Marimba

What came first, the chicken or the egg? or ... what came first, the melody or the scale? In a scientific world, the scale was certainly here first. It was always here. Partials derived from the harmonic series and placed in a row is not a creation of man but an existing entity just waiting to be discovered. Humanity's discovery of scales and modes evolved as artists made new melodies and found order that spoke a language of expressiveness. As a result of their exploring, learning and constructing melodies, patterns and similarities were revealed.

"Time and Space" is an exercise that rhythmically slices intervalic space into whole and half-step movements ascending and descending between the lower note to the higher note. By first defining the predominant interval in half-notes and then rhythmically slicing it up into various divisions of quarter notes, triplets, and simple odd tuplets (5:2 and 7:2) we can strengthen our inner feel of time using the space between the two outer notes as a reference.

Hello Everyone,
The next Good Vibes will air on Sunday, March 4th at 8-10p eastern(wwfm.org) and Wednesday March, 7th at 4-6p eastern. Will you be listening?
Guitarist Mudnell Lowe died this past December and the first tune is in his memory, from Hendrik Meurkens' CD Mundell's Moods. Bryan Carrott and Behn Gillece complete the first set. Followed by Mike Freeman and James Shipp (with Anat Cohen). The second half hour features Steve Nelson, Christian Tamburr, Dana Sudborough, Lionel Hampton and Mike Mainieri. Quite a group!

What is your recipe for success?

okay, so when I first started studying in Berlin, David told me to write an etude every week. which was super challenging a couple of years ago. but seeing the progress I made through this - not only with my technical skills but also challenge myself creatively - I found it to be a great great way of making progress.

i filmed the whole thing for you. hope you find motivation and inspiration with this.

thid etude is about comping yourself with the left hand. i made this whole thing in about 30 minuets. maybe 40. so its not perfect, but you get the idea.

Here's a sample of my current morning warm ups. My warm ups are always comprised of something I'm working on and spend about 30 to 45 minutes on them and then move on to learning tunes, practicing improv or whatever but first, I warm up with my current challenge goal. I stick with a particular warm up subject each day for as long as it takes to really get a good grip on it. I'm just about finished with this particular one and I really enjoyed it so I thought I'd share.

hey everybody,

It's been a while that I posted something here, but Tony asked me to do some content for the site, so I will try to post regularly, probably every week. I'm very excited to get in touch with the vibesworkshop community again.

I'll start with a video I did last November. I was asked to play in the large ensemble of Nels Cline, and documented my preparing process for you. Maybe you can take a little bit for your own preparation process.

Merry Christmas and Good Vibes from McMurdo Station, Antarctica:

Yesterday (Christmas Eve in Antarctica), I had the great honor of participating in one of the coolest events I’ve ever done. I performed my arrangement of The First Noel, which I call “Noel Antarctica” for various U.S. Field Research Camps around Antarctica including the South Pole, Shackleton Outpost and Wais (West Antarctic Ice Shelf).