Lick (music)

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In popular music, a lick is a "rock term [meaning]...something like 'a stock pattern or phrase'" (Middleton 1990, p.137); a short phrase, or series of notes, often improvised by a musician. It is most often associated with jazz or rock music, and with stringed instruments, especially the guitar, banjo, slightly less so with the piano.

In a jazz band, a lick may be performed by a soloist at a rehearsed or unrehearsed point in a song, with the soloist continuing after all other musicians stop playing; see also break and solo. It can be a testament to the virtuosity of the musician to create a spontaneous, original short phrase which fits well with a standard composition.

Licks in rock and jazz are often used through a formula, and variations technique, such as Jimi Hendrix's "Gypsy Eyes", which, according to Richard Middleton (ibid, p.137), "is put together from variants of five stock ideas...familiar from other recordings in the same style...The combination and variations of these formulae are many and highly imaginative. But the basic formulae are so simple that the recording could well have been worked out 'in performance.'"