Jazz up your country licks

Country players often sneak in some jazz influences, especially in faster tunes. Have you noticed? It’s a way to make it sound a bit more sophisticated, and and perhaps an excuse to play more notes! Haha!

Here I’m showing you a way you can approach this. The scale/mode I’m using over this is G Mixolydian. The track is basically a G chord groove. I then make sure I play a chord tone on a downbeat. These downbeats are mostly approached from a half-step away. You can add chromatic passing notes before and after that chord tone. Listen to the first 5 notes of this lick. They are chromatic, and the 5th note is a chord tone. Pretty cool?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsrpoRB0XWk