Island Mines

I’m calling this a sort of world music beat. It’s very simple in that it alternates between A minor and F major, both can be played over with C major scale notes. The B is the #11 of the F which is a nice color.

The challenge with a relatively slow pulse and static harmony is you can’t just run scales. You have to create melody lines. For the “Idea Starter”, I wrote a four-bar melody that repeats except for the last bar. My intent was for the lower part to play on the F major four-bars through the harmony, ending on G.

So take your time with this and see how melodically you can play over it.

The concert notation is below. Click here for Bb instruments and here for Eb instruments. Once open on a desktop computer, click the pop-up and a second time to expand the image.