From Licks To Riffs At The Guitar

Notation of a simple guitar lick

In popular music genres such as blues, jazz or rock music, a lick is a stock pattern or phrase consisting of a short series of notes used in solos and melodic lines and accompaniment. 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. A lick is different from the related concept of a riff, as riffs can include repeated chord progressions. Licks are more often associated with single-note melodic lines than with chord progressions. Riffs can be as simple as a tenor saxophone honking a simple, catchy rhythmic figure, or as complex as the riff-based variations in the head arrangements played by the Count Basie Orchestra.  However, like riffs, licks can be the basis of an entire song. For musicians, learning a lick is usually a form of imitation. Imitating style is as important as learning the appropriate scale over a given chord. By imitating, musicians understand and analyze what others have done, allowing them to build a vocabulary of their own. (info excerpted from Wikipedia, here)

Ton Van Bergeijk

So many words to announce a new course by Dutch master guitarist, Ton Van Bergeijk, who has just released a DVD based guidebook entitled Licks to Riffs with focus on the blues style and how to adapt any lick to any chord changes at the guitar. Ton explains the project more precisely in the video below

In the video Ton stated, quote: ”I've always found that licks played on other instruments are a great source of inspiration for guitarists. Pianists like Jimmy Yancey or James Booker are at the top of my personal list. For stronger riffs, I look at the great riff orchestras: Count Basie, Al Cooper, and then there's T-Bone Walker, Louis Jordan, Allen Toussaint…musical sources for “riff-spiration” is virtually endless. (-) Of course, we can translate the lick to guitar, and then play the lick exactly as it was played, over the same chord or chord changes. But if we change just one or more notes, we can create new licks that can be used over other chords and chord changes. I’ll show you how to do that in this Licks To Riffs Guidebook.”

DVD course (TrueFire, 2018)

According to the inserted video and further info at the website offering the course for purchase, Ton has organized the course into two sections. In the first section, you’ll learn how to make a lick fit over the three chords in a standard blues progression. Ton will show you how to "barbershop" a lick and turn it into a riff. Then, he'll demonstrate how easy it is to make changes to that lick for a jazzier blues. In the second section, Ton will teach a selection of his own favorite licks that he has transformed into versatile riffs.  Learning how to get the most of any lick is the key objective of this course to generate  “riff-spiration” for other guitarists. - More info about the DVD course and how to purchase a copy, here

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Jo

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