightly towards C# (the major 3rd of
an A or A7 chord - the most likely tonality to use the lick over).

A Robben Ford inspired lick. This one uses the A Mixolydian mode as it's
basis.

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 A mixture of both A major & A minor Pentatonic scales again. The first part
of the lick uses a chromatically descending shape. This type of thing is often
found in country music. The 7th - 8th fret double string bend should be done
with the flat of your 3rd finger.

Yet another example of A minor + A major Pentatonic scales. Nothing here

to worry about.

Another A minor pentatonic lick. Once again, notice how the C notes have
been bent up towards the C# - the major 3rd of A.

A lick which can be used over any type of chord, this uses a technique
known as "sonic shapes". The principle is that you take a repeating pattern
(in this case; 1 fret + 2 frets) and repeat it across the strings. As long as
you resolve it to a strong chord note, it will work over ANY chord. Both
Eddie Van Halen and Alan Holdsworth have used similar ideas to this.

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 A widely used scale in jazz is the Melodic Minor. Here you can see the 7th
mode of Bb Melodic Minor (Bb C Db Eb F G A) being used over the A7#5
chord. When used in this context, the Melodic Minor Scale is known as the
"Superlocrian Mode".

This lick uses the principle of approaching a chord from it's 5th. In this case,
the Am7 chord has been "approached" via E major. The E major arpeggio
played over the top of Am is an idea dating back to Django Reinhardt.

A II V I chord sequence (Am - D - G) is another opportunity to use the

melodic minor scale. This time the scale being used is A Melodic Minor (A B
C D E F# G#).

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 The diminished scale is used here. This is a scale consisting of alternating
tone & semitone intervals. Starting on a G, this gives: G A Bb C Db Eb E Gb.
This is an ideal scale to use over any A7 C7 Eb7 or Gb7 chord. Due to the
symmetrical nature of the scale, the same fingering will repeat every three
frets on the guitar.

Once again, the A Melodic Minor scale used over a II V I (Am - D - G) chord
sequence.

The Whole Tone Scale is exactly that: - a scale made up of whole tone (2
fret) intervals. Starting on an A note, you get A B C# D# F G. This is a great
scale to use over any chord with a raised 5th (A7#5, or A+ for example).
Just make sure that the root of the chord you're playing over is one of the
notes in the scale you're using & you should be fine. This lick ends by
hanging onto a 9th (E) of the underlying Dm7 chord.

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 Similar in principle to Rock Lick No.5, this one simply uses chromatic
"neighbour tones" to approach the notes of the underlying Am chord.

Chromatic licks always sound exotic & jazzy, if done right. The secret is to
ensure that you resolve to a strong chor d note (in this case, a C - the minor
3rd of the Am7 chord) when ending.

Another Melodic Minor lick. This time we're using the 4th mode of E melodic
minor (E F# G A B C# D#) to get something called the A Lydian Dominant
Mode (A B C# D# E F# G). This scale is particularaly effective when soloing
over static dominant 7th type chords.

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PAUL NELSON -
Master Guitar Class - Part 1
Making sense and practical use of music theory!
The Ionian Scale, Soloing and Chord
Substitution.

Let's start with the major scale otherwise know as

the Ionian mode.

First of all, there are 12 notes in all of music called a

chromatic scale this allows you to build 12 different
majors scales from each note using what's called a
step pattern.
(See example 1)

Every type of scale has its own unique step pattern.

Western music, (not country music), is based on a
12-note system, Eastern music uses 24.

Musicians also work with what's called the number system. Each letter in the
major scale has a numeric value labeled from 1 to 7. The first note in the scale is
labeled number 1, second note 2, and third note 3, and so on up to the number 7.
A major scale we can say then consists of 7 natural numbers (uneven division of
the chromatic scale). Any other scale would either have a flatted number or a
raised number in comparison creating different step patterns which in turn effect
the tone centers Major, Minor, Dominant and or their colors.

Chords are built from major scales by taking every other note and stacking them
in thirds. The next step is to analyze (or measure) the distances between to find
out if the chord is major, minor, or dominant, etc., within the key. This is called
the Chord Order.

There're two types of chord order voicings, triadic (3 note) and seventh chords
(4 note). Seventh chords are the more jazzy of the two and are chords stacked in
thirds, four notes deep from each note in the scale.

Triads are in thirds from each note in the scale three deep. So what that all
comes out to be, if I do the work for you is what's known as the harmonized
scale.
(See example 2)

Lets look at everything in the Key G, its a good key to work in on the guitar
because you can play the entire key without it being interrupted by the neck
stopping. Your chord forms and all the scale positions line up neatly in a row up
and down horizontally. The key of G contains the letters G, A, B, C, D, E, F# and
G again, following Ionian's step pattern. That's why you have separate sharp and

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flat Ionian keys. The chords for G Ionian are G Major 7th. The second A Minor
7th. The third B Minor 7th. The fourth chord is a C Major 7th. The fifth chord is
D7. The sixth chord is an E Minor 7. The seventh chord is an F# half-diminished
or Minor 7th flat 5, (we use both terms).

We now end up with what appears to be a scale with 7 different chords and this
is usually where most schools of thought end in their analyzation.

