I have written out 40 great Michael Brecker licks that I have picked up and used over the years. I would like the 40 Michael Breacker licks pdf. Bb, thanks alot. I put up a few pages of Brecker Licks that I have worked on over the years. There on my blog page on my website. I didn't include how to use these but many of them are chromatic patterns, licks over minor tonalities or 3 tonic system kind of approaches. I usually give these to my more advanced students. Our first lick is a Bbmaj run in the style of the late, great saxophonist Michael Brecker. This line is very similar to his playing in the funky outfit 'The Brecker Brothers' alongside his brother Randy (Though Michael would have played this line as an insane run of 32nd notes!) Over the ii chord its seems that Micahel uses the 'pentatonic up a 5th' substitution, basing his line on Gm pentatonic (for more info on this substitution check out ). We do have some chromatic embellishment; the 1st note moves chromatically up to D then we descend down chromatically from F to Eb. This the ascends up slides to rest on a D (the 9th). Remember that this is a saxophone line so there is no correct fingering, only what works best for you. Over the F7#5 we have a line that focuses on the #5 (C#), b5 (Cb/B) and #9 (G#) but the use of chromaticism leaves you questioning exactly what scale Brecker is thinking of. I would say that this is irrelevant, the idea is to create tension over this chord and resolve it effectively to the next chord, in this case the 3rd of Bbmaj7. When it comes to this sort of approach it may seem odd, but all the 'wrong' notes are the 'right' ones, so start playing around with the superlocrian scale (R,b2,#2,3,b5,#5,b7) and experiment by adding chromaticism to this. The following two shapes are a great starting point to practice this idea of tension and resolution. This ii-V-I is a 'quick change' in Bb. This means that instead of playing the ii and V for an entire bar we up the harmonic pace and move to two chords per bar. The result is that we have even less time on each chord, making outlining the change even harder! Fortunately there are ways to make this easier on you - using extended tension. The basic idea is that a standard ii-V-I is a well crafted progression that sets up tension over the V chord which is resolved smoothly to the I chord, a perfect cadence. Over this V chord anything is fair game, as long as you resolve the tension created. So if we take that principal of 'create tension - resolve tension' then why not ignore the ii chord all together and play out for longer? This idea is very common in bebop circles; a genre synonymous with tension/resolution and quick change ii-V-Is at tempos often reaching 200bpm! So looking at our lick, you want to ignore the ii chord altogether; it is there (the rhythm section will be playing it) but we're thinking in terms of the V chord alone. Although this line features lots of chromatic embellishment (something common in Metheny's playing) the lick is clearly centred around F Mixolydian with lots of passing tones (instead of using another scale like F Superlocrian or F Half Whole Diminished), this is demonstrated in the diagram below. If you play the line slowly you will see that notes of the scale generally fall on notes 1 and 3 of out 16th note groupings (the strong beats) and out 'oustide' notes fall on the weaker beats. The line is resolved by landing on the 3rd (D) of Bbmaj7 and then for colour I slide into the 7th (G), the 3rd and 7th of a chord are our 'guide tones' and will always define the chord well, so use the idea presented at the end of the last lick and try to come up with your own smooth resolutions. The other part of this lick to note is Pat's articulation; there is a very even blend of picking and legato and where possible the weak beats are picked and the downbeats are hammered/pulled to. This creates a beautiful illusion of swing, I have heard this described as 'swing picking', and helps to bring some attention to chromaticism present in the line.
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