In popular music, a lick is a "rock term [meaning]...something like 'a stock pattern or phrase'" (Middleton 1990, p.137); a short phrase (music), 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 piano.

In a jazz band, a lick may be performed by a soloist at a rehearsed or unrehearsed point in a song, with all other musicians stopping playing, and the soloist improvising; see also break and solo. It can be a testament to the virtuosity of the musician to create a spontaneous, never-before-heard short phrase which fits well with a standard composition.

Licks in rock n roll and rock music as well as jazz are often used through a formula and variations technique, such as Jimi Hendrix's "Gipsy 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 imaganitve. But the basic formulae are so simple that the recording could well have been worked out 'in performance.'"

A riff may serve as an accompaniment figure or as the response in a call and response pattern.

See also: Riff and hook (music).

Source

• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.