Sorry, but I had to do it.
I've talked about this many times, however since we're talking about chord melodies I thought another Dad speech was appropriate.
I made this for my student Dan Neville. We did out last lesson last month and we wanted to end it with a couple duos.
I did two duos, but I'm not happy with the other one. I'll post this one for now.
Also, I didn't post the second part. I always play both parts to see if I can play along with the track. If I can then I know the time is ok. This is ok. But I won't post the second part hear. This way to you it has no other part to influence you.
I quickly made a pdf harmonizing some scales. Spend some time on this, as this will help a lot I think.
You should make melodies out of scale tones and then try to harmonize them. There a lot to do here that will really move you forward with chord melodies.
“Bluesette” by the great Toots Thielemans from Brussels who passed in 2016 at the age of 94. I’m a big fan of Toots and his beautiful harmonica playing. I’m improvising here on his most famous song with a focus on using the top three mallets along with a few improv concepts. I think it’s important when practicing to isolate the parameters and techniques/concepts. My students and I will work in the lessons this way with good results. Gary Burton did the same with me when I was studying with him.
This is a difficult one.
Again I left the chords out. Get the real book out and write in the changes so you in some small way begin to think about the harmony. Look at the notes and enter the chords.
Can you see the different keys this goes through? Thanks to Bach and the Well Tempered system of tuning, or I think this tune would sound terrible in Midieval tuning! :-).
Play it slowly and work it up.
Here's a simple chord melody on All The Things You Are. I tried to incorporate many of the things we talked about in the Beginner's Course. Sorry about the pedal sound, didn't have time to mess with it today :)
Here’s a brief clip of a dampening etude for the vibraphone titled “Spring” that I just finished composing. The piece features chordal playing along with the dampened stepwise movement of one of the four voices. This will be included in a new book that I began working on a few weeks ago. The book will focus on dampening and pedaling for the vibraphone. I have also been working on a book for solo vibraphone playing. Both topics definitely go hand in hand but I wanted to cover in depth the dampening/pedaling aspect of playing the vibraphone.