I may not be the greatest expert on the biography of Claire Musser, founder of the company that bears his name and that dominates in the mallet instrument field. However, I have played Musser instruments since I was six years old (this is my 60th year playing Musser!), and I did have a few encounters with this colorful character, an individual who was largely responsible for increasing mallet instrument visibility in the early years.

David Friedman sent me this. -
Thought you might like this. It says! "Music makes you happy" and down on the right, "Housework, as well". Maybe Marie would get a kick out of it!.

in 1995 the college i briefly taught at brought in Clark Terry to play for a jazz festival. I was the guy picked to pick him up a the Airport in Chicago.. what an adventure. the college was a couple hours from chicago and i had never been to chicago never mind drove there..finally arrived a the airport.. got stuck in the one way lane so it took me atleast an hour to get to the parking for pick up .. whew .. i pulled and met John, cant think of his last name, but he was clarks personal manager.. he brought clark out in a wheel chair... and as soon as clark got in the car ..

I found this file from a few months ago. I was talking to a student about practicing but not practicing. Made me think of our talk here on the site about practicing.

I will just play tunes to work on anything, technical stuff, form stuff, rhythm stuff, stride stuff. I was telling a pretty smart ass student that came over for a lesson. He seemed VERY spoiled. He insisted it was impossible to practice technique when trying to make music. I insisted that's sort of what you are doing any time you play!

Here's another track from my gig with Steve Giordano and John Swana.

Here's the thing about this music for me. Steve has a T-Shirt and it's sort of a joke.... It says 'Avante Guarde - Unfortunately Where Every Note is the Right Note'. I LOVE that shirt, it's just funny. I don't agree with it, but the satire is a real satire of the Avante Guarde. There's a lot of amazing music in the 'Avante Guarde' but I get the point of his t-shirt and actually like that point. However any music played with great musicians, with integrity and with honesty is going to be great no matter what it is.

Here's a fairly simple etude based on a minor blues.

There's no dampening in this etude necessary. Also the pedaling should be straight forward. Pedal slightly on the beat for the single line part and then with the chords for the double stops and chords.

I didn't write the chords in, it's a minor blues so fill them in your self.
I'm going to include the bass part also. Can you hear or figure out the chords for the last 8 bars? I'll tell you this it's not Dmin7b5 to G7.

Here's on of the latest clips from Tyrone's trio on Bob Miles' show, "Miles on Music". It features Craig McIver playing his tune "The McCoy" on vibes. There is some idiot playing drums on this take... no idea who that is. :)

Peace
randy

I've posted Diane playing this same tune on the site. However I'm getting some promo vids for us together and I thought I'd post this. More coming.

Anyone hanging around the site has seen all the changes and the growth of the site! It's really incredible what's happening. Probably the most exciting thing for us is Gary Burton joining the site and sharing with us thoughts on playing, his career and life. I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that that would happen. This is a wonderful gift.

Things like this start taking the site into new directions. In a way he's started an archive of the history of the instrument. He's played such an important part as we all know.

This is a group I play in. What's interesting is it's Guitar (Steve Giordano), EWI (John Swana, and myself. It's fun to play without a bass player! All the roles of the instrument change.

This is Footprints, the last I'll post from the gig. I really respect Steve and John, they're musicians of the highest order and I think there's a lot to get from there playing.