Tony realized that Jay Messina just joined us as subscriber. Jay has a great career as sound engineer for the greatest musicians all around the world... We'd love to know more, about his past, and his history with the vibraphone too!

Jay, please tell us!!

And welcom on Vibesworkshop!

Marie

Hi Guys,

Big hello from Australia!

This is a recording of me and my friend at uni playing in a chamber music concert. We only played this one tune, walked in straight from work with no warm up, no sound check so there are a few fuzzy bits...but I was mostly happy with the performance.

I'd also like to say, we performed this tune because we love it. Ed is a fantastic asset to this site and music in general and writes some fantastic tunes so check them out if you haven't!!!!!!

It would be great if you could take the time to listen and drop a comment good or bad!

Cheers,

So my car stereo blew a few months ago. I bought another one a few months ago thinking it replace it myself. I tried but no sound. So I got my son an his Drexel buddies over figuring 30 grand a year, they can get it working. Nothing.

So finally I went to Best Buy and had them put it in only to find out that the problem was not the radio but the speakers. Ok, 400 dollars later (and I'm broke right now) I have a new car stereo and speakers.

I saw the name Jay Messina and thought that sounds familiar. I went to his site, www.jaymessina.com. Anyone into rock will know who Jay is. And he's a heavy cat. He is probably one of the top recording engineers in the world. Man he recorded Aerosmith. You know he has had an incredible life!!

Well he still has is Hampton model pro-vibes and has been playing around with them again. Jay said Mainieri gave him some mallets and he's been hitting a different kind of heavy metal!

I've been off the radar, mainly because it's the end of the semester and things are crazy.

There's a few things I'll get on soon, including a Jamie Aebersold book give away thanks to Toddc, the next vibe hang (will Randy bring his gongs?) and more lessons.

This is a tune I wrote for my school combo.

The tune is loosely based off of rhythm changes. I use the upper structure triad stuff that Mike Pinto talks about but supper impose them over a pedal Bb at the beginning. so the first 4 chords are Cmaj/Bb, Emaj/Bb, Bbmaj, Dmaj/Bb. These all have the same function as the chords in rhythm changes. Kind of.

SO, I threatened to bring my gongs to the last vibe hang, but unfortunately I couldn't make the date because I was out of town. I will certainly make the next one if I am around.

However, since that time, I have spent a few more hours over at Steve Weiss's place and located another half octave (well, actually, I also found a low D that is super pretty sounding so I went back and got that as well). I am still waiting for the parts for the racks to arrive, but as you will see in the attached photo, some cymbal stands, mic stands and a timbale stand add up to new notes!

Just gott his wild Idea.. Imagine a worldwide collective of vibraphonists sharing their frames, and only bringing their own resonators and bars on trips! -Saving money on owerweight, not needing to compromize on the sound, stay in touch and gather inspiration from colleagues all over the world (Thanks again, Tony!!!), saving our backs on carrying….

Just like the car-sharing-concept… Just spare us the time and energy on finding light weight sollution and only focus on sound...

In this post, I´d love to hear your sollutions for traveling. Do you use cases/bags? Do you preferr car/bus/train/plane? Do you borrow from colleagues and don´t bring anything at all? Do you use a trolley?? If you fly, how do you split up the vibe into affordable (overweight) cases/bags? Do you check in the frame, and taket he bars in your hand luggage? Hope to hear from as many as possible!

Best,

Karl Ivar