Blog

Man, there are so many of us here now. I keep think of ways for us all to work and grow together.

So here's my pitch: The Summer of 2010 will be 'The Summer of Vibes'. Let's play for each other this summer. Let's play little concerts for each other pros and amateurs!

To me a concert has a few things to it. It usually has some talking or announcing and has more than one tune.

So let's say that if you post a recording where you are talking about the piece and it's more than one piece that it's a concert.

I want to acknowledge the life of a teacher and friend who passed away suddenly at the age of 61 last week Saturday May 8, 2010.

I started takeing drum lessons from Terry when I was 7 yrs. old. I continued with him until I was 15 yrs old and had a friendship with him through out my life. Terry was an excellent teacher, always encouraging, supportive and gave me a good reality check a couple of times when I needed it. He was never demeaning, just a regular guy, and a very nice and caring one at that.

Hey Guys,

As I've been away most of the time lately I thought I'd give an update on what I'm busy with, and that's the reason that I'm not online much.

So I had two really great gigs last couple of weeks. One was with a trio(vb-bs-git). A great bass anf guitar player from amsterdam. We had a real nice gig and I did record some stuff. But it needs some editing, so I'll post that when I have time.

Well I finished my little series on the melodic minor scale. I think I'm going to do one on the harmonic minor also. Although I need to study that one first a little more.

Behn is coming over Wednesday to shoot more lessons and I have some more planned as well.

I want to get into writing some more serious etudes, so I'm thinking about that as well. I'm just not sure whether to write the etude over the changes to a tune or make it up all new.

Just letting everyone know that more is on the way.

So my car stereo blew a few months ago. I bought another one a few months ago thinking it replace it myself. I tried but no sound. So I got my son an his Drexel buddies over figuring 30 grand a year, they can get it working. Nothing.

So finally I went to Best Buy and had them put it in only to find out that the problem was not the radio but the speakers. Ok, 400 dollars later (and I'm broke right now) I have a new car stereo and speakers.

I saw the name Jay Messina and thought that sounds familiar. I went to his site, www.jaymessina.com. Anyone into rock will know who Jay is. And he's a heavy cat. He is probably one of the top recording engineers in the world. Man he recorded Aerosmith. You know he has had an incredible life!!

Well he still has is Hampton model pro-vibes and has been playing around with them again. Jay said Mainieri gave him some mallets and he's been hitting a different kind of heavy metal!

I've been off the radar, mainly because it's the end of the semester and things are crazy.

There's a few things I'll get on soon, including a Jamie Aebersold book give away thanks to Toddc, the next vibe hang (will Randy bring his gongs?) and more lessons.

Just restored a couple of instruments.
I think, they turned out pretty well.

One of them is a Deagan 594, once owned by Mike Mainieri. When we got it in, it was painted white.
We did the following:
- cleaned the bars
- replaced the terrible casters by new, bigger, and better ones
- removed the experimental midi-electronics (didn't work anymore, impossible to repair)
- filled up the space in the endblocks where the midi was placed.
- coated the keybed
- powdercoated the supporting frame and the coverplates for the rails in black

From the Real Book, the chords are:

___|_Em7b5_______|_A7b9________|_Cm7_________|_F7__________|, etc., with melody:
Bb |_A___________|____G__A__Bb_|_F___________|_F___________|


When I play it, it sounds like the 1st and 3rd chords are suspended versions of the subsequent chords. I play the Em7b5 as Bb D E A, then dampen the D (the sus 4 of the subsequent chord) and hit a C#, to turn it into the A7b9. Similarly, I play the Cm7 as Bb C Eb F, then dampen the Bb (the sus 4 of the subsequent chord) and hit an A, to turn it into an F7 (no root).

We have a ton of lessons up here!!!

Some of you have really looked through all of them. What do you think is missing?? Give us some ideas.