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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.

I think I've posted this before but I'm not sure. This would make a great EOTM (Exercise of the Month). Might not be as easy as it looks. The left hand plays the double stops.

An easy dampening tip.

Here is the video of them playing.

Below is the transcription:

I thought this was interesting and might get some talk going. Schoenberg is a tough one for me. Bartok, Shostakovitch and Stravinski I get, and I can hang with Schoenberg for a bit but not long!

I've been thinking lots about the open/closed thing that Tony brought up again recently, and so I've come up with an exercise which I've been doing everyday this week. It's quite big... I can just about get through all the keys in a hour now, and it still makes my head hurt following it through and remembering which chord I'm on! But I really feel it's improving my knowledge of scales (just major so far, but there's no reason why it won't work through other scales/progressions etc.), and the chords within scales.