What are enclosures?

Enclosures are ways jazz musicians target a specific note they want to highlight or land on. There is no specific way an enclosure is formed, and the more you listen, you will find many jazz musicians have different approaches to enclosures.


How are the enclosures constructed in the exercise?

Here I have included two different types of enclosure models: Enclosures starting from a half step below the target note (labeled “HS Below” in the worksheet) and enclosures starting a whole step below the target note (“WS Below” in the worksheet). Be sure to go through these individual enclosures to try to further understand how they are constructed. Hint: look at the first notes of the enclosures. They are all in the key of C. Was this intentional on my part?


What are the other notes in the exercise?
I have put parenthesis around the notes that you should be targeting. The series of four eight notes before the target note is the enclosure. You will notice the enclosure will be one of the two types presented at the beginning of the worksheet. After the target note is an arpeggio similar to what you have worked on in the previous lesson.


Further study:

If you find this easy, try using a different scale with the same approach. My immediate next scale would be the dominant scale, but the sky is the limit. Also, I wrote this in a way where every enclosure begins with a note that is in the key of the scale you are using (which is why there are different types of enclosures throughout the exercise). Try this exercise using enclosures only half a step below or only from a whole step below. You’ll find each version unique!

I recognize the arpeggio from the last lesson but what is the extra note?

Here I have simply added a half step before the 3rd of the arpeggio. In the last exercise, we added it before the root (also known as simply the first note of the arpeggio). It’s the same principle as the last exercise and you can add a half step before any of the notes in the arpeggio. Try it out!


How do I practice this?

Take this through all 12 keys again (I know, I’m sorry)! I have included a reference recording as well as an iReal Pro file for you to use as a backing track. If you don’t have iReal Pro (which I would argue is an absolute must if you’re serious about jazz) then using a metronome is just as effective.


My thoughts on the exercise:

Like everything we’ve talked about so far, I think it is more important to get the physicality of the exercise rather than memorizing it. I highly doubt you will ever use this exercise in the context of a piece, so it’s not so important to memorize it. I would sit down and try to understand what is going on in the exercise. If you don’t understand why I wrote the notes I did then you haven’t learned the exercise.