Before a new school year, I did some work on my M55 to improve it.
I was unhappy with the silly W brace system, always getting loose at the worst time (when rolling the vibe to my van at 2AM for example...), and being a nonsense mechanical feature, as explained here by John Piper and Nico.
I had noticed too that the gear wasn't sturdy around his vertical axis. Just one bolt on each side to maintain all is not enough after some years of use and the horizontal pieces making the "T" part of the horizontal pedal brace were already bended, meaning a shaky vibes in a few time.

Hi everyone,

For the next few weeks, we will be studying Summertime and Wave. These are great tunes for the TOTM, many things to talk about with both. I will be posting the first introductory lesson on Summertime shortly.

Behn

Eventually got round to doing this. Funny how the situation arose. I have started a new job as a tutor with a group of other musician in a project called Music Generation. U2 have given 5 million to get the younger generation back into to music through school projects. So this 8 piece band get together and we rehearse all different genres of music for educational purposes and one of the tunes called was Donna Lee. So as I am playing vibes drums and congas etc I had to get to work on it.

Ever since the Delaware workshop, I have been working on Horace Silver's "Song For My Father" as my personal TOTM. I promised Tony I'd post something by the end of this weekend, so here's what I have so far. I played the stock key (F minor) with Aebersold, and then Eb- and Bb- are just on their own. Still have a lot of work to do, so any pointers are appreciated. Thanks!

I can't get over how great this year's Delaware Vibes Workshop was. Tony and Harvey set up a wonderful program, complete with great lessons, guest clinicians, and performances. This was my third summer at the workshop, and although I missed having David Friedman this year, it was wonderful having Dave Samuels (one of my favorite artists when I was in school), Behn Gillece and Christos Rafalides share their expertise, techniques. and stories. I enjoyed all of the lessons, and I feel that my playing has once again taken off.

Florian Poser's BRAZILIAN EXPERIENCE

playing "Air Populaire"
based on the famous "Air on a sixstring" by J. S. Bach

recorded live at the Tedesco Recording Studio, Paramus, New Jersey, USA
2nd of March, 2013

Gustavo Bergalli - trumpet (unvisible)
Klaus Mueller - piano
Itaiguara - bass & ac. guitar
Portinho - drums
Florian Poser - vibes

Sound & Video: Tom Tedesco

We got to see the new Malletech Omega prototype at the Delaware Workshop, here's a video about the Omega...Ton Risco, Mike Pope, Joe Locke & Liegh Stevens discuss the Omega and the new pickup system

http://youtu.be/arSMlnvybHA

So I heard it said somewhere that great comping should include a variety of both opened and closed voicings. I think I'm at the point now where I can play and voice lead open and close voicings in all their permutations and variations (i.e. w/extensions) pretty well. However, I sometimes have trouble combining them in a coherent and musical way. Anybody have any advice re: this? I haven't seen it discussed anywhere on the site. I know the obvious answer: use your ear. I suppose then I'm looking for tips that will help me develop my ears to hear the combinations better.