Vibraphone

On my last visit to the Royal Academy of Music in London, some of the students had prepared things for me which they'd acquired or learned from Vibes Workshop (2 of the students did a duo arrangement of "Sword of Whispers, including Dana Sudborough's solo transcription).
Because VW is such a valuable source of information & inspiration, Neil Percy (Head of Percussion), the students and I just wanted to say.....

Here's a great clip from the 2010 workshop in Delaware. I thought it would be interesting to some of you guys.

Once again it's the end of the semester and I'm going nuts. However I'm thinking to the summer. You know guys, I would really like to work on connecting us all in some way. But it requires effort on all of our parts. For instance, what about a weekly hang, we just get on livestream or whatever and just play some stuff and talk. it could skype, whatever.

From FB, I came across a piece of music with a vibist I didn't know: Karl Berger. This piece was... well a bit too much for me... Still curious, I went to Youtube and found this totally different piece with same vibist... Beautiful all the way!!

A little bio of Karl Berger from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Berger

I'm sure some of you know him... tell us more!!! - M

Which one are you and why?

I'm a 2 and 4 guy, but today I was messing around with 1 and 3 and digging it and seeing the possibilities.

There's been some talk on the site lately about what should a beginner do around here. First off if you're a beginner, you need one thing on your side. That's time. You have to have a lot of time on your hands. You need to be able to go slow.

I think just tackling the mechanics of the the instrument will take at the very least a year. Scales, arpeggios, dampening and pedaling. That's a year of hard work. Add to that learning some simple tunes, the blues scale, chord inversions and a few other things and you are one busy cat!