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Chords Etude

This is a difficult chord study etude. It's straight eighth notes and based on 'Blues for Alice' changes. Definitely not a performance piece but it will get you moving around the instrument and working on chord melody ideas.

All The Modes in the Major Scale

Here's a great warm up exercise and a great exercise for your hands and your mind.

You play all the modes of a Major Scale all in a row, that is continuously.

Here's a mide file of what it sounds like:

You should get the idea. The scales are in 7/4, up 2 octaves and back then immediately start the next one. If you need some help below is a link to a pdf that shows you via notation.

Blues for Alice

Here's a simple study to get you started with the 'bebop' blues. I always thought of the 'Blues For Alice' changes as a rebellion against the blues. Maybe this is not accurate but it explains a couple things for me personally. When you play over the 'Blues for Alice changes' your solo shifts away from the traditional blues scale and becomes more complicated. Scales and harmonic challenges really come into play. This is what the beboper's were all about thought, right? Making things much more complicated, that is, lines, chords and rhythms.

Chord Tone Solo Etude Based On Blue Bossa

Here is a chord tone solo I wrote out based on the same chords as Blue Bossa. You should play this solo, memorize it and then try and play it in different keys! You can see the solo below as well as download the pdf which is larger.

Since this is a chord tone solo, I only use the chord tones in the solo. I just go up to the 7th.

Click here to download the pdf