all-levels

Hey everyone,

I'm starting a new series on solo vibes arranging, where in the first part, I'll give an arrangement in the form of sheet music, and in the second part, I'll walk through it, note by note, explaining why and how I'm picking voicings, textures, etc. I hope this gives everyone ideas on arranging tunes on their own, as well as giving a tangible arrangement to play on gigs or for practice.

As this is the second part on "Easy to Love," I'll be posting an explanation video.

Here's a short clip of me playing the 18th etude from David Friedman's Vibraphone book. Please excuse the unintended cluster at the beginning of the 4 mallet section!

Here's a short video of me talking about a few different basic harmonic minor ideas and tonalities. I talk about the scale, go over the chord definitions and chord scales/voicings, and then spend a little time on a short loop play-along that's attached below!

The play-along is really just a ii-V-i loop in C harmonic minor, there are a few passing chords thrown in.

This is the piano accompaniment I played when I recently posted a version of "I Remember April. Jen asked me to post it. There's an 8 bar intro over D7sus. for 4 bars and Ab Major 7#11 (or G phrygian) for 4 bars.

Download the attachment for general background and notation of the bell pattern.

In an effort to practice soloing over a tune with few chord changes, I limited myself to only certain chord tones every chorus of Impressions until I've added them all.

I realise there'a already a video of mine on "Recent Activity", but I just saw that "I remember April" is the tune of the month, so, since I have quite a bit of free time at the moment....don't we all? OK..Tony doesn't.....He's teaching quite a bit..good for him and great for his students! Anyway, since I do have time I thought I'd record a semi-latin version of the tune. The sound isn't great..one mike on the vibes and one on the piano...I figured the times we're living in don't necessarily call for perfection...So it's raw and that's cool for me.

Hola!
Sobre un coro de Autumn leaves, armé este solo aplicando siempre escalas pentatonicas mayores.
Por ejemplo: En los acordes dominantes utilizé la b5P (es decir Ab para el D7, o F para el B7b9), en el caso de los -7b5 utilizé la b6p (es decir D para el Fa#-7b5) y así...
Siempre buscando que en la escala elegidas se escuchen tensiones de esos acordes.

So here's the deal.

I have a Sibelius file and a midi file and an xml file. So there's a way to use this with any notation file or even DAW that you have.

I put down chord tones on the beat. You fill in the off beats with notes from the scale (the rests).

Make musical sense. Half step below is fine. Half above has to be in the scale.
Listen to it and make changes to make it sound as good as you can. it won't sound super great but parts of it you will like and you can play. I recommend playing the whole solo.

Play along with me and Drum Genius!