I owned a really beautiful vintage Deagan marimba about 10 years ago and recorded a bunch of harpsichord music. The marimba played the right hand part and piano played the left hand part, basically turning solo pieces into duets. Some of them came out sounding pretty good.

This one is by G.F. Handel and is titled, oddly, The Harmonious Blacksmith! It is a theme and variations format, starting with a slow stately melody, and progressively getting a little faster and more difficult with each variation.

I altered my vibraphone in the way that I swapped the bars from C to E from front to back and the bars C# and D# from back to front.

So I get an unique playing surface where every interval has the same distance and every scale and chord follow the same pattern. The green stickers on some bars indicate the "black keys".

Here's a chorus, using different outlines.

A lesson on applying patterns to improvisation....specifically standards with ii-v-i changes. Refer to the pdf for a copy of the patterns.

Rusty

A lesson on 1-2-3-5 based patterns I use for technique building and warmups. Refer to the pdf for a copy of the patterns.

Rusty

I'm happy to announce that 'Mostly Marimba' just published two of my pieces:
'Whisper Magic' for solo vibraphone and 'Hortensia', a duo for vibes and bass.
Whisper Magic can be found on my latest recording 'Blue November'.
Hortensia will be released this Spring.

here is the link

http://www.mostlymarimba.com/books-a-recordings/music-books.html?page=s…

thank you

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Another great month went through: working hard and fun on our TOTM 'How Deep Is The Ocean', testing our first online lesson, setting the last details for our upcoming Winter European Working near Dusseldorf. Also read about our first Kickstarter project and be a part of it!

WINTER EUROPEAN WORKSHOP!

Some of us will join Tony and David for lots of fun at the Mallet Institute… only for the vibraphone near Dusseldorf. Be sure to be on the site between 21st -24th of February… and don’t miss the vibe hang on Sunday 24th!