Sometimes I feel like the scare crow in the Wizard of Oz. Not because I feel I'm missing a brain but because i wish I was a sponge. I want the capability to immediately soak up all the information available for playing vibes. And I want it now. At my age sometimes you feel its risky to buy slightly brown bananas.

I was lucky enough to get along to Ronnie Scott's on Saturday night, to see an absolutely fantastic gig. I rushed over to catch the late show, (all the early tickets were sold out, unsurprisingly) and a packed out club was treated to some amazing music.

Austria Drei was the first group I produced. Werner Pirchner(malletts) and Harry Pepl(git) were just great creative guys and I loved playing with them so we made the Austria Drei LP. I think we did the recording in the winter of 1973.

This is a song from Werner Pirchner called Birds. Its a vibes and marimba solo piece.
I hope you enjoy this.

This is a top 30 list derived from the tune list PDF Tony posted.
I was so overwhelmed by 200 tunes I needed to add some focus.
One step at a time :)

-Todd

I'll just pass this letter along for the real vibe geeks!

This guy called Nico got information and then went to a machine shop to get the work done on his yamaha!!!

------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------

Tony, Thanks you for introducing Nico Vanderplas to me after telling him about my Yamaha YV2700 keybed problems with the sounds of the last seven bars in the high register.

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to recommend the DVD of Gary and Makoto Ozone's Live at Montreux DVD from the 2002 performance. I was just websurfing last week at Amazon and discovered this, and I didn't even know that it was available. As much as I like the CD, the DVD adds that "third player" - the audience, and I think you'll enjoy this even more.

I've been messing around with this lick from Joel Frahm. I dug it because of the bebop and the 4ths and wanted to study it.

The side benefit from studying something like this is you can work on sticking ideas with vocabulary. I want to play this lick starting with my right hand.

But now I'm doing it with my left. I'm realize how much stick changes the 'feeling' of the lick when I play it.

For me there seems to be a difference with sticking's starting with each hand, based on what I did today.

Here's a tune list that was compiled by a fellow teacher at Univ of the Arts. Might be of use to some of you. Also see the 'Check this out link' for the Short Tunes List.

Hey I'm just getting started on Facebook and thought I'd mention it here... (I need friends and fans). Check it out. You can hear many of my recordings by clicking on the "My Band" tab. (Thanks Michael Pinto).

Another tune from "Ternaire", this time it's "All Blues" by Miles