Blog

I've decided to move the Philly workshop to my home.

I'm planning a great week from July 10-14 (I can even do something on the 9th If people come in early)

It's really getting impossible to do independent workshops at Universities unless you're bringing in 100 students. The red tape, background checks etc., forms are unbelievable! You need a team of 2 or 3 people to pull all this off.

Back in the mid-1980's I started using pencil grips on my mallets. I was obsessed with finding and eliminating every little thing that contributed to extraneous noise on the vibraphone. As I became a little more known for my "Vibraphonics", I got an endorsement opportunity with Michael Balter to make the John Piper Mallet. I sent him pencil grips and told him the mallets have to include the orange ones (see photo) because for some unknown reason, the orange ones have a better feel and longer lasting quality.

The idea of the MBraces was created WAY back in the 80's when I first started working on my M55 vibraphone for improvements. I discovered (with the use of two cymbal stands) that by placing two braces from near middle of the pedal rail to the sides of the leg frames, the results were fantastic for stability. Very simple but they are the braces that were missing on all previous designs of the instrument! Many people had secondary braces added to their instruments but for some reason, no one was doing the obvious. In the L.A.

Recent posts got me interested in experimenting with resonators.
https://www.vibesworkshop.com/video-embed/omega-vibraphone-vibrato-syst…
https://www.vibesworkshop.com/blog-entry/motor/tonymiceli/051717

This blog is my repository of my experiments. Comments welcome.

Do people like us still make CD's? Is there a point to doing that? I'm curious because things have changed so much since I was active in it full time. What is the standard media product for artists like us? Recordings have pretty much become "business cards" and give-aways. I'd love to hear the full scope of what seems cool and purposeful to the upcoming class of musicians and the established ones.

Our discussion of cord for vibes started to branch off in soft vs. hard mallets.

So I thought I'd open a discussion on that :-).

I don't want to say too much about it but I'll start off with this.

It's sad to go hear a vibe player and then you can't hear them.

I'm not innocent here, btw.

YOUR TURN

Let's add what you find to the Archive! :-)

Check out this link by Steve, read what he says
https://www.vibesworkshop.com/video-upload/just-kicking-around-original…

As many of you know, I use tunes not only to have fun playing over but also to learn about harmony, work on chops and time. Why not, as improvisers we can make up an etude on the spot. And as you get better as an improviser you can make more complex etudes up.

Minority is a tune with tunnel vision. It's the study of one note and meaning depending on what is surrounding it. The 9th and the 13th. In a 2 5 they kind of blend together. And Minority is a great example of this.

So here's a way we can pay tribute to Gary. Consider this his retirement card.

In the comments, post whatever you want. Play for him, talk about him, post anything. If you have a photo of you and him, send it to me and I'll post it under your name on the page.

When we build this up, I'll invite Gary over to see it. He used to be on the site all the time, but these days I think he's phasing it all out so he won't see this I think.