Sometimes, well many times, I listen to music that I want to influence me. I'll do this and then go play the vibes. This really helps me. Listen to Debussy for a while and then start playing your instrument and improvising. What's going to come out? Well, your reflections on what you've just heard.

We're are all influenced musically all the time so use that for your practicing.

This is a comment that was posted by tpvibes. I thought it was so well done that I'd make a FAQ out of it. If anyone has anything to add, please do in the comment section. You could add links, preferences and why. This way we'll have a good post for anyone interested in getting their first set.

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

Some weeks ago, I posted a take of I Remember you, made soon after I had learnt the tune. Since then I have become more familiar with it. This take features a piano player, a friend of mine from my college days. He lives 600 km away, and we've started exchanging some music. One thing is for sure, if I had a piano player like that close to me, I think I would just play with two mallets and keep the four as an option. Two mallets come to me more naturally. Sorry I haven't been very active on the site lately. But I'm still doing my homework.

50 years old ! can"t read music,never played the vibraphone don't have an instrument
I would like to learn,where do I begin,do I save and buy a malletkat or a vibraphone
what books should I buy to learn to read whats first where do I start i'd like a step by step
way to make this happen for me,thanks in advance
Didee-bop

Neighbor tones are ways to embellish melodies. A very natural musical thing. This does though take a little practice if you're not already familiar with them.

Here's an in depth study on neighbor tones!

I just had a great lesson with my student/buddy from Ohio, Jon Letsky. It's great to do the online lessons because I can see what I post in action. He's practicing invitation and doing the quarter note solos, chord tone solos and playing the tune through the keys and he's kicking ass with it all.

It's not a requirement to post stuff, but affirmation, completion and closure are important. At least with private students I get to see the stuff in action. What I've learned is at these ways of learning tunes DO work. I've seen them happen way too many times for it to be anecdotal.

We've been working trying to solve the Explorer problem but the reality is that Explorer is a big problem on any site. If you look through any CSS or html book, you see these parts where they show how to do cool stuff with the programming languages and then they tell you if Explorer can do it and if there's a way how to hack it to work. This has been forever.

Nothing I can say about loyalty, if you're into Explorer then ok, but if you're open, get Firefox, check out the cool add ons and then have a much better experience on the Internet.

Check out Warren Wolf. Pretty killin' stuff!

I'm just summing up what I practiced tonight. Might be of interest.