Improvisation with David Barrett

“I learned a cool lick. Now what do I do with it?”

Saturday, February 21st at 9am Pacific/11am Central/12pm Eastern

We’ll be using a C harmonica for this class.

We often learn songs to expand our lick vocabulary for improvisation—but here’s the reality: very few licks from a learned song actually stick in long-term memory. If you focus only on playing a song from start to finish, most licks remain trapped within that song, in that exact sequence.

In this seminar, David will show you how to extract your favorite licks  from songs, and practice them in ways that make them more likely to appear naturally in your improvisation—and, most importantly, how to use them when they do . You’ll learn how to:

• Fit a lick into the seven phrasing types used by great blues harmonica improvisers and songwriters
• Explore different textures within a lick (variations in note articulation) to keep it fresh throughout a chorus
• Break a lick apart to create new ones—a process called lick fragmentation 
• Use pickups  to make your playing sound smooth and connected

This workshop is open to all skill levels. A basic understanding of 12-bar blues and bending is helpful.