How do you play this bebop lick?

Steve Knight · From: NC

Jazz players,

A lot of jazz musicians play arpeggios "enclosing" or "targeting" the chord tone with the diatonic note above the target note & the chromatic note below the target note. For example, a C triad (C,E,G) lick would be:

D, B, C
F, Eb, E
A, Gb, G

Of course there are many variations of the lick, using the same notes. How do you play this common bebop lick on the psg? It doesn't "jump out at me" when I look at my D-10 like it does on a guitar or piano. Do you play it on both the E9 & C6 necks?

Thank you,

SK

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

This seems to be a textbook case of why the 2nd (or 9th) and maj7th intervals of the scale are on strings 1 and 2, respectively, of the E9 neck. The first lick you post, D B C, can be obtained, at high speed, at the 8th fret by executing a reverse roll (MIT) on strings 1 2 4. Of course, with bar or pedal/lever movement, there are many ways to easily get this lick. For example, striking strings 5-NP 6-NP 6-B gives this same 2 maj7 1 lick (NP=No Pedal, B=B-Pedal), again on E9.

BTW, F#, not F, is the 2nd interval to E, so I assume you mean F# Eb E. You'd get it using the same roll using open strings or on the 12th fret, and A Gb G on the 3rd fret. F Eb E is a chromatic over/under approach to the root, also a reasonable lick, I think one needs bar or pedal/lever movement to get that in any common tuning.

Adrienne Clasky · From: Florida, USA

Wow. Great advice, Dave.

This won't be great, (hey, I'm new) but you could also get most of that at the 8th fret with fun little jogs to the 7th:

DBC: 1,2,4
F Eb E: 3(B)/ Fr7 3/Fr8 3
A Gb G: 5(A)/ Fr7 5/ Fr8 5

Those are all pretty high. For a lower version of lines one and two:

DBC: Fr8,7/ Fr7 9/ Fr8 8
F Eb E: Fr8, 6(B)/Fr 7, 6/ Fr8, 6

I'm exhausted. (Wipes forehead.) I should have left this to the people who actually know how to play.

Thanks for the great lick, though!

John Steele (deceased) · From: Renfrew, Ontario, Canada

I use a related phrase all the time on C6:

1-------7----
2--6---------
3----6----7--
4------------

-John

p.s. I also use this phrase over Em7b5 all the time.

Steve Knight · From: NC

Excellent. Thank you for the replies.

Dave, the reason I had the E listed out as F, Eb, E is because I was thinking of targeting E within the C major triad, CEG. So, to "target" a full major triad, you'd hit

C, root: major 2nd, major 7th, root
E, third: major 4th, flat 3rd, major 3rd
G, fifth: major 6th, flat 5th, major 5th

After spending too much time at work thinking about this lick, I came up with a C6 approach, utilizing the RKL on an Emmons setup (do you call it the Emmons setup on the C6? Another topic...)

This example is for an E triad, "targeting" E, G#, B. The "C" lick I could figure out on the C6 necks seems too high. Here's the E major triad:

root E: F#, D#, E
third G#: A, G, G#
fifth B: C#, Bb, B

I hope this tab works:

D__4__________7______11__________
E________________________________
C___4RKL_4_____7_8_____11RKL_11__
A________________________________
G________________________________
E________________________________
C________________________________
A________________________________
F________________________________
C________________________________

Because there are 20 strings, two necks & 13 or so pedals & levers, there must be a lot of other ways. Anyone else?

BTW, I got to thinking about recordings where I've heard the lick & it's not limited to bebop. I've heard it on older swing stuff on up through modern music, too.

Thank you,

SK

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

Steve, I missed the point that the main issue was to string these 3 triplets together. Actually, the string 1,2,4 roll can be executed pretty fast even with moving the bar between frets 8, 12, and 15. All you need to do to is flat string 1 to fret 11 to get the F. Using the notation String/Fret/Pedal-or-Lever-Comb., that version of the lick looks like this on E9:

8/1/-, 8/2/-, 8/4/-, 11/1/-, 12/2/-, 12/4/-, 15/1/-, 15/2/-, 15/4/-

For a lower E9 version that doesn't jump around, try this:

7/8/-, 8/7/-, 8/8/-, 6/8/B, 6/7/-, 6/8/-, 5/8/A, 5/7/-, 5/8/-

These sound very different, especially if you don't separately pick/block notes 2 & 3 of each triplet but slide hard into each 3rd note.

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