Vibraphone

The great Irving Berlin ballad.

I'm always amazed at those old xylo players. Honestly I can't believe that that instrument was that popular. It's bizarre to me. 

But Teddy is great, and I'm always watching his videos.

It's also interesting to me to listen to music where they have no real concept of bebop, rock, rap or anything. 

Hello all,

The vibraphone is one of the only instruments we play where you have to work extra hard to control the ending of a note. It requires two separate strokes to play and end any given note with dampening, whereas on, say, the saxophone, you can end a note by simply stopping your air. Thus, it's important to figure out how all this relates to playing the instrument in any context, including in lines, so that you're able to play what you're hearing.

Thinking about dampening, deadstroking, stride piano, sliding, big band shout choruses, walking bass lines, block chords, and much more! Let me know what you think!

Hey everyone,

Here's another lesson on dampening. This is a subtle topic that relates to how you actually physically press the mallet into the bar when you dampen. You can use varying dampening speed to create clean-sounding dampening, legato-sounding dampening, and everything in between!

Let me know if there are any questions!

-Oliver

Took a little longer getting this all together than anticipated due to holidays and work, but felt I was at a point I could post this stuff and keep on going.  

The goal of this round was to put a solo take of Blue Bossa together.  Things I worked on with Tony to get here are:

Rootless minor chords - 3,7,9,11 in all keys https://youtu.be/w-GSikYfuGk

Rootless Maj 2-5-1 progression on vibes min9, Dominant13(b9), Maj9 https://youtu.be/BrFjBZM7CQk

Hey everyone,

Very excited about finding this one. Been using it a lot lately. Has anyone ever heard of it? I assume I haven't invented it, but I haven't ever heard of it, either, so I'd be curious to hear if anyone's heard this before.

This is a great cd. And there are no chords, so learn the tunes and play along. It's an all star group with Erik Harland and Christian Mcbride. 

In yesterday's presentation for the Vibes Congress, David proclaimed that he was NOT Satchitananda Guru. OK. I get it, but... I've spent time in both worlds and, given the things he was talking about, this made me have a moment of "things that make me go hmmmm."

First, since most of the folks who frequent this site are a bit young, Swami Satchitananda is probably not a guy who is a big part of your life; allow me to bring you up to date on who he was.

Let your ears tell you what is happening. Train them to give you information.