The best thing about a jazz swing bass line is it does 2 things. The first is it is supposed to outline the chord changes very clearly. The second is in it's main function it insists on being played on each beat. A great way to study chords and improvisation is to play bass lines.

This doesn't have to be strict for our purposes. By this I mean you don't have to stick to the low end of your instrument. If you're not a bass player just play quarter notes and outline the chords. Below is an example of a simple blues bass line.

In this section we'll study different grips.

Chord Tone Solos
Tony Miceli

Here is a video showing a close-up of Alexey Chizhik's 5 mallet technique. At the beginning of the video, you can see how the sticks are laid out.

"Alexey Chizhik (vibraphone) and Zhenjia Glukk (journalist). Show on TV VOT 2008 (summer). St-Petersburg Russia. Playing Over the rainbow by Harold Arlen."

Barry

Here is a Bass and Drum Play-Along track (generated from BIAB) to go along with Jazz Waltz No. 1 by Simon Kanzler. See Check This Out for the PDF and Simon's version.

If you want to change the tempo, the free program, Audacity, has a plug-in, called "Change Tempo" that changes the tempo without changing the pitch (which would happen if you just changed the playback speed).

Barry

This is an arrangement I did of Coração Vagabundo by Caetano Veloso. For those who don't know, Caetano Veloso is a very famous Brazilian songwriter. I've always liked this tune so I decided to attempt a solo version. This is also my first attempt using my new mic setup. Thanks for listening everyone!

Mike Blake is the percussion cat out at University of North Dakota. He's well respected in the vibe world and is a great player. Check him out playing Blue In Green.

Meet Mike Blake. He's a subscriber on the site, and great percussionist, drummer and vibe player who teaches out at University of North Dakota.

He's really well respected and loved in the vibe world. I know that from just mentioning his name to Ed and Joe.

Here he talks about himself and the vibraphone a little.

Here is tune with chords also attaching a lead sheet

John