Practice Tip: New Ending Lick

Players commonly stumble at the end of songs to perform an ending lick that sounds good and is in time (lots of players improvise this, and the results are sloppy). A strong ending lick not only sounds good, when played with confidence, it’s authoritative enough to really pull the band together for a solid ending. Grab a new ending lick from one of your study songs or the list provided in Improvising Study 6 and practice placing it into your improvising practice (which should be 1/3 of your practice time at this point). Make this your default ending lick for a minimum of two month. If you do this, then by the end of the year you’ll have six killer ending licks in your vocabulary.

Reference: Improvising Study 6