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Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 for solo vibes by Ted Wolff

This is a really nice work for solo vibes. Originally written by Hector Villa-Lobos for voice and cellos, this is just one in a series of pieces that were an attempt freely to adapt a number of Baroque harmonic and contrapuntal procedures to Brazilian music.

The accompaniment is often just arpeggios, so let them ring. You'll need to mallet dampen the melody at several strategic places. The goal, as always, is to have the piece sound as full and clean as possible. Fullness comes from leaving the pedal down a lot, and cleanliness comes from pedaling and dampening in all the right places.

Interval Scales -V

Here are some exercises I was working on the other day. You can stick them into your improvs as vehicles to get from one point to another nicely and create a bit of excitement and change. The first one is one creates the dimished scale but the rest are quite different. I call them "interval scales". After you do them with the half step between each other interval, go back and replace the half step with a whole step, then again with a minor third, Fourth etc...

It's also good for ear training on intervals.
Hope you enjoy.

Thoughts After Yesterdays Rehearsal (Keep this between us)

Let's back up a couple days. I saw Burton play, the music was great. Gary was talking about how it was new music and making jokes about maybe making mistakes. Well if they did, it didn't matter. These are serious and heavy pros. I know what went on behind the scene to make this first night work, however I assumed Scott Colley, and Antonio and Julian came in with the music down. But I could be wrong. Although it sounded like they had it down.