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Note: Example tune is All The Things You Are, I only played part of the melody.

This was from a while ago, but I wanted to share it since we are talking about solo playing. I tried to cop the Miceli style of solo vibes, which is much different than the Burton or Friedman styles. Ed Saindon has a style that is more similar to Tony's, but uses the stride concept more. When I think of the great solo vibes players, those are the four that come to mind. Where Burton and Friedman tend to use more countermelody lines, Tony tends to use more "jabs" like a pianist would. Tony does the whole countermelody thing to, and is great at it...

Check out how important dynamics are in separating the melody line from the accompaniment. It's especially noticeable in the first 8 measures of the tune.

Here is a pretty good first video. Probably the most famous solo vibe performance of all time. Thank you, Gary.

just a quick application comment...

this line is quartal vocabulary (or fourthy vocabulary hahaha).

it's a quartal chord just in an inversion. If you made C# the bottom note voiced... C#, F#, B, E you would have stacked 4ths.

where to play this? Well it could be...

Emaj giving you scale degrees 13-9-5-1
Amaj (3-13-9-5)
Dmaj (7-3-13-9)
C#minor (1, 11, 7, 3)
F#minor (5-1-11-7)
Bminor (9-5-1-11)
E7 (13-9-5-1)
Bb7alt (#9-b13-b9-#11)

I'm sure I left a few out. But do you guys see how it fits into all of those chords?

Simple Etude. Play F# B C# E up and down your instrument. Try it fast. Hard right? I think of these as asymmetrical arpeggios.

Just do that for a few weeks and then come back to it, every now and then. I just did it yesterday and I sucked at it! Your turn!