Lick (music)

This article is about the concept in general. For the specific jazz lick known as "The Lick", see The Lick. For other uses, see Lick (disambiguation).
Carter-style lick.[1] Playⓘ

In popular music genres such as country, blues, jazz or rock music, a lick is "a stock pattern or phrase"[2] consisting of a short series of notes used in solos and melodic lines and accompaniment. For musicians, learning a lick is usually a form of imitation. By imitating, musicians understand and analyze what others have done, allowing them to build a vocabulary of their own.

In a jazz band, a lick may be performed during an improvised solo, either during an accompanied solo chorus or during an unaccompanied solo break. Jazz licks are usually original short phrases which can be altered so they can be used over a song's changing harmonic progressions.

  1. ^ Sokolow, Fred (1997). Complete Country Guitar Book, p.9. ISBN 978-0-7866-2841-4.
  2. ^ Middleton, Richard (1990), Studying Popular Music, Philadelphia: Open University Press (published 2002), p. 137, ISBN 0-335-15275-9