all-levels

I was working on this song with my student this past week. We were talking about various techniques that can be applied in order to fill things out with the melody and improv. A few things we covered were counterpoint, comping underneath the melody and two hand lines with left hand jabs. All of these techniques will be covered in depth in the upcoming solo vibraphone playing book. Writing this stuff out is hard though. Ha!Ha!

"I'll Remember April" from last Saturday's gig. Always a fun night of playing by the fish tank. (The camera was on top of the tank).

Jobim's "How Insensitive" with Mark and I from our steady gig (over 8 years) at Li's last Saturday. Nice to play in a relaxed atmosphere and hang with friends.

This covers strictly the piston stroke-- the what and how of physically performing it.

The start of an ongoing project! After parsing the physical skills, philosophical issues will get teased out, and then I'll create segments particular to drum corps problems. Hopefully a contribution of something new to Vibes Workshop!

Shawn

My first post. Going through some old tapes I found a recording (1991) of my duo Mallet Unit. Roland Stolk wrote the piece and plays the vibes. I play the marimba on this tune Foreign Breakfast. Hope you like it.

This is a solo on Joe Henderson's "Recordame" that Dave recorded for me in a lesson when I was studying with him at Berklee most likely in '73. He played this in the lesson unaccompanied and I had taped the lesson and transcribed it after. It's probably on a cassette somewhere but I can't locate it. Anyways, it's a great display of Dave's playing at that time and shows a high level command of language, nice improv concepts and his strong time feel.

Fast tempos are hard, slow tempos are hard. I think tempos are hard period.

I spend so much time playing and recording and checking the feel and the tempo. Sometimes it's 3 hours later and I'm on the same tune looking for a take that I think is acceptable. Where the time seems to be ok.

I love playing by myself and trying to make a piece of music. Check out Peter Bernstein's solo guitar album. Well and check out my solo vibes album. Both are on Itunes. I think for some musicians it's really something to work towards; playing alone and playing well. And playing time.

“I Loves You Porgy” – a great ballad by Gershwin. One of my favorites beautifully played by Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. I’m using some chord changes from Bill and Keith as well as a few of my own. Also using voicings from by book Voicing Concepts for the Jazz Vibist.