You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Bebop Enclosures

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

On this episode of You'll Hear It, Peter and Adam take a SpeakPipe on different types of chromatic enclosures you can use on bebop tunes.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, man. What do you know about chromatic enclosures? Well, you're about to hear it. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. Oh. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast with the theme right under us.

Daily Jazz advice coming out. You just keep playing. I'll do all the rest. We got a premium episode this month for our premium members. Shout out to all the premium members. We love y'all. And we're having a great time with you over in you'll hear it premium. Hope you're digging all the cool stuff, all the bonus content, the archives.

That's a live fade. You like that? That's not a board feed. That's not a board feed. That's a well-acute. What's up? What's up? Premium.

So what are we doing this month? This month, we're taking a speak pipe from Jack. I'm nervous, man. Why? Because it's like this is a monthly thing, man. We've got to deliver. Let's do it. We'll deliver.

Okay. Hi, Peter. Hi, Adam. Love your show. Great insight and great inspiration every day. I wonder if you could do a podcast on enclosures, all type of bebop enclosures. That would be the way of and how you practice them.

Okay, thanks. Keep up the good work. You guys are awesome. All right, Jack, that's a great question. How do you practice bebop enclosures? What is a bebop enclosure? Can I demo? Please.

If I'm right. That was a couple of them, huh? That was a bebop enclosure? It seems pretty advanced. Really? Okay, so just... That's it. That's a bebop enclosure.

So, Jack, a bebop... showing it in line. A beb enclosure is this really cool little hiccup rhythm that didn't start with bebop musicians, but they definitely did it a lot and they perfected it. And basically the easiest way to think about it is you have a target note. We'll say that C is our target note. And you can come at it from above and below by half steps, below or above. You can come at it from whole steps into half steps, just all different kinds of ways,

just diatonically. Does it have to be above and below or below and above? No. Okay, so it can just be... Yeah, I think... I mean, enclosure kind of... Yeah, we're not dogmatic about our enclosure. We're not doing about anything like this.

What about just this? It's enclosing itself. No, that doesn't go. That's not. Okay, we're a little dogmatic. Okay, so... But I just want to make a note of something. When you first said the description,

you guys can rewind back and to confirm this, you said a very important thing. You said it's a rhythmic device. It is a rhythmic device. Now, most people are going to say, No, no, no, it's a melodic device. Why is it a rhythmic device? I think it's both, but it's a rhythmic device

because if I play this line, great, but if I play it with a couple of enclosures, it changes the rhythm. It changes the shape of the line. But that's because you're playing it well. See, and I think this should be people's first takeaway when you do practice. You've got to think about the rhythm.

See, a lot of people aren't thinking, they're just thinking about the melodic and maybe the harmonic implications of it, and they're missing what I think is the most, exciting part of it and that's the rhythmic vitality and if they don't know if they don't if they don't if you don't if you don't play those you're going to really miss the sound and be like wow i'm playing the same notes they said it's true it gives you this rhythm uh this rhythmic feel that's kind of like you're you're weaving you know you're displacing these accents give them a little a bunch of enclosures

that's next level so by doing these you know these babidip do do it's different than if he were just you know going sort of in a linear fashion you might hear in more modern stuff although most modern like even out stuff uses enclosures in bebop language yeah I mean I almost think that this is the biggest part that bebop influenced or really just infested

modern jazz vocabulary I don't mean infestation in a bad way I mean in a good way maybe if we even like if you think about like going down a major scale versus Oh, yeah. Like that's, you know, that's where you really hear how it disrupts the line, but you're using it as an opportunity to both have an actual accent

to give it that syncopation of the line. And look, there's a thousand ways to do that, but there's always that element of rhythmic juxtaposition combined with a change of direction with the melody, whether you're starting it or it's kind of in the, is that, do you still consider that enclosure when it's in the middle of a line? For sure. Yeah, okay.

For sure, yeah, yeah. And then it's always easier to hear as opposed to like that has rhythm and like a connotation of syncopation because it's like bulk to gank

but that has like kind of next level but you can't play them like you can't but it's all about that jab that same thing with something like another common one would be like right that's the line but putting that enclosure

So the first one, C, E, F, G, B, flat, just to A there. This, with enclosure, you get to there, you don't go right to the A. You enclose it from a whole step below going up to step. That little thing takes it from boobo-d-b-d-d-dop to boobo do-dub-dib-dhid. Yep. And look, and check this out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like if you don't play the full chromaticism going up, that's a totally different sound.

Totally cool, too. Because you're coming out. But you're going on the upbeat, as you're going on the upbeat as opposed to the chromatic being on the upbeat. And coming in on the beat. Totally, yeah. And I think, you know, as important as the enclosure is as like a setup technique, whether you're starting the phrase or playing it in the middle, like we're doing there, what you play after it is so important.

