hey gang .. i just got the official notice that i have been added to the artist roster of Hammondbeat records based out of Portland, Oregon. The label up til now has been primarily B3 players, they are opening a new series, of which ive been selected to be the first.

There are two release dates coming up .. The Mackay Project ( original material project), will be release in June and The Thomas Mackay Quintet ( standards cd ) will be released in september ..

very excited

As you are going along your established route in life playing vibes, marimba or whatever, be aware that you can obtain some serious injuries that you may or may not have heard of. Below is a picture of me just after I got out of the hospital this past Monday. The injury I have is a "Trigger Finger". These are very painful and most of the time it requires surgery for complete relief. I have now had five of these and all have occurred (excepting the very first one) in a very short period of time.

Here is a quick version of Satin Doll tune only with a little vocal (sorry Marie) and an ending, hope the last chord sounds ok. just wanted to get this up will work on intro and solo

John

Hello guys, here's a short solo vibraphone clip that was just uploaded to my YouTube Solo Vibes channel. This very brief solo clip shows me working on playing lines along with some left hand comping on Coltrane's Giant Steps. There's also a new clip of Van Heusen's Like Someone In Love. I'll be uploading more solo vibe clips soon. To be notified when new clips are added, you can subscribe to my Solo Vibes channel. Best, Ed

When I started to collect information about 'everything vibraphone' I entered 'vibraphone forums' in Google and it gave me two www sites (this one and the vibes.net?). The second one seemed to be abandoned and this one looks alive but with the total number of posts and slow rate of posting it's not easy to see it at the first sight.

I'm also registered at other musical instrument forums like guitar, sax, etc. and there are thousands of posts on those sites. Everything is moving there with dozens of posts every day.

WARNING: if you are not a TRUE vibes geek, this will be boring. :) If you are, please join my journey.

So, about 6 months ago, I owned two sets of vibes. One a Musser M55 from 1977 and the other an M48 from around 1987. I bought the M48 when I lost my car in a spat of poverty and had to find a way to get to gigs in smaller vehicles because my big car died and I couldn't afford a new one. Never really liked it that much because of how its damper got out of adjustment every time I moved it, but I appreciated how it got me through that time in my life.

Hey Guys,

These are the records of my Entrance Exams in Hamburg. I had to send in some Records and decided to post them here to.
Tell me what you think. Im happy about some feedback

To friends of mine played Bass and Drums. We just played for the records and it was great fun! We decided to play more as a trio.

greets from Bremen, Hauke

Here is the link:
https://soundcloud.com/hauke-renken/sets/aufnahmepr-fung-hamburg

Finally got around to doing this cool tune, my apologies fro being very late but other stuff kept getting in my way. I chose a Latin feel for this hope you like it. Wasn't too sure on how to end it but it was never discussed so wouldn't mind getting some ideas on that. Ignore the bum notes...:)

John

Hello everyone again!
I hope you don't mind me filling in this section with some more questions on the vibes makers?

What do you think about the Yamaha's lower end vibraphone, the small and cute YV-520 model? Would you consider it as a true vibraphone or rather a toy? It has 32 mm wide bars and I've heard it's not so much comfortable to play on the bars so narrow especially when applying a four mallet techinques.
Is this model more like the vibes for children?