How to Play Piano - #1 Improvisation Technique - 4 - Using Licks

All right .

So now that we know the 1357 cord in our left hand and we know some of the basics about just how to play the piano and our posture and all that .

Like we can get started with playing like actual lines now in our right hand .

So , you know , up until this point , we can solo in all the white keys .

But you know , if you don't really know what to go for , then it's gonna get pretty boring for you .

Although , you know , you , I do want you to be able to feel each note that you're playing and really tune into that and just play the notes and you know , any , any order that you want .

But , you know , just try , try to kind of get fluent in this all white key scale .

And then while you're doing that , let's work on this concept called licks .

So , or a lick or a line is just a rhythm that's repeated over and over and over again in a solo and , and a lot of solos are really composed of just a bunch of licks over and over and over again .

So I'll show you one lick here .

So it's really a lot easier to , to just make an example of rather than just talk about .

So , a lick would be like this , it'd be like , like if you notice that , like , what I'm doing is I'm playing or I'm playing the same rhythm , but I'm just moving the notes down instead .

So a lick is just like a rhythm , a rhythmic element that's repeated over and over and over again , up or down the keyboard or just something that's repeated over over again to make a solo , like , sound good .

So if I was just soloing , you know , like I , I was soloing on this uh C chord in my left hand and I'm , you know , just playing an all white keys .

Say I'm going so that lick right there , there was a lick kind of embedded in that soloing .

There was this , it's just a repeated rhythmic element that , that I just , I just do over and over and over again because it sounds good as I move down the keyboard and then eventually I'm gonna switch to another lick and then just kind of take off with that and , and you'll notice how in soloing that's really all it is .

It's one , a solo is moving from one lick to the next and they're just , you know , just kind of like , I , I , I'll take a lick and I'll , I'll just kind of experiment with it and really expand upon it .

But if you notice all I'm doing here is I'm just playing all the white keys , but I'm not really , I'm just playing all the white keys .

That's really it .

And I'm , I'm just kind of taking that rhythmic element and moving it up or down uh with , with my right hand .

So here I'm gonna play just a solo .

If I was soloing on this C major chord , just see if you can spot the licks .

It'll just be a repeated element or repeated notes that are played , you know , again and again and again in the same kind of way , but you should be able to spot it because it'll , it'll sound similar , but it won't be the exact same .

Um A as , as the first time I started the lick .

So it'll be like , so there I started with a lick and then after I got done with that lick , I went to another , another way of playing and , you know , then I was gonna go into another lick after that .

So just , just spot these licks .

So like that was one lick .

So there , that was like maybe five or six licks combined together .

And if you notice I went like , and don't worry about the notes here , but just worry about or just think about the lick .

So this is going up , that's a rhythmic element there .

And again , there was what I was doing before was the , that was uh , one lick followed by this other little uh other rhythmic element uh that I can add to it .

So that's just a little bit about like how improvisation is , is started .

You know , you start on one note , you feel that note , you know , and then you feel like , oh , well , what does this note wanna go to next ?

And it , this note wants to go like that .

And then , so that creates a lick and then that lick is gonna be repeated again and again and again , until I want to just kind of change it up a little bit and then I'll go move on to another lick .

And that's a really easy way to think about what soloing and improvisation .

And I encourage you to go , go listen to uh you know , a lot of other jazz artists and you'll hear these licks kind of embedded in their music and it'll be like just repeat it like over and over and over again , but they'll use it in a really cool way .

But um but other than that , you know , you can just take this C cord in your left hand and then you can start so in all white keys with your right hand .

And um in the next lesson , I'm gonna give you another chord to be uh soloing with .

So , you know , we can kind of spice it up in the left hand as well .