all-levels

Hello all! Here's my version of Etude 5 from the Dampening and Pedaling Book!

Hello all,

The vibraphone is one of the only instruments we play where you have to work extra hard to control the ending of a note. It requires two separate strokes to play and end any given note with dampening, whereas on, say, the saxophone, you can end a note by simply stopping your air. Thus, it's important to figure out how all this relates to playing the instrument in any context, including in lines, so that you're able to play what you're hearing.

I'm working out a solo version of "I'll Be Seeing You." Loosely based on the attached lead sheet.

The solo piece played by Henry Wilson is called Papirosn. It is an old Yiddish Theater song about a little boy trying to get by in the ghetto selling cigarettes and other things. Henry changed the harmony and melody quite bit for this arrangement, which he calls a work in progress.

It's great to hear such a diverse collection of solo repertoire on the VW site, and Henry continues to make excellent progress with his journey into all styles and possibilities.

Henry Wilson is an up-and-coming vibes player who studies with me at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He came to me with lots of excellent skills and we've been diving into solo jazz repertoire as well as some groove ideas inspired by my African and Balafon styles (many balafon lesson videos on the VW site to explore).

Down the road, we hope to post some videos of Henry in action. For now, please enjoy and comment on this lovely rendition of Prelude to a Kiss.

Attached is me (Vibes) and my Dad (MIDI Accordion) playing a Latin tune called Cumana written by Barclay Allen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumana_(song)

In the late 80s, I bought a kit to retrofit MIDI into my Dad's electronic accordion (_lots_ of soldering). We resurrected it recently, and it still works! I also created a MIDI Thru box that splits the MIDI to allow it to control up to 4 different instruments, which can be turned on/off via switches on the accordion.

OK, a bit of a clickbait title, yes, but it's true! All three voicings I'll show you in this video have no third, which is usually the one note we absolutely need! We shall explore why that's the case.

Hello everyone,

Here's another lesson about voicings. The common theme of all these recent lessons is trying to extrapolate as many different possible voicings as we can out of a sing idea. You take any four notes, and you can do all these things we've talked about so far:

-add extensions
-alter notes
-invert the chord
-use drop 2s, drop 3s, drop 2+3s, etc.

And now we'll add planing to the list! This is when you move a chord through a scale, or just move it chromatically.

Hello everyone,

In the last lesson, I explained how to methodically go through all possible extensions for a chord, and, in this one, we will look at the different options for rearranging those notes. You can use inversions, and spread techniques, including drop-2, drop-3, and drop-2+3.