5 Jazz Licks That Make Any Guitar Solo Sound Like Jazz
What makes a solo sound like jazz is not just what notes you play. It is as much about how you play them. The same scale, the same arpeggio, the same chord tones — played with a different slide, a different accent, a different rhythm — and suddenly it sounds like jazz instead of an exercise.
Here are five licks, all over an Am7 chord, broken down phrase by phrase so you can see the habits and techniques doing the real work.
1. A Trick For Fast Arpeggios & Some Chromaticism
This lick has a great technique trick for playing faster runs, plus some chromatic notes. It’s played in 5th position, close to the good old box 1 pentatonic shape.
Instead of playing the arpeggio of the chord itself, you play the arpeggio from the 3rd. It’s one of the most common moves in jazz.
Am7 is A, C, E, G — the 3rd is C, and the arpeggio from there is C, E, G, B, which is a Cmaj7. That gives you a strong melody, and it’s also a way to bring out the B on the chord, the 9th.
The lick slides into the first note of the arpeggio from below. That makes the triplet easier to play, because your right hand has time to change strings before it needs to move again.
Once the lick hits the top note of the arpeggio — the B, the 9th over Am7 — it adds a chromatic note going down to Bb. Pick the Bb and pull off to the A. That makes the Bb, the interesting “crunchy” note, stand out, while the resolution to A, just the root, sits softer. The later licks do the same thing: accent the funny note, not the resolution.
The last two notes are plain scale notes, but notice the lick doesn’t end on the downbeat. Jazz licks have a lot of short notes and often end on the offbeat — it makes them lighter.
2. A Sloppy Sweep, And A Target-Note Phrase
Lots of funny notes and a few twists and turns in this one.
The lick opens with a descending Am7 arpeggio, played as a sweep. These notes should feel like a quick run, not a clean rhythm — a little muffled is fine. You don’t want to sound like a MIDI track.
That leads into a short chromatic phrase. The last note gets an accent on the “4 and” — that’s the syncopation that gives it life. This is a phrase you can lift out and use anywhere.
Then comes another essential jazz move: the enclosure. You approach a target note from above and below. Here the target is the root, A, and the accent lands on the B, not the A. Same idea as the first lick — accent the interesting note, not the resolution.
3. A Minimalist Trick
Here is another essential, but simpler chromatic enclosure: Diatonic note above – Chromatic below.
You can also strip the enclosure down — just one note on each side of the target. It’s still a great trick. First around A, then around C.
From the C, the lick goes straight into a Cmaj7 arpeggio — the arpeggio from the 3rd again.
It ends the same way the first lick did: a chromatic phrase up to the B, landing on that Am7(9) sound.
4. Jazz Blues Flavor And A Trill
This one adds some blues flavor to the mix.
The b5 — Eb — is the important note, and it’s used two ways: first, slide up to the 5th, and a few notes later, the same note slides down to the 4th instead.
The second bar opens with a trill — a quick back-and-forth between C and D, played legato. Don’t try to force trills everywhere. Find the spots where your fingers naturally want to do it, and use those.
The lick closes on the 9th, B, with a grace note sliding in.
5. A Double-Stop And A Tritone Skip
The last lick mixes double stops with arpeggios for another jazz-blues sound.
It starts with a pickup into a blues double stop, sliding into both notes:
Then comes a tritone skip — that wide interval brings out the F#, the 13th on Am7. It’s a very distinct sound.
That leads into a Cmaj7 arpeggio, played as a triplet, which drops into a descending blues phrase: just the pentatonic scale, with a b5 grace note added to the D for a little extra spice.
How To Make This Work For You
You can play these licks yourself instead of just learning them off the video. The way you want to work on them is to take small bits and pieces and make your own licks from them — composing your own variations. That’s how you make them fit with what you’re already playing.
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