So as you practice it, Jack, and everybody, think about how you're going to kind of rhythmically resolve things afterwards. And I don't want to give you too many rules on this outside of saying, like, play stuff that sounds good. I know that's a little frustrating. But I think you'll find that just thinking about it. And what I mean by, like, if you play, you've already kind of completed the syncopation. So we go like, whoa, boo-doo up,

and we got an accent and we're at the top of the phrase, right? And now we're on the downbeat. So you got... That syncopation right there because you've got tension and release within the rhythm. But if you go, you've actually got two upbeats after each other. At the top of the phrase. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I gave a little stank face.

I don't know if you were doing it too. So you, I mean, I don't want to say you have to resolve it, but you have to do something, either resolve it or not resolve it or complete it or not. I mean, there's so many different ways. That's what I'm saying. It's not one way to do it. But you want to be kind of conscious of that because sometimes people like won't finish it. or do something, resolve it, unresolved it, do something with it.

They just kind of keep playing in a generic way. And they're like, wow, my enclosure didn't sound good. It didn't sound like Charles Parker's. But you got to think about what's happening before and what's happening after. There's a cool sort of metarithm I learned from Mr. Barry Harris at one of his master classes a long, long time ago. In person? In person.

Yeah, I was the guinea pig on the piano. And I've heard it now, I've heard it in a couple different ways. But this is the way that I remember him showing me. And see if you can hear the best. metarhythm above everything else. I'll do it again. Dig, ding, ding. But to me, what's so brilliant about that little line, I'll do it slowly,

is it gets all of like the kind of major enclosures you might get, but it does it in a way that really emphasizes that you can use these for things like right? That's how, that's like level one of how you might use that bob and weave

sort of rhythmic technique. And then your choice is within that. I see. I screwed it up. No, it's not. But here's the... Right, so... And I really think once you know how to do these...

Yeah, you're just kind of faking it, but it sounds great. And I think that you can also kind of next level for a lot of these is when you have sort of built into the top of the phrase or within the enclosure, whatever else structurally sets off those notes or as you said, Metorisms, which I've never actually heard that phrase, but I think I understand it. You don't have to... Like the accenting of the notes becomes less necessary

because how it's phrased, like the enclosure almost gives it a melodic accent. You know what I mean? The enclosure makes it pop by itself. I can play it perfectly straight and I'll watch me play this perfectly straight. Bum bum bum bum bum. That's exactly it.

Right. You still hear, bump, bump, bump, exactly. That's actually kind of the trick to these things. And when they talk about, I mean, Charlie Parker was so fluid. And it sounded like he was playing above and the time and floating above it.

He was actually like very rhythmically precise. But the architecture, I think, of his lines was so interesting with enclosures as one of the big elements, of course. Yeah. That the syncopation, he didn't need to over-enunciate or over-accent the notes in a way that can be a little bit corny. And I think sometimes people, when they learn his solos, they kind of overdo it a little bit. Yeah, that's great. So I have a couple of really great already kind of prefabbed 251 lines that get. into some of these enclosures for you, Jack, and it will include that PDF here.

So the lick itself is an enclosure. It's like a diatonic enclosure. It's like a diatonic enclosure, yeah. That's the lick from... Well, you can kind of hip up the lickler. That's it. So I think that covers it. We'll include the PDF of some examples.

I'll even include Barry Harris's cool little exercise of that metarithm. And I think just in terms of you were asking about like how to practice and stuff, playing these exercises will definitely help in these ideas. But you also might want to just think about, you know, any kind of arpeggio. And I would, you know, you can certainly do just like a minor arpeggio to start. But I would encourage you as soon as you feel comfortable, more like a minor seven, up to the dominant seven. And I kind of changed my mind if I was going to do chromatic or not. You can do either one.

Really, the combinations will wear interesting. But if you do diatonic, that'll start to get your hands in the position. It's not going to be a great line to play. but it'll get your hand into the positions. Then that's chromatic. Is that clear, you think? That's clear. Yeah, for sure.

The stuff that's hip, though, I think it's... It's based upon the concept of that, but it's just adding in some more kind of melodic stuff in between, basically. That's right. And once you start to find the ones that, like, fit well for you, you know... Yeah, it's feel good. You'll start to... It's this really cool thing that happens.

where you just are playing and they start coming out. They just start kind of naturally coming out in your hand. And what's cool about it, every note doesn't have to be in the key. I mean, definitely not. There's chromaticism involved. Don't worry about it. I like that one. Call it cascading downward flurring.

Yeah. And then there's the opposite. Yeah. Enclosures. You'll hear it. You'll hear it. Premium.