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My M55 will be appearing at the Iowa City Jazz Festival this year. I won't. I'll be backstage all nervy and excited to be among the professionals. At times like that I have the appearance of a one year old yellow labrador retriever banging my tail on some-one's bass drum without any regard for how bad my time is or how really annoying I am.

After about three minutes of tough negotiating I agreed to loan my M55 to Steve Nelson.

I just posted a comment on another blog and mentioned that I studied Alexander Technique for a couple of years when I was in my late 30's. Then I thought it might be useful to some of the musicians here to know about this approach to improving posture and understanding physical movement. It is named after the man who developed it about a hundred years ago in Australia. He went on to teach and train people in his methods leaving behind a solid network of teachers around the world. It is quite popular with actors and singers, by the way.

I'd like to begin a discussion about feet. Your feet and how you deal with them when you're playing. Vibes players may be at risk for foot and back problems because we are often standing on one foot with the other on the pedal. The weight distribution is very unbalanced. Has anyone had problems with either foot, leg, hip or back pain? What did you do about it? What helped? What didn't? What kind of shoes do you wear while playing? Do your feet stink?

Dear Workshop, what do you think about combining the vibes with technology??

I recently transferred some old recordings from DAT tape which featured the K&K midi system, and started thinking maybe this site would be a good place to share them...I haven't seen much discussion about this.

I'm digging back into recordings from a few years ago. I have an m-audio and was bringing out to lots of gigs.

I just started digging into ones from 4 years ago. It's really great because they're far enough away that I have really no connection to them. I can really listen critically which i'm doing right now.

Checking out your past can really give you a perspective on things. Too bad we can't listen to the future! That would really help.

There were still a couple mistakes in my transcription of the Coltrane solo on "Four". I have corrected them and asked Tifoo, my faithful copyist, to rectify the Sibelius file. This is great stuff. I have managed to learn the whole solo by heart, and I play it (but only slowly)as an exercice, to try and get the feel of it.

OK. So I will start this one up, mostly out of curiousity. I am no expert on this, but certainly there are those amongst us here. The concept of swing has reared its head in the discussion about stickings and grips. It's always an important piece of any discussion involving jazz.

Here is the rarely told story of my first band. It began as a solo venture, playing unaccompanied pieces on marimba and vibes. Soon I decided to add a pianist, a sort of preview of my duets with Chick Corea, which would come along later on down the road. Next came the need for a bass player, followed by the addition of trombone, clarinet, trumpet, and drums. Not exactly the most logical instrumentation, you’re probably thinking. But, when you only have one brother and one sister, plus two parents, you make do with what you have.

Hey malleteers,

We haven't had a lively discussion here at the Vibes Workshop for a week or two, so it's time to bring up a couple of perennials: Grips and Sticking. Let's start with Grips and get into sticking maybe next week.

I just saw this on YouTube and it reminded me of my interest in learning and hearing other classical tunes for the vibes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmGgSUBldAs
(As a side note, notice he picks up a 5th mallet at 4:18).

I totally dug Gustavo's Partita video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMfiNbqrzYE

Gustavo, was that a literal transcription or did you have to modify the original to fit the vibes?

I'm glad this site isn't called JazzVibesWorkshop and maybe other folks would also like to work on classical pieces with me.