Today i'm going to show you a tasty jazz lick that's going to make you
sound like a bebop pro over minor 251 chord progressions let's do this thing
what's up brent here from learn jazz standards where we help musicians just like you learn how
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also make sure you stick around to the very end we're going to show you three ways that you can
make sure that you learn this lick very deeply so that you never forget it alright so today's lick
is over top of a minor 2 5 1 chord progression and i'm gonna teach it to you in concert c
minor so first of all what's a minor two five one it's d minor seven flat five to a
g7 altered to a c minor seventh chord that's the one chord so d minor seven
g seven to a c minor seven now how do we get that b boppy sound that super chromatic beautiful jazzy
sound over top of this chord progression well that's exactly what this lick does so let's take
a deep dive look into it but before we do that of course let's listen to what it sounds like
now a few more times through the lick
really be boppy really chromatic sounding but what makes it sound like that and what makes this lick
so great let's slowly walk through this leg so the very first note is a g natural now the g natural
is the 11th of d minor 7 flat 5 but this note isn't actually really the important note
what i'm going to do is identify some target notes within this lick now those target notes
in the first chord with the d minor is actually when we get to this f natural we'll get there in
a second and i'll explain that as well and then after that when we get to the g7 alt chord we
come to this f natural as well which is another one of our target notes and then we get to this b
natural in that same bar with the g7 alt again go over that in a second and then finally we have a g
natural over top of this c minor seven so i want to talk about these target notes first because
when we talk about target notes target notes are any note in a jazz line or a musical sentence
that we're targeting through other notes whether it be diatonic or chromatic so we're arriving to
these notes essentially that's why we call them target notes so let's go through this so we start
like i said with the 11th that's g natural and then we go to an e natural now that's technically
the ninth of d but that's really again not that important compared to our very first target note
which is the f natural now what is f natural in d minor seven flat five well it's the third now the
third is another thing that we like to call the uh a guide tone it's one of the two guide tones
in jazz meaning it's an important note important chord tone that is gonna really help the chord
changes pop and that's really going to make the difference between an amateur sounding jazz line
and a professional sounding jazz line so we're targeting that third to really make that chord pop
out really loud at us now something that's really bee boppy that b boppers do all the time
is something called enclosure you have that g natural and then the e natural
arriving to the f so we have a note starting above in pitch from our target note then below in pitch
that's the e natural arriving to our target note f so that's what we call an enclosure and that's
essentially like bebop 101. like this is going to come up all the time in bebop so adding lots of
enclosure we call these approach tones and target notes it's going to really help make your solos
sound like bebop and really jazzy for lack of better terms so let's keep going through the line
go back to that g natural to the a flat the a flat's kind of important because
it's the flat 5 five the d minor seven flat five so it's worthy to note that one
but again we're heading a certain direction so
now we hit this b natural which is kind of a little bit strange uh because there's not
really a b natural within the scale structure of a d minor seven flat five for example
so far this you know lick is really based a lot off of the locrian sharp two um but you know
by adding this b natural it's almost like it's coming out of the whole half diminished scale but
putting aside scales for a second i really am thinking about this b natural more as the third of
g7 which again we talked about the third being a guide tone so it's almost like we're anticipating
that g7 alt and that's a good thing because we're about to do some really chromatic
stuff that's going to make it really sound like bebop so moving along
now we hit the first note of g7 alt which happens to be the root now the
root isn't the most powerful note to hit in a lick but i don't really think that this
note is really structurally grounding really it's moving to our first target note so we go g
to g flat that's the major seventh which again it's not really the major seventh in this line
it's really just what we call a chromatic passing tone which is arriving down to the target note of
f okay now f again what is f in g7 f is the seventh the flat seventh to be specific on
this dominant seventh chord now that is another guide tone that's the seventh the thirds and the
sevenths are the guide tones so we're really again we're making these chord changes pop but
in a chromatic way which is really a lot of what's going on in bebop
uh continuing down with the chromaticism we go to an e natural
okay e natural now this is like really the 13th a nice extension that you can play over top of
dom at seventh chords but that kind of leads us to the next one which is the b flat note which is the
that's the flat 13. now this is our first truly altered note that we're dealing with here in the
chord so this is why this is an awesome altered lick so really adding a lot of tension and release
through these alter tones like that flat 13. but continuing on now we go to a b natural now
b natural again in a g7 is the third so that's our next target note is that b natural so
we're going from hitting that seventh to a bunch of chromatic and altered stuff
but coming back to a grounding center of that third again to bring out that chord but we don't
stay there too long after that we go to a b-flat which a b-flat is actually just the sharp nine
right the sharp nine it's that jimi hendrix sound right another one of our altered notes okay so
now we hit the a flat and the a flat
is also an alternate it's our flat nine so so far we've got the flat 13 we got the sharp nine
we got the flat nine making it a really altered chromatic tensiony sort of note
now finally we land on our last target note which is the g natural that's the fifth of c minor
seventh which it's a strong tone it's not the thirds or the seven so it's not the strongest tone
but it's still totally fine to land on it especially when we're ending uh a phrase
or a line so that fifth and then we end on a color note the d natural which is the ninth of
c minor seventh so a beautiful sound so again this is what the lick sounds like in totality
so that's the lick now what about some tips for actually learning this lick and and never
forgetting it what's the best way to internalize this so it actually comes out in our playing so
number one the first thing that you can do is to learn it by ear so instead of looking at
notation for this just learn it by ear and i guarantee you even if it's hard at first
that you are absolutely going to learn it a lot better and it's going to make a lot more sense
for you and then the second thing that you can do is take it through all 12 keys so bringing it
through different key center contexts is going to be incredibly helpful for you just to truly
understand it internalize it even further and finally number three is actually to take that lick
that you've learned and find different ways of playing it yourself so not only will it solidify
the anchor that is the lick you just learned it will help you actually make into something
that's coming from you which is much more likely to come out when you're playing than something
that you have learned verbatim all right so now obviously taking this lick and applying it over
top of jazz standards is also another really great way to go so i would highly recommend checking out
my free guide learn jazz standards the smart way where i teach you a five-step process for
learning jazz standards by ear effectively so check that out at learnjazzstandardsmartway.com
but i'll also leave a link to that on the screen here and also hey if you want to learn
some other licks i have some three two five one licks that you'll really find helpful as well
i'll leave a link to that video here on the screen alright make sure that you like this
video if you found it helpful please subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next one