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I am posting the music to just the A section of a diatonic song in C. This is a 6/8 dance song from the state of Chiapas in Mexico. See if you can harmonize it in closed voicings and drop 2.

Once you have the hang of it, try it in all keys. It is a handy melody for getting your feet wet with drop 2. It modulates to the IV and V7 chords, it is diatonic, it has both scalar and arpeggiated motion and not too fast to execute.

Updated 2/16/09:
I attached a video of a harmonization of the melody in both closed and drop 2 voicing. Notice, I play a C6 sound on beat six of measure 7 (rather than the diminished sound I played earlier in the measure) because I thought it sounded better to anticipate the resolution that way.

We will look at some jazz standards in Part II of this lesson.