As I wrote in my text re Dave Samuels the day I heard about his passing I remembered that I must have a folder with a few tunes of his he had given me many years ago. And a set of Mallets - there is no imprint on them, they may be very early Malletech mallets - that I paid a small fortune for at the time. They came with bent shafts, almost impossible to play with.

Check this photo out. This was my M55 back in the day and it has the custom pedal, Mbraces and the bladder damper pad. This is the only photo I have of the instrument that I know of. The pedal was very cool. It had a horseshoe-shaped object with two spurs similar to bass drum spurs that were adjustable. The spurs would come down on each side of the pedal (right and left) and poke into the floor for greater stability.

"Skating in Central Park" - A beautiful song in 3/4 composed by pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet. I've been working with songs in 3/4 for my solo vibraphone book that I'm in the process of writing. I'm making headway on the book with many of the music examples finished. I just started formatting the layout of the book along with the accompanying text for the music examples. Still along way to go though. Meanwhile, my book Voicing Concepts for the Jazz Vibist is available from Amazon.

Solo vibraphone version of a new composition titled "Someone Close". The lead sheet can be downloaded here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JRJ_f-K74wDDxL2y1gl1w-Uw5ZCW-N0_/view?…

First, this is a short sample of some rough practice time. Be aware. Just being accountable and looking for any feedback as to whether I'm on the right track. I do feel like this is helping.

One of the hardest things for me, personally, as I develop as an improviser, is "hearing" lines inside of the chord structure that AREN'T the actual chord tones, OR similarly....hearing lines that don't follow a diatonic pattern, e.g. up/down the scale. I realize this is probably very common at my early stage of learning, but it's non the less a bit frustrating...

By Richard Rodgers, and featuring new leather mallets.