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Exercise
— switch — The Cycle Shells with Color Rootless Voicings Bud Powell Left Hand The Turnaround Tritone Substitution Reharm the V Diatonic Sevenths Secondary Turnaround Minor ii–V–i Minor ii-V-i with ♭9 Minor Turnaround Diatonic 7ths in Minor Backdoor Progression Twelve-Bar Blues Minor Blues Bird Blues Blues Stride LH Blues Walking Bass Rhythm Changes Boogie Blues Shuffle Rhythm Changes Bridge Blues Rootless (Evans) Coltrane Changes Blues Pedal Point Standard Intro Blues Block Chords Two-Handed Comping Blues Freddie Green Charleston Comping Bebop Blues Comp Freddie Green Comping Blues Guide Tones Walking Bass Charleston Blues Tritone-Sub Walking Bass Bud Powell Blues Drop Two Two-Handed Modern Blues Stride Bass Stride with Melody Quartal Voicings Upper Structure Triads Hybrid Voicings Kenny Barron Voicing Sus Chord Vamp The Mu Chord Maiden Voyage Chord 4-Way Close Pedal Point Lydian Vamp Phrygian Vamp Bossa Nova Guide Tones Bebop Scale Dominant Bebop Dorian Bebop Bebop Minor The Enclosure ii-V-I Lick Pentatonic Patterns Plain Locrian Melodic Minor Dorian ♭2 Lydian Augmented Lydian Dominant Mixolydian ♭6 Locrian ♮2 Altered Scale Harmonic Minor Phrygian Dominant Half-Whole Diminished Whole-Tone Scale Minor Blues Major Blues Aeolian (Natural Minor) Dorian Mode Ionian (Major) Lydian Mode Minor Pentatonic Mixolydian Mode Phrygian Mode Whole-Half Diminished
(MED. SWING ♩=80 )
59
Jazz Piano · Bebop Approach Patterns
The Enclosure
Chromatic approach to the 3rd, all twelve keys
Play exercise
Pick a target — say, the 3rd of C major: E .
The note a half step above is F; the note a half step below is
D♯. Play F → D♯ → E in three eighth notes leading into
the downbeat and you've enclosed the target from both sides.
The chromatic squeeze makes E feel inevitable when it arrives.
This is the single most common bebop pickup figure. Charlie
Parker uses it in nearly every chorus he ever recorded. Once
it's in your fingers, it becomes a default ending shape for
lines — any phrase can land on its destination via a half-step
enclosure, regardless of what scale or chord came before.
The shape Half step above → half step below → target. Three notes.
Where to use Any chord tone, any downbeat. Most useful: the 3 or 7 of the chord.
Jump to
C F B♭ E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭ B E A D G
C
3
2
X
O
O
O
C
3
2
X
O
O
O
F
3
2
1
X
X
O
F
3
2
1
X
X
O
B
1
3
2
4
X
X
B
1
3
2
4
X
X
E
1
2
3
4
X
X
E
1
2
3
4
X
X
A
1
1
1
3
X
X
A
1
1
1
3
X
X
D
4
3
1
1
1
X
D
4
3
1
1
1
X
G
4
3
2
1
X
X
G
4
3
2
1
X
X
B
1
3
2
4
X
X
B
1
3
2
4
X
X
E
3
1
2
O
O
X
E
3
1
2
O
O
X
A
2
1
3
X
O
O
A
2
1
3
X
O
O
D
1
2
3
X
X
O
D
1
2
3
X
X
O
G
4
3
2
1
X
X
2fr
G
4
3
2
1
X
X
2fr
The Daily Drill
Land on purpose
3 min Play one key with a metronome. Count the eighth notes: the pickup falls on "4-and-of-4", the target lands on beat 1. Feel the gravitational pull onto the downbeat. 8 min Cycle three keys. The fingering changes radically — that's expected. The shape is consistent; the keys are not. 4 min Try enclosing the 7th instead of the 3rd. For Cmaj7 that's B: enclose with C above and A♯ below. The 7 is the other strong target. 5 min Extend the pickup: above → below → above → target (four eighth notes). For Cmaj7 third: F → D♯ → F → E. This is the four-note enclosure used in much of Bird's vocabulary. Why both sides, not just one? A single chromatic approach (just F → E, or just D♯ → E) sounds leading-tone — pleasant but predictable. The two-sided approach creates harmonic suspense by visiting both neighbors before resolving. The ear can't predict whether the resolution will come from above or below until the target arrives. That micro-suspense is exactly what makes bebop lines feel propulsive: every landing has been earned by surrounding it first. Substitute different chord tones (1, 3, 5, 7), different timing (triplets, sixteenths), and different combinations (above-above-below, below-above-below) and you have most of the post-1945 jazz vocabulary.
Approach from both sides. Every important note in jazz has been enclosed at least once.