This is a great week! After getting fresh news of Emil Richards, we are honored by some recent and cool "postcard" of Bobby Hutcherson! And they could hardly be fresher, as it was taken during the Monterey Jazz Festival which took place this week end!

I got the chance to come across this great picture through Facebook this time. And beside the Master is not less than journalist Leroy Downs, "The Jazz Cat". If you look at the newbies, LeRoy even joined the site!

I just happened across this and I thought it was too cool! Needless to say, I want one :)

He's got a few other videos up too if you like it.

A cliché Tony pointed out inspired me on this post: "Accordion is old fashion. People make easily fun of it".

Like most people, I used to think so… up to the day I met some French masters. With Gary we talked about Astor Piazzola and French Richard Galiano. I'd like to present you two other masters from my country.

Francis Varis:
He used to teach in a school near my home, where a good friend made me know him. He plays with guitarist Titi Robin, a multi-instrumentist, specialised in "eastern" guitars like oud, bouzouk…

Hi Tony!

I've been messing around with Lou Reed's song Perfect Day and tried to do a jazz interpretation of the harmonic progressions but I got in trouble with the Fmaj and Dm bar.

Am/D7/Gmaj/Cmaj would be a II/V/I/VI progression in Gmaj.

I tried to use a Fmaj scale for soloing over the next two bars F(maj)/Dm as this would be a I/VI progression in Fmaj but this does not sound good.

So maybe you can give me a tip which scale to use on the three bars F(maj)/Dm/E7?

12 kEYS!!!!!!!

Here's me and Randy Sutin playin at the vibe hang Sept. 19th, 2009.

The thing I like about this is that it's 2 vibes together and it doesn't sound horrible! I've heard and played some duets that were terrible, from the aspect of the instruments. But I thought this sounded cool. I was surprised.

Also Randy plays great and is a great musician. So that's cool. He knows what to play and when.

FYI - I have the brighter sticks. Randy plays the melody and solos first. We had technical difficulties in the beginning of the tune so I was running back and forth for a second.

Here's lesson 4.

Hi all,

French vibist Jean-Michel Davis, an old pal of Joe, is among my myspace friends. Some weeks ago, I came across a pic of him w/ Emil Richards: he had recently visited him!

Emil, whose guest found in great health, nicely gave his agreement for posting one of those pix on vibesworkshop.

So, here he is: the smiling, sparkling, shining Emil Richards, taken by Jean-Michel last July in his home, in front of his incredible "octave vibraphone" with double head mallets!

Hi All,

I've tried to contact Beiner Bags to get some info on the M55 cases, but haven't got any response. The only contact info I can find is a submit-a-question webpage (http://www.beinerbags.com/contact.php) -- I did that a week+ ago and haven't received any response. Does anyone have a better method of getting in touch with them?

Of the questions I have, one has been answered. I see that they now have an option for the cases without the bar bag at $550. Two other questions remain unresolved though:

Hey Guys,

I thought I'd start a little discussion/lesson on how to transcribe changes to tunes. As a drummer(or a drumming vibist..haha) I have been(and still am) always struggling with learning and transcribing changes and I thought I'd start out here with some tips on how to break it down. As Tony's shrink would say: if you have a big problem, brake it down into smaller problems and the big problem will go away.