One Of The Best Lessons I Ever Had (Jazz Beginner)
This concept really changed the game for me which was pretty lucky because some of the early jazz guitar lessons that I had were not that great. My teacher was a good jazz guitarist but he only gave me licks and didn't show me how to use them or make them into something except for this one lesson which really made a massive difference. You have to imagine that at the time I was practicing the licks, scales, arpeggios and trying to make my way through simple songs but failing pretty badly because there was no real connection between what I was practicing and how I was supposed to use it.
It was probably only because I'm a fairly stubborn person that I didn't quit. There's a good chance that you also know how it feels to practice all the dry stuff like exercises, scales and arpeggios but you can't put it together and turn that into playing solos that sound like jazz. This was one of the first times where I had a lesson where I was shown how to create a line following a recipe. We were playing a blues in C and I was making a terrible mess of it as usual and I could barely follow the form because I was too busy thinking about the chords. When he was soloing then he played a phrase and it's kind of strange that I remember but this was in bar 6 after coming back to C7 from F sharp diminished and that caught my attention so I asked him what that was.
He told me and I am translating this from Danish and memory since this is more than 25 years ago that it was a chromatic phrase leading into an arpeggio. I'll show you how this is just the beginning of a way to help you develop your phrasing and make more interesting melodies because it is much more powerful than you think. My teacher then showed me how you can use the same chromatic phrase for other notes in the arpeggio like the root and it also works for the seventh. What he described to me as a chromatic phrase is in fact what we usually refer to as a chromatic enclosure so a short melody using chromatic passing notes that moves to a target note from above and below and as you will see or rather hear direction is incredibly important. This concept is incredibly simple it's like instant noodles the stuff that most students eat when they don't have any money so just add water and then you have food or at least you have food.
It's a two ingredient recipe for jazz licks which in itself is a great thing if you're new to jazz but maybe now you're wondering what's the big deal? In this video I'm going to show you how the enclosures will help you deal with a part of jazz phrasing that most beginners really struggle with but the first more obvious part of this is that it's very flexible. It will work with other arpeggios as well so you can create a lot of lines.
Here's a version using a Cmaj7 arpeggio and we have more options when it comes to the chromatic enclosures. Another good one could be this one which is also a four note enclosure and is sometimes referred to as the double chromatic enclosure. You can probably hear why. So as you notice then it moves to the target note in half steps from two directions. Until now the chromatic enclosures have been using four notes which make them easy to use as building blocks but there are also two and three note enclosures that are very useful and as you'll see the two note enclosures especially are very powerful and flexible. But first let's just talk a bit about one of the main reasons that beginners find it so difficult to play solos that really sound like jazz.
There are a few levels of beginner solos where you might find yourself. Maybe you're only improvising with the arpeggio or you can also add the scale notes in there and keep in mind that these examples are not wrong they're just also not that great. And if you're a bit further then you're adding chromatic notes but as you can hear that also doesn't really fix this. I'm overstating it a bit in these examples making it a bit more obvious but what is missing is rhythm. The lines are heavy and the accents are always on the downbeat and that's because what makes jazz lines work is the rhythm in the accents and they happen when the melody changes direction on an offbeat and if you look at that first lick then you have two of those. Try to listen. Here you have a change of direction on the one end and on the three end in the arpeggio so the line has more energy and isn't stuck on the heavy beats in the same way as the previous example.
Starting to get this into your playing and being able to hear phrases that move like that will make you sound a hundred times better. Of course you can't think about where in the bar you change direction while you're soloing which is why these are so great. I'll talk more about this later. A short side note before we add some more flexible enclosures and some Barry Harris tricks. Keep in mind that what I'm saying here is not that you shouldn't use passing notes. The passing notes are a part of it and the enclosures are sort of the next level melodies that you build using passing notes. Even if the enclosures are a little bit more effort to play then they're also adding something important to your solo. Something that you want to get into your playing and if you start checking out solos you probably won't find any jazz musicians that don't use enclosures of some kind.
Sometimes when I talk about enclosures then I get the comment that they don't work or how passing notes are better and I really think this is missing the point. You just want to be patient and keep practicing until you can use them. They will add something to your playing and they are a part of bebop. Especially this next variation. Usually I try to look at enclosures as a mix of chromatic notes and diatonic notes from the scale. So in the first enclosure you would have chromatic below, then a diatonic above, then a chromatic above and then a chromatic below. Check out how we can use this analysis to create a simple but very useful two-note enclosure.
So diatonic above and chromatic below. Let me show you how this can be applied to a triad because it's used like that very often in larger chunks. Just listen to Joe Paz or Barry Harris if you want to hear an example of that. But these enclosures are everywhere and they do so many amazing things. I'll show you some examples. Here's the C major triad and then we're using a diatonic note above and a chromatic note below. And since this is pretty easy to play then try to turn around the enclosure so that it's chromatic below and then diatonic above. And with these and then another enclosure then you have a line like this one. And to give you an idea about how powerful this is you don't get something as complex or surprising just using passing notes. And here's an example with a few more chords so that you can hear just how bebop this actually sounds.
I'm sure you can tell just how useful these are and as I said if you look at solos then they're everywhere. But this is of course not about having to think I need to change direction now while you're playing a solo. That's way too complicated. What you want to do is work on coming up with lines that are using these enclosures so that you hear melodies with that built into them and that will automatically help you get the sound in there.
It's almost like a bonus. Let's add some Barry Harris to the mix and see how that opens things up. Let me first explain how this works and then how you can use it. Barry Harris chromatic scale is a way to add half steps or passing notes between all notes in a scale. So the basic concept is that you either use a chromatic note if there's a whole step between two notes or you use the scale note above if there isn't. If I apply this to the C major scale then there are two places where I need to use a scale note above between E and F and B and C. So in the key of C major then the Barry Harris chromatic scale would be. The great thing is that now you can use Barry's chromatic scale as a way of moving around an enclosure in the scale and in that way get some other enclosures or other melodic ideas. Let's take this one which will give you some really great variations. Let's first analyze the enclosure.
The target note is B and the phrase of course starts two diatonic notes above so that's a D then it moves down with a half step and jumps down below and grabs a half step that resolves up to the target note. Let's take it down the scale and keep in mind that I'm always just using a chromatic note from below. That just always works so it doesn't really need any special treatment. Check out how we get a lot of different phrases. This gives you other phrases that all work and that you can use in lines.
For example this Dm7 line using the E as a target note or take the version that has A as a target note and mix that with another Barry Harris concept a pivot arpeggio. Working through the material like this can give you a lot of useful phrases and Barry's system is fantastic for this and actually does a ton of other stuff that will make your solo sound so much better and help you get rid of uninspired scale runs and overused licks so check out this video to really dive into that system.
