We've restored and upgraded a great sounding M55 by among others putting it on our LW frame.
I hate to say, but this instrument turned out a killer instrument.
So much that we've decided to make this frame a standard M55 frame.

I started working on the Cherokee Etude. Here are the first 32 bars. I cheated a little bit, splicing in a couple sections and removing pauses. Eventually I will get it smoothed out.

My sticking is different from Tony's suggested sticking. I am exclusively using the inner mallets, always alternating, for the bass line and mallet 4 for the melody. I haven't tried the second half yet, so I don't know if I will be able to use the inner mallets, alternating as I do in the first half...

Barry

I was practicing some solo stuff yesterday night. Here's something that I recorded during my practice session.

Joe Locke's Cinema Paradiiso @ Dizzy's

This was recently posted to YouTube. I never heard of Chuck Redd before. He's played with some big names. Sounds great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFP_jpjZnBs
http://www.chuckredd.com/recordings.htm

Barry

I was watching a video of a concert by Bobby Hutcherson and Joey de Francesco and in the middle of the concert there was this interview made to Bobby Hutcherson, I was blown away by his words. I just wanted to share this with you because I thought that this just describes what's important in life in general. Here are some of his words:

“Music is not the image is only the reflection of who you are in your life.”

“Music reflects and tells the story of what is going on around you.”

“The rules of life are very simple. They are just not easy.

I just read that Joe Cuba died yesterday on Sunday, February 15th. I only knew of Joe from his hit "Bang Bang" and that was the result of Cal Tjader covering it on Cal's Primo album (David Sanborn also covered it among others). The obituary mentioned that his bands were vibraphone-driven, so that piqued my curiosity to go to Youtube and see what was there to be viewed.

When I heard Joe's tune Sword of Whispers I fell in love with it. I had heard it on cd, but I must have been doing something else while listening to it. I stopped and watched his video and just fell in love with the tune.

So I started messing around with it. It changes, I hope he doesn't mind. He had some 3 bar phrases in it. I wanted to play the tune so bad that I didn't worry about that and just made everything even.