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

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

Peter's M.I.A. so it's up to Adam to spread the jazz advice today. On this episode, he'll discuss chromatic enclosures at the Steinway.For a deeper dive on this topic, check out Adam's post from the You'll Hear It blog here: https://youllhearit.com/enclosures-the-lightbulb-for-beginners/Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter, if you're out there, come home. I'm Adam Aniston, you're listening to The You'll Hear at Podcast. A little bit different today because Peter's been on the road for what feels like forever. If anybody sees him out there, send us a line or just capture him. He's probably running some European city somewhere in a morning run, possibly playing the piano, a concert hall. Just grab them. Let us know where you are, and we can bring them back here to our open studio.

family and his family too you know they probably want to see him anyway I'm going to be doing some solo a couple of solo episodes which I always really like and I always like to do them at the piano and today I want to talk about chromatic enclosures something that we get asked about a lot and so I figure I kind of break down the basics for you here today at least as far as I know them so chromatic enclosures really help us to get you know I mean it's a it's a bebop sound for sure but it's been then taken through all kinds, every iteration of jazz sense, and they're really, really a fun sound.

I always think of these, like when I have students who this clicks for, it becomes this light bulb moment, and all of a sudden they're playing sounds more like jazz to me, and they get some stuff locked in. So what an enclosure is, is you have a target note, and you have different ways of approaching that chroma, So the most basic one is surrounding your target note from below and above or above and below. So if our target note is middle C, we can surround it with an enclosure like B, D, D, F, C, or D flat B, C.

Right? So this now opens up some rhythmic possibilities to kind of get these little turns in our lines. So instead of doing something like... you know that where our target node is C we can surround it and delay that a little bit or if we start with the phrase let's say our phrases just a simple you know run up a C minor 7 chord that little delay D flat B to the C creates this little hiccup or let's say that we're doing the same phrase and uh or maybe we're doing you know we're ending on an A there like you might in a two something like that very you know basic basic kind of run there but we can delay that with another kind of enclosure one that comes up from a whole step down and then includes that half step right and actually it includes the the b flat above this a I would consider that part

of the enclosure because it's surrounding it so you have a half step above your target and then a whole step half step up to it And you could do this from the reverse as well. From a whole step above to the half step right above your target to then the half step right below. All these things come in place. You have your basic half step. And then you have your whole step approaches. And there's even more.

I mean, you can start from that half step below your target note. So in this case, our target note is G. and then go a whole step above it, and then down, you know. All of these things come in really handy. So if you can kind of start practicing these on every single chromatic target note and have the different kinds that lay with your instrument and your fingers, your hand, you start to have a lot of possibilities as you're playing lines. And all of a sudden, scales become more than scales,

and arpeggios become more than arpeggios. So that instead of just you start having... All these little starts and stops in your lines. And it gets this really cool, you know, rhythmically off-putting sound that's not so square, you know. So it's really, really worth putting some time in on your chromatic enclosures. I'll have a link here. Andrew, put a link to our blog about chromatic enclosures

so that they can see it for themselves. There's some written out examples and some things you can do. The way I like to practice these is really kind of picking. my target note as I'm going in an arpeggio or a scale. So if I'm doing like a C major, you know, I can choose different points in this to add in an enclosure and it changes the entire timing of the scale. Whatever note I choose, you know, now I have some some different movement in that scale or an arpeggio, you know, that kind of thing makes for these really like sounds. So yeah, hope this helps. Check out that blog post. Leave us a rating and review. I'm putting that out on Peter's behalf wherever he may be. If you see Peter, let us know. Still looking for him. And yeah, leave us a speakpipe. We like those speak pipes. You can go to you'll hear it.com to leave us a message, either written or voice, and check out our blog as well. And yeah, you'll hear it.