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New Melodies, Old Tunes

Hey guys,

This is a GREAT exercise for writing, improvising, and tune learning. The idea is to write a new melody over the chord changes to an old standard tune. You can alter the harmony a little bit here and there to fit your new melody but the idea is that you could call a standard tune everyone knows, but it will sound completely different.

Playing melodic phrasing with Cells and Upper Structures

Hi everyone, I'm attaching a pdf hand out I used recently for a clinic. In it I go through an example of how one might use a combination of Cells and Upper Structure Triads to create tension and release for playing melodic lines and phrases through your improvisations!

If there are any questions please do not hesitate to ask!

Enjoy!

My new book!

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let all of you know that I have a new book out! It's titled "Sight-Reading Skills for the Mallet Percussionist" and it's published by K. Wylie Publications. For those of you who don't know me, I teach at multiple schools with students from 6th grade up through university. This is a project I've been working on a long time and it's finally finished.

I hope you will forgive the shameless plug, but I thought I'd let everyone know. Here's a link for it: