David has turned out to be a very very kind and wonderful cat on the site. It's truly a gift to have him. He's always offering suggestions, being so helpful. He's been an idol of mine for a long time. And listen to him. Joe and I were talking about his duets with the sax player (Peter Weniger). Beautiful music and a real command of the instrument.

And right now he's hanging out in South Africa having a great time I think.

So I thought I'd post on ways people fix up their instrument, especially the older ones. For instance ringing. I have in the past taken a piece of felt and tied it over the felt pad to stop the ringing. Even a few pieces to raise just that part.

Any other ways (besides replacing the pad)?

I bet you could use yarn and do something with that.

This is from a website I found. I didn't see it at first, but barryk said, 'Tony, you didn't scroll to the bottom of the page or you would have commented.' I missed this picture big time!! Woah, this is out!

An old rooster, getting ready to retire from his gig on the farm, invites some up-and-coming young roosters to audition for the choice gig. The first young rooster shows up, and scats Dizzy's Groovin' High solo. Nothing happens. The sun doesn't rise. No dogs bark.

The next young rooster steps up, and does Bird's solo on Night In Tunisia, and still nothing happens. A third, quite pompous rooster comes up, and scats Trane's Giant Steps solo. Nothing. No rising sun. No barking dogs.

Hello Vibesworkshop,

I recorded this some days ago... It's me practicing on "Nearness of You", a ballad I personally love.
I just used the aebersold play along for this one... When practicing the first I didn't even know that it switched to bossa, then samba !!!!

Hope you will enjoy it !

Nico Farugia

ps sorry for the big hesitations at the end, I didn't know what chords where used in the outro, so I just tried to figure out and do the arpeggios...

Here a recent take of Wine & Roses (to get going with posting here)
Through practice of permutation from Bergonzi's Melodic Structures I recently started finding a way to bridge the "gap" between playing the head with chords (I generally start out learning a tune by fitting the chords under the melody first- as written on the pdf) and horizontal lines, in other words: move on from a "stiff" head to being able to improvise over the changes.

The steps I figured out playing more freely & horizontal were:

I got a call sometime back asking if I was interested in playing the percussion book for Bye Birdie at my alma mater Upper Merion High School. They're putting on the show March 18, 19 and 20. They've hired a choreographer and the pit orchestra is made up of some good student musicians plus some professionals. I said yes without even thinking because this is a great chance for me to get my hand back in playing multiple percussion, something which I have been doing with a community symphony orchestra I am involved in.

It was Saturday evening, my mobile phone rang with a SMS from my guitarist friend Bernard: "Turn on to France 2!" (French TV channel) So did I...

It was the French music awards evening "Les Victoires de la Musique", the overture tune. They had chosen to make a little medley in tribute to Michael Jackson, with a bunch of French musicians of the moment.

Aug 1st - 6th Worskhop at University of Delaware with David Friedman and Tony Miceli