Using Enclosures in Piano Improvisation
Ever feel like your jazz piano improvisation is stagnated as if you just keep repeating the same scales but in a different order? Is that's the case, you are not alone! Many piano students get caught in a linear trap and struggle to inject emotional depth and melodic intrigue into their solos. Today we are going to explore a new technique that will help us break from our linear motion 'using Enclosures.'
What are enclosures?
We create an enclosure when we surround a target note with its immediate neighbors. This seemingly modest concept unlocks a hidden dimension of melodic and harmonic possibilities.The Advantages of Using Enclosures
- Enclosures help us explore our creativity. Using enclosures is a fun way to explore new and innovative musical ideas.
- Enclosures promote diversity in our melodic motion. Enclosures allow us to break away from the linear motion that stems from our scale practice, which is going to help us come up with more interesting and dynamic melody lines.
- Enclosures can serve as melodic bridges, that allow us to cross from one side to the other side of a tonality or chord change helping us make a more seamless transition.