Skip to main content

Henry Wilson (my student at NEC) playing a vibes solo of Papirosyn

The solo piece played by Henry Wilson is called Papirosn. It is an old Yiddish Theater song about a little boy trying to get by in the ghetto selling cigarettes and other things. Henry changed the harmony and melody quite bit for this arrangement, which he calls a work in progress.

It's great to hear such a diverse collection of solo repertoire on the VW site, and Henry continues to make excellent progress with his journey into all styles and possibilities.

Introducing my NEC student, Henry Wilson, playing Prelude to a Kiss

Henry Wilson is an up-and-coming vibes player who studies with me at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He came to me with lots of excellent skills and we've been diving into solo jazz repertoire as well as some groove ideas inspired by my African and Balafon styles (many balafon lesson videos on the VW site to explore).

Down the road, we hope to post some videos of Henry in action. For now, please enjoy and comment on this lovely rendition of Prelude to a Kiss.

Cumana - Vibes and MIDI Accordion with BIAB by BarryK and PaulK

Attached is me (Vibes) and my Dad (MIDI Accordion) playing a Latin tune called Cumana written by Barclay Allen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumana_(song)

In the late 80s, I bought a kit to retrofit MIDI into my Dad's electronic accordion (_lots_ of soldering). We resurrected it recently, and it still works! I also created a MIDI Thru box that splits the MIDI to allow it to control up to 4 different instruments, which can be turned on/off via switches on the accordion.

All By Myself - Vibes Trio

I've been working a lot on vibes trio playing lately due to gigs, and it's fun trying to adapt pianist techniques to the instrument and make the trio sound full. In here, I use some dampening (check out the very end specifically), some sliding, a solo stride section I got from Emmet Cohen (although I'm sure pianists did it earlier than him), and a modulation up a half step. This is Irving Berlin's great tune, "All By Myself."

The 2 Methods of Moving Chords Around (AKA "planing")

Hello everyone,

Here's another lesson about voicings. The common theme of all these recent lessons is trying to extrapolate as many different possible voicings as we can out of a sing idea. You take any four notes, and you can do all these things we've talked about so far:

-add extensions
-alter notes
-invert the chord
-use drop 2s, drop 3s, drop 2+3s, etc.

And now we'll add planing to the list! This is when you move a chord through a scale, or just move it chromatically.

What happened to December's Good Vibes

Hey,
For those of you who've asked what happened to December's Good Vibes, we've had a router failure at JazzOn2 and, like many things these days, a replacement couldn't be found in time to air much of this month's programming. We're hoping to be up soon - soon as the darn thing arrives - and I will let you know about the re-airs. And also when I post it at mixcloud.com, which I will do next week if the station doesn't get up and running. I'm playing a mixture of Christmas/Winter tunes, including "Skating" by Warren Wolf from his Christmas Vibes CD.