Blog

I was looking at some things today on the site. I found out a couple things. We have over 6,000 individual posts on the site and over 24,000 comments.

Those are very rough figures but they give an idea of what's here. There is a LOT of information now on this site.

Just remember to also check out the vbooks (http://www.vibesworkshop.com/book). Things in there will stay there in the order they are in. While not everything is in there yet, a lot of the early lessons are there.

Just thought I'd pass that on. 6,000 posts and 24,000 comments is a lot of talking about the vibraphone!!!

I really don't post too much in this blog, so here is a shorty on what we're doing at this moment at vanderPlas Baileo.

We started to have montly clinics at our facility in Sassenheim, generally every first Saturday of the month. This basically is a smaller version of the one and only annual vibesworkshop.com workshop week in Februari. Our first one was held October 1st, and about 12 percussionists showed up. Lots of fun.

As you may have noticed, we have come up with the DIYframe, a highly affordable solution for those who need a second frame for their bars and resonators.

So we're about to start studying chords and harmony. In my usual fashion I have no idea what we're going to do. I figure it's like this: There are a lot of vibe players here and we can collectively use all our minds together and really grow. It's really not just up to me, it's up to us. All in all we're making a huge collection of information about the vibraphone. We are all working and learning about this instrument and passing the information on!

Hey everyone, on sat Nov. 12 we are trying to a range a hang to go see Gary play at the blue note in ny with chick corea. So far its me and tony, anyone else interested?!

Twenty or so folks, mostly ladies in wheelchairs, at the rest and rehab hospital last night for a sing-a-long with Jocey's soprano voice leading and me on MalletKat synthing vibes. We did a dozen songs in an hour. I played each melody line through once, then came in with chords in the left mallets and the melody line on the right with everyone singing from song sheets we passed out.

Dream about them, think about them. Imagine them. Let's get ready to study them for a couple months. Chords, harmony, voicings, colors, shadings. Let's strip them down and build them up. Let's really work hard on chords and harmony and see where we wind up.

I've been recording a bunch of tunes the last couple months. And I've let them sit for all this time. Now I'm going back to them and it's a great experience to do this.

I'm see myself play one tune over and over and work through problems that I don't think I was conscious of but was picking up on listening back to everything. Pretty cool to look back and see yourself working through problems.

I buy a lot of music off of Amazon. You know they give every use storage space. I think it's 2 free gigs and then 20 for 20 bucks a year. Something like that.

I just liked at my account and I have unlimited storage for music! So I'm now backing up 19,000 songs. And I have another 30,000 to go. I wonder if it will take it all??

I also signed up for Google's cloud service (free). I have 20 gigs there. I uploaded a ton of stuff there. Mostly music. I'll take the music down and then start storing docs up there.

I was thinking about a lot of the blues lessons we've been putting up lately. And this thought popped in my head.

We don't always focus directly on technique, but anything well played is an etude, a chop builder and an all around technical exercise in many ways. At least that's what I think. If you can swing and play a blues and do interesting stuff you have technique.

Just thought of that and thought I'd pass it along, see if you guys agree.

I mentioned about pausing the TOTM and do a huge chord and harmony study. 2011 Vibesworkshop Chord and Harmony Festival!

I'm digging that more and more. Here's the thing. If we all work together we could create a HUGE compilation of all this, study our butt's off, and grow like mo' fo's' musically.

I have a bunch of pros who will create some lessons for us and I think I'll pick a theme for each week and we can all talk about the theme.

I'll wrap up the blues this week and next week we'll start the Chord Fest!