Here’s my go-to practice routine for tackling altered dominant chords—especially those spicy #5/#9 voicings—and the diminished whole-tone scale (aka the 7th mode of the melodic minor).

Let’s make this abundantly clear up top: Transposing anything to the whole-tone scale is a recipe for disaster. The basic premise of the whole-tone scale is to create atonality, as all of a note ...