How to Add Rhythmic Enclosures to Your Solos

Today, we're going to take a look at the use of enclosures that have a rhythmic component built into them. Everything we’re going to look at today comes from Cecil’s course with Jazz Lesson videos, “Straight-Ahead Jazz Guitar Techniques.” And if you want to follow along with anything we talk about today, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, “How to Add Rhythmic Enclosures to Your Solos - feat. Cecil Alexander”.

We've talked about some enclosures that sit outside of bebop scales. And we can use these enclosures here to great effect.

But the enclosures and chromatic approaches that have rhythm built into them are a favorite for Cecil, because they give you one less thing to think about. So for example, if we’re leading into the b3 of Fm7 in All the Things You Are, we might use this approach. 

This is going to take a minor third distance again and just fill it in using chromaticism, but also an eighth note triplet. This can add a nice forward motion to your playing. You can even reverse the direction of that. 

So that is an approach to the root of Fm7. You can even do it approaching notes that are outside of the scale, and then deal with that dissonance with another chromatic approach or enclosure. 

We can do on Eb7 from the #4 into the 13 (or 6), so from outside of the scale on into the scale.

Then once we get to that C natural, we resolve it to the 5, and then descend the scale from there.

Another approach that you can use for a little bit more rhythmic variation is a variation on that first enclosure. 

This time, we're going to kind of a trill between those top two notes in that approach. So this is kind of a 16th note triplet idea. You could also feel it as straight 16th notes, depending on the tempo. But this one is just going to be setting up a note that's a half step above where you start. If we start on G, we’ll be setting up Ab. So we have G, then B flat and A, a whole step and a half step above, respectively, back to that half step below. And then finally, our target. And the cool thing about this approach too is that you can move it around anywhere, just because it's so dense and chromatic. 

So again, setting up the b3 of Fm7, for example. Do it a half step below, maybe even setting up outside of the scale. If we’re thinking of the Ab major bebop scale against this Fm7. 

There we’ll enclose the b7 of the scale, resolve it to the 6 and then continue down the scale from there with a passing tone, or even doing that dissonance on dominant chords is really useful. 

Let’s do it into the b9 of Eb7, resolving the flat nine to the root.

Then you could even combine the two approaches to create a really rhythmically dense line. 

So there we did the chromatic enclosure, first into the b9, resolving it to the root of the Eb dominant bebop scale, moving down the scale, and then once we get to the fifth, we descend using that major third triplet enclosure. Then we can continue down the scale however we see fit. 

So now let’s look at some of these enclosure concepts over “All the Things You Are.” 

That’s all for today, but if you want to dig a little deeper on these concepts, make sure to check out Cecil’s full course “Straight-Ahead Jazz Guitar Techniques.” And if you want to hear Cecil play anything we talked about today, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, “How to Add Rhythmic Enclosures to Your Solos - feat. Cecil Alexander”.

We’ll see you next time!