My great and dear friend and phenomenal violinist Diane Monroe never ceases to amaze me with her wisdom. At a workshop yesterday she said something that I thought was pretty profound.

We were playing in front of a bunch of really talented violinists and Diane was talking about rhythm. She said "Mozart was known for being a melodic genius, but thing was he was first a rhythmic genius". Then she began to explain that rhythm is the essential ingredient for being a melodic genius. That's what made Mozart a melodic genius.

Here's the first lesson for the TOTM 'My Romance'. This part covers the melody. It's very important to isolate the melody and to work on the melody.

Here are all the lessons from our TOTM, 'My Romance'.

Here are a bunch of lessons already up on the site based on the tune, My Romance.
These items are supplemental to our TOTM studies.

Here are the studies from our 'Tune of the Month' Club. You can do the lessons at any time. They should take about a week each to complete. They're Organized by the name of the tune.

Here is "My Romance" melody in 12 keys.

This tune, as Todd mentioned, is relatively easy since all of the notes in the melody are in the key in which it is played. Knowing that really helped me learn this. Also as Todd pointed out, the melody starts on the 3rd. As I played it in other keys, I also found other tricks to play the melody. For example, the last few notes in the tune are the notes in a dominant 7th chord of the 4th degree of the scale (e.g., in Bb, it is an Eb7), and end on the key's root.

Everyone:

I've been communicating with Tony and here's what we came up with for the Tune-of-the-Month Group (TOTM):

First week:
• Find and listen to 3 versions of the tune. You may have to buy them. Don’t just get them off YouTube. This way, you’ll have them to listen to anytime. Share which versions of the tune you’re listening to with the others in the group.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the modern business of writing song lyrics. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487041649045754218135164517….

Tom P.

Pretty cool pack up system that Mike Pinto has! I usually knock this instrument, but man that's pretty amazing.