skills/human-melodic-phrasing/references/bebop.md

# Bebop and jazz phrasing

## Vocabulary
- Chord tones on downbeats, chromatic and scale passing tones between them.
- Enclosures: approach a chord tone from a half step above and a half or
  whole step below (or the reverse) before landing.
- Bebop scales: add a chromatic passing tone to a 7-note scale so chord tones
  fall on downbeats in eighth-note lines (dominant: b7 to natural 7 to root).
- Over the V7 in a minor ii-V-i or an altered dominant: b9, #9, b13 resolving
  down by half step into the next chord.
- Tritone substitutions and 3-to-b9 arpeggios over dominants.

## Target notes
- ii7: 3rd and 7th.
- V7: 3rd and b7; tensions on offbeats.
- Imaj7: 3rd or 9th on the downbeat, 6th or major 7th as a landing colour.
- Aim the whole line at the I chord's 3rd; everything before it is approach.

## Rhythm
- Eighth-note lines that START on an offbeat (the "and" of 1 or 4) and END on
  an offbeat, often the "and" of 2 or 4 of the last bar, followed by rest.
- One triplet figure per 2 to 4 bars, either a triplet eighth group or an
  eighth-quarter-eighth grouping across a beat.
- Set `feel` to `swing`. Write the eighths straight.
- Phrase lengths of 2, 3 or 5 bars are common; do not chop everything into
  even 2-bar units.

## Contour
- Long lines run 6 to 12 notes but change direction every 3 to 5 notes.
- Angular leaps are fine when followed by stepwise motion the other way.
- Descending lines resolve tension better than ascending ones at phrase ends.

## Avoid
- Playing the scale of each chord up from its root.
- Landing the root on beat 1 of every chord.
- Continuous eighths for more than 3 bars.
- Faking swing with dotted eighths or 12/8.