Vibraphone

I've been transcribing parts of a Chick solo. What's great about these programs is that some of Chick's licks are hard to play. Now I can slow everything down and play the line and then work up the speed.

I thought that might be a great way for some of you guys to learn hard tunes like Donna Lee.

My keyboard is set up to send instructions to Amazing Slow Downer, so play the lick and then hit a key and it speeds up. That's how we practice anyway right? Play it slow and then a little faster and then faster until we have it up to tempo.

I just got all excited because I counted 560 Lesson on this site. It's a rough count, but even at 500, that's amazing. I really think there's 3 or 4 years of study here now!

I posted this etude. (See Check this out).

I put a link to it above so if you reply to this page it will keep it in the classroom.

Check out the etude. We talked about this in the workshop.

In other words if you come back to this page and post comments it's just in the classroom and private to us.

I'm really excited because our first 'classroom' is up and running.

I love working on music and playing. I used to go to my mentor Steve Giordano's house once or twice a week and we'd play from 9 at night until 5 in the morning. Sometimes later. I loved driving home in morning while everyone was on there way to work, knowing that I had the opportunity to stay up all night and play and study music. That was worth a lot or money to me! That is the sacrifice of a steady income, which is a very difficult way to live.

I'm sure it's no suprise to any of you that I'm not too cool with holidays, especially birthdays.

But now that I have all these friends and have to run this site, I decided to be cool. And as an exercise I thought I would thank everyone in Marie's birthday post this morning. Hopefully I didn't skip anyone!

The great thing about this birthday, is that I have hundreds of new friends and they're all vibes players! that's pretty cool.

So Thanks guys.

I just got the update to Band-in-a-Box. First impression is that it is really cool (as if it wasn't already cool). As usual, you enter the chord changes and BIAB automagically generates an accompaniment of bass, drums, piano, guitar, strings, etc. With the update, instead of using MIDI instruments, there is an option for BIAB to extract pre-recorded audio of session musicians playing real instruments over certain changes.

Hey Guys! I had such a great time with you all!

I'll be setting up the classroom very soon. So the workshop is not over yet!

I'll post again when the classroom is set up.

This last week was a great week for the mallet instruments here in Boston. Gary was in town two Saturdays ago with his quartet and they put on a great show.

.