Creative Lick Phrasing Guidebook

Musicians who improvise in jazz, rock, and blues need to be able to take any lick or phrase, in their vocabulary and modify it creatively to fit the groove that they’re playing over. Thanks to the unique characteristics of their instrument, guitar players have a very wide palette of harmonic, rhythmic, and positional options at their disposal.

The Creative Lick Phrasing Guidebook from Richard Hallebeek will guide you through 7 concepts and 18 creative approaches for modifying your own licks to make them not only your own but make them stand out in your improvisations and solos.

”I'll show you creative lick concepts and applications for the most commonly encountered chords, like Dominant 7th, Major 7th, Minor 7th, and so on. Each lick application will use a specific strategy, like using pentatonics over a Major 7th groove or using a Melodic Minor on a Minor 7th b5. We'll then tackle different concepts that you can use to twist and turn any of your licks to squeeze the most out of them.”

Richard will present 7 creative lick phrasing concepts: Major 7 Displacement, Triads in Scales, Rolling Fingers, 1-2-4 Scales, Around Chord Tones, Timing Variations, and Drum Book.

He will then apply those different concepts across 18 licks: Major 7 Ionian, Major 7 Lydian, Major 7 Pentatonic, Minor 7 Dorian, Minor 7 Aeolian, Minor 7 Pentatonic, Dominant 7 Mixolydian, Dominant 7 Melodic Minor, Dominant 7 Pentatonic, 7Alt b9b13, 7Alt b9 13 Dim, 7 Alt Pentatonic, m7b5 Locrian, m7b5 Melodic Minor, m7b5 Pentatonic, Triads in Augmented, Triad Line in Augmented, and 1-2-4 in Augmented.

In the final section of the course, Richard will present 5 Soloing Performance Studies showing how his example licks would sound in a musical context by soloing over jam tracks. He'll take the basic licks shown in the previous section and then use different approaches to craft creative versions of the lick in the solo. For each of the 5 Soloing Performance Studies, Richard will first solo over the track and then provide a detailed breakdown of the solo emphasizing how the approaches in the solo relate to the prevailing chord changes.

Richard will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way.  You’ll get standard notation and tabs for the key examples and performance studies. Plus, Richard includes all of the rhythm tracks for you to work with on your own. In addition, you’ll be able to loop or slow down any of the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let's get creative with Richard Hallebeek!