Recently upon reviewing some transcriptions I have done, I stumbled across a very simple and clear example of why transcription is so important I thought i'd share.
The transcription is of John Coltrane playing his composition "LazyBird".
Ok, stop, freeze. What's the last vibe cd you listened to???
For me it's Jim Hart's Narrada. Guys were talking about him in the shout box so I put him on while I was folding clothes. Great stuff! He's a great player.
Your turn.
Sorry to get all cheezy, but there are some players on this site doing cool stuff.
There are some really talented players here!
I'm amazed because I've seen some of these guys for almost 5 years now. I've seen the progress and what can happen if you just pick up the sticks and practice on the instrument.
I'm truly inspired tonight. Right on guys!
Cool few days. I play duo with this alto player Aaron Irwin and we have a lot of fun playing tunes. Well we've started to do a study of Parker tunes. We took Blues for Alice, Donna Lee and Anthropology and soloed on them through the keys. It was hard and fun!
I was looking at some things today on the site. I found out a couple things. We have over 6,000 individual posts on the site and over 24,000 comments.
Those are very rough figures but they give an idea of what's here. There is a LOT of information now on this site.
Just remember to also check out the vbooks (http://www.vibesworkshop.com/book). Things in there will stay there in the order they are in. While not everything is in there yet, a lot of the early lessons are there.
Just thought I'd pass that on. 6,000 posts and 24,000 comments is a lot of talking about the vibraphone!!!
I really don't post too much in this blog, so here is a shorty on what we're doing at this moment at vanderPlas Baileo.
We started to have montly clinics at our facility in Sassenheim, generally every first Saturday of the month. This basically is a smaller version of the one and only annual vibesworkshop.com workshop week in Februari. Our first one was held October 1st, and about 12 percussionists showed up. Lots of fun.
As you may have noticed, we have come up with the DIYframe, a highly affordable solution for those who need a second frame for their bars and resonators.
So we're about to start studying chords and harmony. In my usual fashion I have no idea what we're going to do. I figure it's like this: There are a lot of vibe players here and we can collectively use all our minds together and really grow. It's really not just up to me, it's up to us. All in all we're making a huge collection of information about the vibraphone. We are all working and learning about this instrument and passing the information on!
Hey everyone, on sat Nov. 12 we are trying to a range a hang to go see Gary play at the blue note in ny with chick corea. So far its me and tony, anyone else interested?!
Twenty or so folks, mostly ladies in wheelchairs, at the rest and rehab hospital last night for a sing-a-long with Jocey's soprano voice leading and me on MalletKat synthing vibes. We did a dozen songs in an hour. I played each melody line through once, then came in with chords in the left mallets and the melody line on the right with everyone singing from song sheets we passed out.
Dream about them, think about them. Imagine them. Let's get ready to study them for a couple months. Chords, harmony, voicings, colors, shadings. Let's strip them down and build them up. Let's really work hard on chords and harmony and see where we wind up.