I saw the name Jay Messina and thought that sounds familiar. I went to his site, www.jaymessina.com. Anyone into rock will know who Jay is. And he's a heavy cat. He is probably one of the top recording engineers in the world. Man he recorded Aerosmith. You know he has had an incredible life!!

Well he still has is Hampton model pro-vibes and has been playing around with them again. Jay said Mainieri gave him some mallets and he's been hitting a different kind of heavy metal!

I've been off the radar, mainly because it's the end of the semester and things are crazy.

There's a few things I'll get on soon, including a Jamie Aebersold book give away thanks to Toddc, the next vibe hang (will Randy bring his gongs?) and more lessons.

This is a tune I wrote for my school combo.

The tune is loosely based off of rhythm changes. I use the upper structure triad stuff that Mike Pinto talks about but supper impose them over a pedal Bb at the beginning. so the first 4 chords are Cmaj/Bb, Emaj/Bb, Bbmaj, Dmaj/Bb. These all have the same function as the chords in rhythm changes. Kind of.

SO, I threatened to bring my gongs to the last vibe hang, but unfortunately I couldn't make the date because I was out of town. I will certainly make the next one if I am around.

However, since that time, I have spent a few more hours over at Steve Weiss's place and located another half octave (well, actually, I also found a low D that is super pretty sounding so I went back and got that as well). I am still waiting for the parts for the racks to arrive, but as you will see in the attached photo, some cymbal stands, mic stands and a timbale stand add up to new notes!

Just gott his wild Idea.. Imagine a worldwide collective of vibraphonists sharing their frames, and only bringing their own resonators and bars on trips! -Saving money on owerweight, not needing to compromize on the sound, stay in touch and gather inspiration from colleagues all over the world (Thanks again, Tony!!!), saving our backs on carrying….

Just like the car-sharing-concept… Just spare us the time and energy on finding light weight sollution and only focus on sound...

In this post, I´d love to hear your sollutions for traveling. Do you use cases/bags? Do you preferr car/bus/train/plane? Do you borrow from colleagues and don´t bring anything at all? Do you use a trolley?? If you fly, how do you split up the vibe into affordable (overweight) cases/bags? Do you check in the frame, and taket he bars in your hand luggage? Hope to hear from as many as possible!

Best,

Karl Ivar

Thought I'd post this for Tony, this is Jack and he is just getting started, you will notice he is reading and playing sections a piece of music,its not the black page but its a start. I particularly like the gentle stick drop at the end

John

since david posted the sheet of the black page by frank zappa i thought you will also enjoy this more simplified arrangement of the tune. it´s based on the "make a jazz noise" cd-version, which i like a lot.i played this tune way back for my classic examen (2001) i found also a poor recording i did with my friend on marimba and me on vibes. i would play it different today but who cares...

Here's the lead sheet. Check out the groups of five an six. Just try going through the piece playing only the rhythms. I think Terry Bozzio played this as a drum solo.

This is probably one of the most singurlarly challenging pieces of music on the planet. It's also a great piece. Ruth Underwood was the mallet player with Zappa and she played the shit out it. I thought it might be interesting for all of us to check this piece out, see it written and listen to the music. It's great the way Zappa creates a sense of constant flow without conveying a sense of meter or tempo. Enjoy.

(the lead sheet is below)