Lick

What it means

A lick is a short, self-contained melodic turn of phrase, usually only a few bars long, that instrumentalists use in improvisation. Licks are heard, memorised and reused in different keys and harmonic contexts.

The term originates in jazz, blues and rock music, but is not confined to those styles: traditional folk music has comparable fixed turns of phrase, passed down from one generation to the next.

Musical use

Over the course of their training, soloists build up a personal repertoire of licks, which they lay over typical chord progressions such as the twelve-bar blues or II–V–I turnarounds, varying, combining or rhythmically shifting them on the spot. Learning other musicians' licks, often by ear from recordings, is a central part of jazz education.

A lick should be distinguished from the longer, through-composed riff, which usually serves as a recurring accompanying figure for an entire piece, and from the classical motif, understood more as a compositional starting idea than as an improvisational building block.

Performance practice

Listen closely to solos by players you admire and try to pick out and replay individual licks before practising them in other keys. Then alter the rhythm or ending note of a learned lick so it stops being a mere quotation and becomes a flexible part of your own vocabulary.