Daily Licking 013: Blues Triplet Lick

Here is a little bluesy lick you can use over that inevitable I-IV minor jam that you are bound to be implicated in sooner or later. It will happen.

It uses that Jaco-esque technique of grouping triplets so they can be heard to fall across the beat. He used that trick all the time to mess with the time, or to sound like he was. See how you could group the last note of that first triplet, the d, with the next two notes of the next triplet, and it would make its own ascending line also? Its like a special secret triplet built it for free!

bass lick tempo 90 4/4 swing 0 | Gmin [bb+8 g d ] [g bb g] [d g bb] [g d g] | Dmin [a g d] [g a f] [d f a ] [f d f] |

Oh wait, hold on a second. Hmmm, just checking my notes here, and, woops, my bad...

This isn't a bluesy little Jaco triplet displacement lick after all, it's actually measures 6 and 7 from Prelude Number 6 in D Minor (which is, of course, as we all know, the saddest of all keys) from Book 2 of the "Well Tempered Clavier" by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach.

All I did was change it from sixteenth notes in 3/4 to be triplets in 4/4. Check it out at the link for the sheet music and a midi file of what it sounds like when he did it.

So another example of a "modern" concept that is only modern if wearing a powdered wig and having a good bleeding is considered modern. Cutting edge stuff, straight outta 1722.