all-levels

This weekend at the first-ever online vibes bootcamp, David Friedman spoke about the importance of following the movement of the bassline and the harmonies when choosing chords for My Funny Valentine (and the same goes for many other tunes). That reminded me of a lesson Tony posted back in 2011, but it was audio only so I made this video to show at the vibes coffeehouse.

Pretty self-explanatory. Tony thought there weren't enough gongs on my last post.

Well... gong solo this time.

Need I say more?

My apologies to Juan Tizol. It was a great tune before this happened.

This weekend is our VW Bootcamp.

David is working in his class on the My Funny Valentine. He put up a version and so did Hauke so I wanted to do one as well.

I have not played the tune in a long time but I thought I could bang it out. I couldn't. I had to remember the parts and assemble it again. Hence my comment in the beginning, which I decided to leave in.

Don't any of us who record have comments like this or worse on some of our recordings?

"Send In The Clowns" composed by Stephen Sondheim in 1973 for the play A Little Night Music. A beautiful song with deep lyrics sung by many vocalists including Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Betty Buckley. All great versions but my favorite is the one by Dame Judi Dench performing it in 2010 on the BBC program for Sondheim's 80th birthday celebration.

Transcribe my solo.
1st chorus - quarter note solo
2nd chorus - simple solo

Play my solo, then do yours.
Your first chorus needs to be quarter notes
Second chorus, simple and swinging.

I've attached a file with only brushes. You can use the to play along with.

Clip from a practice session playing the classic Joe Henderson song. Playing with a "stream of consciousness" approach. Seeing what develops and working with motives, varied sounds (articulation, dynamics, accents, ghost notes, deadstrokes) and techniques as they come into play. This is one of the ways that I practice. I always enjoy playing songs this way and seeing where the music leads me along with taking some chances. For me, it's not about perfection but more about the process that's important.

Big fun to do this duets.

Before Tony and Leigh developed the awesome Late Night Mallet, there was the Deschler 114. There was a lesson in the studio downstairs, so I was playing with soft mallets up in the living room. Nothing fancy here, just a Zoom recorder and me.

the other day, Chien Chien and I were talking about Crystal Silence. I think it is one of the nicest tunes ever written specifically for the vibes. I like to explore this side of the instrument.

Tony often talks about the use of vibes outside the context of jazz. Well, here is our newest release. It is probably best categorized as "New-Age Ambient", although I don't really like labels. I prefer to just ignore the box. Typically our music is considered too "new-agey" to appeal to jazz listeners and too "Jazzy" (whatever that means... sometimes they call it smooth jazz if they really want to fling what they feel is an insult) by folks in the new-age healing and yoga community.