intermediate

This is a solo vibe piece Tony Miceli commissioned me to write for him. Let me know what you guys think! These are the program notes I wrote for the piece:

This piece was written in April of 2024 upon commission from Tony Miceli, professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While taking private lessons with him, we began experimenting with timbral effects on the vibraphone, and one of my assignments was to write a solo vibraphone piece surrounding this idea. Thus, this piece was born.

Cool lesson. It turns into an etude once you get the chords down. Spend some time on this! 

I made this with a bass and percussion. I think it's 'groovy'. 
 

It's focusing on one chord, and that's C7. Check it out and Try and play it. I have the groove at 2 tempos a slow one and a faster one. 

And then.... a slow one in F in case any of you guys want to try and transpose it. To the first person, who makes a video of them playing it in C and F, I'll give to free lessons. OFF EXPIRES JULY 1 2024

You know what, to be very frank and mildly funny, the big boys and girls can play good 2 5 1 voicings.

Well rounded players can do all this stuff. You can tell how well rounded a player is by listening to them play a standard and comp. For whatever that is worth. I imagine if you are a blue grass vibe player and that's all you care about then you're not worrie about this etude. But if you want to be a decent jazz player this stuff I think is important. 

Every chord has a scale that in each tune fits in the context of that tune. That's because chords can have more than on scale that goes with them. I.E. Cmaj has Ionian and Lydian. 

This video talks about ways to practice these scales and then learn to weave through the scales. The scales are your basic material, like colors to a painter. Once you know all this, then you make phrases and sounds that really represent the harmony. Sure there's all types of advanced stuff to do, but if you can't do this, then you can't do the advanced stuff.

This is an etude for Donna Lee that is all 8th notes. Of course we don't necessarily want to play a solo like this, but it's a good study in weaving around the changes. 

I've made other lessons here with the same theme. Make it sound like the song. 

It's our job in a way. Sure the heavy weights do this or that. But a true heavy weight can make it sound like the song. Once you have mastered that then you can take liberties. Listen to some of the solo Chick Corea CDs. He takes liberties but he's a monster! 

I am doing a lot of teaching this semester. Probably the most I have ever done. It's really hard for a musician to turn work down. Well for me it is. 

It's a lot of fun teaching students who practice and work hard. Not as much fun teaching students with lots of excuses. 

I do have a bunch of good students though so that helps. Here's an exercise I made for one of them to work on the Bebop dom scale. Learn it, memorize it and play it fast!!!!

Friedman Etude 8

Two choruses of All The Things You Are with notation.