In an effort to broaden my linear vocabulary, I devised an exercise that would force me to choose a different scale degree each time I landed on a particular chord. Here, I used the first part of John Coltrane’s “Countdown” and arbitrarily chose the F7 chord in the first bar as the parameter. In other words, the object was to construct seven different lines, the only restriction being that I use a different scale degree on the downbeat of the F7 chord in each of the seven lines.
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