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Using Deadstroking and Staccato Dampening in your Lines

Hello all,

The vibraphone is one of the only instruments we play where you have to work extra hard to control the ending of a note. It requires two separate strokes to play and end any given note with dampening, whereas on, say, the saxophone, you can end a note by simply stopping your air. Thus, it's important to figure out how all this relates to playing the instrument in any context, including in lines, so that you're able to play what you're hearing.

"Dampening Speed" Lesson

Hey everyone,

Here's another lesson on dampening. This is a subtle topic that relates to how you actually physically press the mallet into the bar when you dampen. You can use varying dampening speed to create clean-sounding dampening, legato-sounding dampening, and everything in between!

Let me know if there are any questions!

-Oliver

The 2 Methods of Moving Chords Around (AKA "planing")

Hello everyone,

Here's another lesson about voicings. The common theme of all these recent lessons is trying to extrapolate as many different possible voicings as we can out of a sing idea. You take any four notes, and you can do all these things we've talked about so far:

-add extensions
-alter notes
-invert the chord
-use drop 2s, drop 3s, drop 2+3s, etc.

And now we'll add planing to the list! This is when you move a chord through a scale, or just move it chromatically.