Everyone usually begins by learning arpeggios that outline each chord. This
becomes totally frustrating because everything sounds so contrived. The real
deal is that those 7 seven chords, if you take things a step further, are divided
into two separate groups.

Chords which contain the fourth (Suspended) degree of the scale (The forth
degree of the Ionian scale is the key to all of music's tension and release) and
those chords that don't or what I call resolved and unresolved. If you can
control the movement of that one note alone, you can play effortlessly through
changes.

If you were to play G Major scale notes individually over a G Major 7th chord
you'd find that, you can't sit on the fourth degree of the scale (the C note) for to
long. It has to be resolved either down 1/2 step to the third degree or up one
whole step to the fifth degree. Every other note in the scale is a color or chord
tone, which sound fine over the Gmaj7th chord.

We can now divide the G Ionian scale into two categories: those chords which
don't contain the C note in their tone centers (1357) and those chords which do.
Chords that don't contain C in their voicing are in the resolved category and
those that do have the C either in their root, third, fifth or seventh are in the
unresolved category.
(See example 3)

You can condense that thought further by calling the resolved column R and the
unresolved column U.

In the resolved column the chords are: I, which is a G Major 7th chord, III, B
Minor 7th, then VI E Minor 7th.

In the unresolved column, (those chords which contain the actual C note in them
in the key of G) are the II chord, A Minor 7th. (The C is the flatted third of the
chord.) The C Major 7th, (C is the root) the IV chord. The V chord is the D7th (C
is the flatted seventh.) And the VII chord (C is the flatted 5th). (Roman numerals
are commonly used symbols to analyze chords)

The beauty of this separation of columns is the realization of there being only 2
sounds not 7 chords in the key (also known as tension and release, or yin and

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yang or whatever else you want to call it).

The fact is that all the chords in each individual column are interchangeable
within themselves. They're substitutes for each other resolved with resolved and
unresolved with unresolved. So just for the purpose of comping (playing various
chords behind something) ideas begin to flourish, not to mention the soloing
possibility end of it.

If you saw a progression that said G Major 7th to A Minor 7th, that could be the
same as B Minor 7th to A Minor 7th. It could be the same as E Minor 7th to A
Minor 7th. It could be the same as B Minor 7th to F# min7b5. It also could be the
same as G Major 7th to C Major 7th. There all the same thing!
(See example 3)

Say you were to write a melody for the chord progression / G Major 7th
(Resolved/R) / A Minor 7th (Unresolved/U)/, you could "Sub" a different harmony
to the same melody by simply substituting U chords and R chords and that's just
for chord substitution.

Now let's look at the soloing possibilities as far as arpeggiating. Take the G Major
7th to A Minor 7th again. You could sub an E Minor 7th arpeggio or a B Minor 7th
arpeggio or both over the Resolved G Major7th chord and all you'd be doing is
adding the new color of a ninth or sixth depending on the arpeggio you played.
The rule of thumb would then be never play what's defined to open up the sound!
If you see a G Major 7th chord, don't play a predictable G Major 7th arpeggio!
When the A Minor 7th chord hits play a C Major 7th and you'll have an A minor
9th.

Ex: 1 Key of G Major Ionian Scale Step Pattern:

G w A w B 1/2 C w D w E w F# 1/2 G

back

Ex: 2 Harmonized G Ionian Scale:

Triads:

7ths:

3
 back

Ex: 3 Chord Substitution Chart Ionian Scale: Resolved (R)

* Note that the V chord in it's triadic state does not contain the C

Unresolved (U)

back

The first thing that players start doing is practicing and solo playing their
arpeggios in a row! 1,3,5,7 etc... This is the killer mistake, when you play an
arpeggio like this it sounds like your practicing even when youre improvising.

Go from at root to a seventh, to a third to a fifth or just play a root and a fifth. DO
EVERYTHING TO AVOID PLAYING IN A ROW BOTH UP AND DOWN!

That's all you have to think, and the same holds true with your scale patterns. "I
can't get anything out of this scale. Everyone else plays the same thing and I
cant figure it out!" Its because your playing it like an exercise.

MENTALLY AVOID PLAYING NOTES (ASCENDING OR DESCENDING) IN A

ROW. SKIP STRINGS, PLAY INTERVALS, SEQUENCES, AND OR ANYTHING
ELSE YOU CAN THINK OF. NOT SOUNDING LIKE A SCALE OR ARPEGGIO
EXERCISE IS THE KEY!

Good Luck…

—PAUL NELSON

PAUL NELSON is a recording artist and top session player touring with

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countless international acts his guitar work has been heard nationally on NBC,
WWF, TNN, UPN television and has been featured on countless CDs along side
today's top guitarists. Studying under Steve Vai, Steve Khan, and Mike Stern
early on he has recently performed as part of the Johnny Winter group as well as
writing for and playing on the Rock/Blues Legend's upcoming Virgin records
release. His highly acclaimed solo CD (Guitar World, Guitar One, Vintage Guitar)
entitled "LOOK" has been released worldwide. Paul is an endorsement artist for
Ernie Ball and DiMarzio products.

For questions, comments and more visit: http://www.paulnelsonguitar.com

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