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Sharing a little bit of some very early morning practice time today. Here's what's up with this:

One of the things that has always mystified me a little bit, is the blues. I've sat on the drums in small group settings for years - admiring a horn player or singer's ability to express themselves in this unique art form.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've started listening more....and also getting into some of the lessons on this site. Going through Behn's comping lessons...and John's lesson which he shared, and some of the others.

Here is my new travel vibraphone.
Now I finally get no more trouble with the cottage neighbors or my wife.

As my summer toy doesn't create a great sound I have taken the wonderful recording from Maciej Afanasjew for background. I love the sound of the bass vibraphone.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHqtlA3E_0g)

So, I need to share this amazing fusion tune from 1976. The band "Gong" and this tune, in particular, transformed my life when I was in high school. There is loads of mallet playing on all of their music. Esnuria is an epic that kicks into many gears and is a virtual percussion extravaganza. The ending in 7 is what I would call "Awesome!" I'll shut up and let the music speak for itself...

For some reason this etude is especially challenging for me. If I went a little faster, then you can hear the dampening mallet almost ring. I tried using harder and softer mallets and these worked the best. I tried to keep the dampening mallet quiet and still feel and express the song.
To get it to this point, believe it or not, I practiced it a LOT. It is elegant and there's nowhere to hide! You can hear everything.

Here's a lesson I wrote years ago on Misty. I had permission from the owner who was Erroll Garner's wife. Then it turned out that she sold it to Warner Brothers. I contacted Warner Bros. and I paid them and they issued me a license for the licensing giving me permission for this lesson and then I got a letter from Hal Leonard stating that they owned the rights to it so I just gave up. But I think it's okay to share with y'all.

Here is a blues article I wrote many years ago. It's a different approach than what I learned at Berklee which I believe caused me to overthink the blues. I taught it quite successfully to many students so if you're starting out or struggling to express in the blues form and style, give this method a go. Once this basic idea of the blues is in your ears and hands, it's much easier to add more sophisticated things on top of it.

I downloaded a lead sheet last night and started learning this.

This morning I've been trying to learn/practice it in different tempos; I'll upload two of those tempos here. While it was fairly quick to learn, the challenge for me is the swing, the feel. And really locking in the time. So I'll keep working on it!

This first video is of the slightly faster tempo. I'll load the slower one next...

Obviously, work to do. Onward!