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Hey everyone,

I'm starting a new series on solo vibes arranging, where in the first part, I'll give an arrangement in the form of sheet music, and in the second part, I'll walk through it, note by note, explaining why and how I'm picking voicings, textures, etc. I hope this gives everyone ideas on arranging tunes on their own, as well as giving a tangible arrangement to play on gigs or for practice.

As this is the second part on "Easy to Love," I'll be posting an explanation video.

Hey everyone,

Here's part two in the little diminished lesson series. In this lesson, I'll show you how to better think of flat 3 diminished chords to give you more melodic material.

Hey everyone!

I’ve got some exciting lessons for the next few months, starting with this series on diminished voicings. These three lessons will really go in depth with how you can creatively voice diminished chords, and how you can use the same shapes on non-diminished chords. Do you know the diminished major substitution? The dominant diminished substitution? The four main alterations of a diminished chord? How to use diminished shapes to play “out?” These lessons will go through all of this with a practical mindset, giving you tangible things to work on.

Melodic Ideas for Comping

A crazy mental exercise in improvisation! This will help your dampening skills as well as your ears and your overall understanding of the instrument.

Hey everyone,

For this first part, memorize the first four measures of the tune. Pt 1b coming shortly!

Play it, study it, move into different keys, learn about the chords. It's a blues in F.

Hello everyone,

As with the previous lesson on dominant chord scales, I want to stress that just playing scales correctly won't necessarily produce the best improvisational content, and I think learning scales has a limited value. But there is value, and it's essentially figuring out what extensions happen on what chords.

A scale, at the end of the day, is just a 13th chord, with a 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 all put within one octave, and knowing this makes scales much more useful to me. So as you practice scales, remember this and figure out what chords they relate to.