Thank you for having coffee with me today at the Vibes Workshop Coffee Vibe Hang! I enjoyed telling some of my stories and appreciate you all for hanging out. I look forward to learning more about you and getting to know all of you better.
Here's a Wynton Kelly lick off of Hank Mobely's tune "Dig Dis." I explain how it works and how you can practice it, but the main idea is that Wynton Kelly is able to mix blues with upper structure triads and it still just sounds like blues!
The last Friedman etude!
Learning the vocabulary of jazz is one of my favorite -- and, I would argue, most rewarding -- things to do in the practice room. Just like human language, jazz vocabulary allows us to musically understand one another, know how to react to one another, and keep ourselves from saying something stupid. From Monk-ish quirks to the pentatonic idiosyncrasies of Coltrane, jazz history is, in many ways, synonymous with jazz language -- you can see the evolution of the music, the cultural influences, the “family tree” of players, etc.
Hi everybody. Here All Of Me played in old style, but with a lot of fun, which we need in those covid times...
Second to last one! This one is beautiful (and hard!).
Hi all! I'm fairly new to the vibraphone, and most recently picked up burton grip a couple of months ago; however, I have been playing percussion and four mallet marimba for a couple of years now (playing with Stevens Grip). My jury is one week away and I thought I would share a practice run through I recorded of a transcription of Gary Burton playing "O Grande Amor" by Antonio Carlos Jobim. I recommend listening to Mr. Burton's performance to get a sense of what it should actually sound like. I plan on revisiting this piece down the line to refine it.
This is one of my absolute favorite pieces - I learned this first during my violin study, and transferring it to mallets just sits so well.
This improvisation is inspired by some of the grooves I explore on the African balafon (log xylophone) using 4 mallets. It’s all about freedom and energy, flow without measure, and getting to the “no mind.”
Alchemy appears on my 2017 world percussion CD “Crafty Hands”
http://www.rhombuspublishing.com/recordings.html
Just recorded this at home as preparation for our latest duo album. Martina Barta is a dream singer to play with. She listens, waits, takes the lead and sings in tune. Her voice has myriad colors that all fit well with the vibraphone. Accompanying a vocalist is not so easy. What I've learned is not to over play and to leave space.