Home
Body Author
Image of At Carnegie Hall
 At Carnegie Hall

This is an amazing CD. The cool thing is that they had a strict time schedule to adhere to. So they had to be concise with the solos. Knowing that and listening to them is great!

The playing is great. I imagine most of you guys got this.

Also cool to listen to Monk and wonder how to do some of that on the vibes!

 tonymiceli
Image of Villa-Lobos: Bachianas brasileiras
 Villa-Lobos: Bachianas brasileiras

Nothing really to do with the vibes, except that I play No. 5 with my duo with Diane Monroe.

This is so beautiful, if you haven't heard Bachianas brasileiras you should definitely check it out. Magnificent!

Not sure what the best version to get is. Maybe one of you classical cats will now and post a link below!

 tonymiceli
Image of Jazz 'Round Midnight
 Jazz 'Round Midnight

I like this cd. Lot of ballads on here and I remember that Milt used to be a singer, or rather, was always a singer. I like listening to him play ballads knowing that he thought of phrasing like a singer. I like hearing how he embellishes melodies. How he treats a note that's a melody note and is supposed to ring for the whole bar.

If you're interested in that, this cd has a lot of that.

 tonymiceli
Image of Action (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)
 Action (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

This is a great CD. One cool thing about it is that Bobby plays with 4 mallets and comps!

It's funny to hear 'stick droppers' because when it's time for a solo you can tell they're dropping two mallets by the pause in their solo. Sort of like a sax player playing an alto part but then having a solo and putting down the alto for a tenor solo.

The playing and writing is great! Bobby's solos are great!!!

 tonymiceli
Image of Evolution
 Evolution

I'm on the last pages of this book. I read it for the second time, this time down here on my last days in the Carribean (I'm ready to come home).

I read the whole book and kept a sub theme of being a musician and practicing in my mind. I though of this book as being about a jazz musician. Man if there was ever an example of practicing, it's nature. Although this is a novel it's based in part on facts. So I found it interesting to think of nature doing the same thing over and over and over. And then screwing up. Ok, sometimes the screw was thrown away, and sometimes the screw up was for the better.

Since I always read books as a sort of extension of myself, I tried to adapt this to what I do. Playing things over and over trying to perfect them, yeah that's one way. Then playing things and stumbling on something that sounds awful!! And then stumbling on something that sounds good.

The cool part is, as you get more and more knowledgable and proficient, you can grab the cool things and adapt them quicker. Sometimes something happens live on a solo, a sound you didn't expect, and you just go with it and make something out of it.

But as we all know without a lot of trial and error by nature we just wouldn't be here. Things had evolve to get us to this point.

To realize that if you're going to try and play this instrument well, you're going to need hours and hours and hours or trials on it, that is to evolve and perfect what you're doing. Without those hours and hours the job becomes so much more difficult.

For me as a teacher I don't like to hand students things, I like to get them to evolve to it. It pisses off some students because they want things told to them. When a student asks me 'How do I do this?', my first reply is, 'How do you think you do it?'. My feeling is like this planet took billions of years to get to this point, a student has to give themselves ample amounts of time. If they're serious about music and they want to evolve into a great musician. It's ok to be in a hurry, but you have to give yourself plenty of time. If you're in a hurry and you don't give yourself plenty of time then what do you expect to evolve into.

Evolution is such a cool concept, something that fits in with much that we do in life and as musicians evolution is part of the process. The music has to evolve and we have to evolve as musicians. And all this takes a lot of time and a lot of trial and error. If you're serious about playing the vibes I hope time and trial and error are something that you give yourself plenty of.

This has just been on my mind lately, so I though I'd pass it along.

 tonymiceli