The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the modern business of writing song lyrics. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487041649045754218135164517….
Tom P.
I busted Mario's chops all through the workshop in Delaware for a good discount for anyone who came to the workshop. Mario finally agreed to $425 dollars off the price!
I begged him to extend that to ALL VW members and he agreed.
So if you want a mallet kat NOW is the time to get it!!!
Just go to the Alternate Mode Website and email mario!
I had in mind a 'Summer of Good Vibes' much different from the one that happened. But this one was pretty cool, thanks to Stephen Hambright, Harvey Price, John Daly, the one and only David Friedman, Marie Noelle and all the vibes workshop people.
We can't forget the companies that helped us out. VanderPlas Baleo, Yamaha, Mike Balter and the biggest percussion dealer in the world Steve Weiss and the U.S. Embassy!!
Here's my latest email from 92 year old vibe player Angelo. Man did he just design the ultimate frame? I think video is coming!
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Hi, Tony! Haven't heard from you for a while. How did your gig in Europe go?
Remember me telling you that I was working with my machinist in redisigning the
vibraphone frames (keybed & base) so that the heavy weight of these parts are
detrimental to the vibraphonist especially for multi-gigging.
What a week. That's all I have to say. To see people practicing from morning until night is amazing. And by that I mean from 8 in the morning until midnight. This was an intense workshop. I would imagine one of the most intense ever. I can say that without trying to brag, because I think Harvey Price really made this happen. The facilities here were incredible.
With each person having an instrument that enabled everybody to work non stop. My dream is to have the workshops, Harvey's was all the rest. Harvey is amazing.
These guys have been working hard! The school is open until midnight and I leave between 10 and 12 and I always see people in there practicing! We are ready for David Friedman to come in tomorrow!
Today I had violinist Diane Monroe come down. During the afternoon class we played different tempo and different style tunes and talked about playing with out a bass. We didn't perform the whole tunes, just parts of them. Saving the actual performance for the evening class.
With these workshops, I've taken a little break from posting lessons. Mainly because I'm away from my studio. But I'm home Sunday and next week we'll get back to work!
I've really had a great time here in Delaware and also in Ireland. Man we are building something great here and it's showing. Vibe players from around the world are coming to hang out and to play and to study. It's really fun to be in the same place as a bunch of other vibe players for several days. It's a lot of vibe talk!
What a great day we had today. Mike balter sent us 52 pairs of mallets! There was a pile of sticks on the floor and after we took a break, half of them were gone! They were going through them and comparing them.
We worked on tunes and forms of tunes today. Mario took us all in for an incredible demo of the Mallet Kat, it was really fun. He is the master of that instrument (he owns the company). I think everybody in the room was blown away!
We have 19 vibraphones in this school for the workshop. Can you believe it! Everyone has a practice room and a set of vibes. Really cool. We're going to get a photo with all the vibes, should be a cool photo!
Hey everyone!
It's officially today! It already had a few months of existence as beta site, but on August 1st 2008, Vibesworkshop was officially open!
I got into the users list, and found that at that date, there were already around 20 members! (today we are... 1382!!) Among them -appart from Tony and his partner Stephen- we can see:
- Tjaco,
- Barry,
- John Daly,
- Behn Gellice,
- Gilbranimo,
- Alan Watt (amazing Alan from this year Ireland workshop!),
- Jinwoo (our Korea very silent member!)
A few others would follow soon, like:
- Bruce Wells,
- Tony Fontana,