Vibraphone

I posted about transcribing some MJQ and hearing mistakes in the recording and feeling a little funny about it. This is one of my favorite groups, but I was complaining a little bit!

My punishment was that the video - 'Modern Jazz Quartet, Django. True Jazz Inovators in Their Best Filmed Performances' came today. I'm in the middle of it now, all black and white so far. Between that and the looks of them this must be early on. They sound SO good. Milt sounds beautiful! Thanks for putting me in my place Almighty Amazon.com!

My first wife was an actress who did a lot of mime. This brought back some trauma. (Don't tell her I said that)

This is pretty cool. Cop that groove!!! :-)

So tell me how you found the vibraphone?

Here's my abridged version.

I played classical guitar growing up and was very serious about it. I also played drums and then picked up piano as a teen.

I almost went to school for piano, but some weird stuff happened with piano lessons and I quit on a dime as they say.

Jeez, probably not the kind of drummer we want on a jazz gig? Did I post this already?

So I'm transcribing some MJQ. I remember (I think) Gary Burton talked about them not being good readers. Ok. I'm taking down the tune 'Don't Stop This Train'. It's a sort of fugue. Well I've found 2 mistakes and I think they cut out a John Lewis bad note. I don't know, maybe I'm totally wrong here.

But I'm thinking what happened on this recording? Didn't they want to fix the mistakes? Was it late in the band's career and they didn't care? Were they fighting? Did they have only one hour left of studio time and they had to get this down. Didn't they practice the tune at home.

I've been emailing with magicescalator and talking with him. We were talking about how he came to the instrument and more. So I thought we'd do a Who Is so you guys could meet him.

magicescalator, just add a new comment here and tell about yourself. If you're shy, Marie will give you some encouragement. She's our host!

See if you can cop this