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Afro Blue by Alexander Kohrs + Holger Denckmann (attempt)

One of the things that keeps blowing me away is to see Gary Burton perform in duo constellations with piano players! The DvD "Live in Munich" with Gary Burton and Chick Corea is along with the Joe Locke CD "Live in Seattle" one of the reasons I started learning the jazz vibraphone. With my band mate and duo partner Alex on piano I came across the duo-concert DvD of Gary Burton and Mokoto Ozone. What they made of the rather simple piece is absolutely breathtaking!

Listen to us playing our attempt at the masters' work. The recording was taken from a concert we did three weeks ago.

Patrice Guillon

I found this video on Facebook. I dug Patrice's playing and his 4 mallet playing. Sometimes I do a test when I'm listening to guys, I turn the sound off and just watch them. Patrice has a nice feel IMHO. And I thought he had a nice flow in his playing and nice technique. So check him out!

The video on Facebook syncs up much better than this youtube video.

Forum Topic: Length of Mallets, Distance from instrument, and physical attributes of players

It's interesting to note how the physical attributes of players influence how they approach the instrument.

I'm 5'7" when I get up in the morning and probably 5'6" by the time I get home from work to practice. I'm also overweight which puts a bulge in front of me with my belt line right at, or just above, the bars.

The tyrannosaurus rex and I also have something in common. My short arms.
My hands are also relatively small as well. So as you can imagine I'm not exactly a chick magnet. But I have spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express.

Forums

Delaware and Ireland Workshop People

I won't be writing stuff out. We're going to use our ears. I know already that that's very difficult with 15 vibe players in the room, but the alternative of writing stuff out just doesn't work for me.

You might want to get into the swing of things by transcribing a little bit each day. Take a solo and just go 1 bar a day.

We're going to sing also, so you might want to put on Aebersold and start singing solos and getting into the swing of things.

More to come!

Prelude in A minor (J.S. Bach) by Ted Wolff

This old thing was recorded around 1973 using a low end Sony reel to reel and 2 very inexpensive mics, so I apologize for the audio quality. Still, the sound is clear enough to hear the 2 instruments pretty well. I remember having to practice the page turns (there were 3) just as hard as practicing the lines. The bass player was playing a Hofner Beatle bass - remember that? Vibes and Electric Bass doing Bach is weird, but I was into weird back then.