Vibraphone

Yesterday was a fun coffee house. We talked a bit about transcriptions and why and how we do them. In the fashion to which I have become accustomed, Tony described his methods and motives as “exactly the opposite” of mine. I love this aspect of our excellent 30+ year friendship. We do see things differently, but in the end... we wind up agreeing about all the important stuff and how much we love the vibes.

Attached is my Free Improv at today's Vibe Coffee House. I thought it would make a good lesson.

Just playing around with a simple tune and working on improvising an intro to it.

Hello everyone,

This is my fourth "How to Play Vibes Like" lesson. And I should be doing 8 more this coming month, so if anyone has any suggested pianists to cover, let me know. So far, I plan on having George Shearing, Benny Green, Count Basie, Monk, and a second part to my Oscar Peterson lesson.

I'm hoping everything I talked about in this lesson made sense. It can be tricky stuff, so please ask questions if you don't understand something. And listen to his music, specifically "Passion Dance" and "Blues on the Corner" to hear these concepts in action.

Thanks!

Remember I think this:

Most of the time we play solo, we are doing solo playing :-). Doing it right and in time can really help you.

I got inspired by Oliver's arrangement of "Days of Wine and Roses". The drummer in my band wants to play "Beautiful Friendship", so I thought I would try to arrange it in a Shearing style.

I understand the basic concept behind the Shearing sound, but I'm not sure if I've quite got it. In particular, I'm not sure what to do when the melody note doesn't fall within the chord-dim-chord-dim scale pattern. Chromatic notes in the melody are also difficult.

In the online meeting a week or so ago, David played a Red Norvo video and, when talking about it said, "I don't know why nobody has ever transcribed this solo.."

That was enough motivation for me. :)

To my ears, even though this was performed/recorded in 1960, it is an excellent example of the crossover point between ragtime and jazz. So much of what Red plays, from his low to the keyboard mallet technique to his linear construction, is reminiscent of the George Hamilton Green studies. Sometimes literally... check out measures 208-209.

We had a great discussion in the Sunday Vibes Coffee House meeting last week on wrapping mallets.

One of the members, Brett, talked about how he wraps mallets. He included this article about wrapping mallets.

He also talked about hemp yarn and how strong it is. How long it lasts.

Here is the article he talked about.

btw - if you want info on the coffee house sign up here:
https://bit.ly/vibecoffee

Part of my new practice strategy of just improvising a solo arrangement and recording my first take, instead of my usual thoughtfully working everything out beforehand and using maybe a third take. It's a lot more time-efficient.