Most Popular Lessons

Hey Vibeworkshop,
Im currently getting ready for my recital and one of the pieces that I am playing on my recital is a reduction, I'm currently working on, of the ever popular Strange Meadow Lark by Dave Brubeck. As I study the piece and boil down the transcription to an honest reduction I really started to see the genius of Brubeck's solo playing. So today I would like to break down all the techniques and ideas he used while playing the melody of the tune and how we can incorporate those ideas to other standards and ballads.

Hi everyone,

Here is Part 1 of a lesson that I'm doing on spicing up intros. Enjoy!

Behn

This is to go along with Dana's Video. See above for the link to the video.

Hi all,

Here is a lesson that explains some ideas for soloing over the blues. Enjoy!

Behn

I banged this baby out. Really fast. But it looks ok. Let me know where the mistakes are.

But it's a lesson in drop 2 voicings. Now that I know what drop 2 voicings are I see them everywhere! How about choral writing. Big band charts.

This is great stuff to study. And we're taking it slow, so practice in all the keys. I think these lessons will help many of you guys!

OK here's an etude for stride playing. A couple things to keep in mind. Put the pedal down on every and life it up on the eighth. when you play stride the quarter notes shouldn't be real quarter notes, they should have space in them. With this exercise you should be able for MOST of the etude to do exactly the same thing with the pedal on every beat and everything fits in.

I always like that progression and I'm not a theory guy, but I have my version on why it works and what it's about. I was actually going to make podcast about it, but I thought instead I'd open it up for discussion first.

What do you think about that progression? Why is it you can slip in a C#dim in between a repeating dominant chord??

I'll leave it at that.