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Hi Eric, here’s my question: How many licks can you retain in your mental lick library? Or, how many licks do you want to retain in your memory? I joined AM nearly 10 years ago (amazing but true), and for a long time my goal was to collect licks. I think maybe I got up to about 20 or 30. But what happened is that I only used about 10 or so on a regular basis. But through the process of noodling around, I created alternate versions of those 10 licks. I found that any one of my favorite licks could be tweaked and morphed into half a dozen licks that sounded different from the original. Classical musicians call that “theme and variation”.
Next question: How many unique licks are there in Brian’s 600 or so lessons? I would guess at least 3 per lesson, so maybe 1800 or so free licks. No need to buy additional licks. However, instead of relentlessly collecting standalone licks, I started observing how Brian incorporated those licks into his songs, and how he arrived at those licks (which he explains in detail each time).
Anyway, here’s my advice: Put less emphasis on memorizing licks, and more emphasis on how to develop good phrasing. A person who sits there and plays a series of licks with no common motif will very quickly become boring.
Sunjamr Steve
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I couldn’t agree more with what Steve said.
Studying a reasonable number of licks is necessary to understand how to play a given genre, or how to play like a specific musician. BB King doesn’t sound like SRV, Django Reinhardt doesn’t sound quite like Charly Christian, Brian May doesn’t sound like David Gilmour, etc.
But the focus should be on articulation, phrasing, motifs, intervals, etc., not on memorizing and reproducing the licks themselves.Learning tons of licks is like walking with crutches. The only way to become an interesting improvising musician is to learn how to play your own phrases. And the only way to do this is, well, to play tons of phrases, evaluate them and correct them.
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