Member

#11 in my quest to complete Friedman's book.

#6 in my quest to complete Friedman's book.

"I Hear A Rhapsody" - from a social distancing session yesterday in the home studio with Mark on bass, Gustavo on piano and myself on vibes. Lot of fun. After that we hung outside on the deck (with Lisa and Pam) and had takeout from Li's (our 10 year gig run and still going hopefully after this is over).

"How Insensitive" - from a social distancing session yesterday in the home studio with Mark on bass, Gustavo on piano and myself on vibes. Lot of fun. After that we hung outside on the deck (with Lisa and Pam) and had takeout from Li's (our 10 year gig run and still going hopefully after this is over).

This is Claudia by Chucho Valdes. Such a beautiful tune. Found it in the Latin Real Book.
https://www.amazon.com/Latin-Real-Book-Hal-Leonard/dp/0634006916/

Me on piano and vibes. Squawking birds by nature :-(

Enjoy,
Barry

Late night musings on “I Fall In Love Too Easily”.

Once through the Intro and melody on vibes, then vocals with iReal running. This is pretty much the way our old folks band, the Second Winds, usually plays, first the melody, then vocals, then various instruments taking a ride on the melody. The timing glitches and other glitches are evident in the vibes section. Listening to yourself in recording makes sense, but can be painful. The lyrics have been greatly changed, apologies to Lorenz Hart. The original lyrics may have made more sense in the context of the Broadway play where this music first appeared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTarH3B5U2s&list=PL-vFGfMIOcNq2Q48Fd140…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phThwIPVcX4
There are two videos, one is donna lee transcription on tony's audio file that he sent us, the other one is a regular solo vibes video.

Today's coffee hour conversation touched down on this twice, once during the discussion of mallet hardness (pretty universal agreement that music not heard is music not good) and again during the discussion about the role of lyrics. These are concepts I have been wrestling with for years and my ideas are not yet fully formed, but let me know what you think~

I believe there are four modalities of the sound we create with our instruments.

Playing ballads is always a challenge; phrasing and tempo are crucial for expressing a song's essence. Fortunately, we can draw upon the way vocalists confront this for guidance. Billie Holiday, one of my favorites, recorded and performed a Duke Ellington classic, "Solitude", throughout her career. Here's my take on it.

Michael