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I've been tied up with teaching, gigs and recording the next part of the Vince Guaraldi lesson! I need to get a little time and see what comments are going up. I'm glad Piper is around.

Anyway, I think I have a decent performance of the tune, now I need to talk about it and then that part will go up. I'm thinking probably Friday or so, I should be finished.

Hope someone is practicing the piece. I did more of my version which is similar to the etude and will give you an idea. I'm hoping one of you guys will record that actual etude and post it!!!

I have some old Good Vibes mallets that are warped out of line about 3/16". I have newer Mike Balter mallets that have a slight curve also so I am assuming this happens with all mallets.

Do you try straightening them (steam them?), play with them as-is or go out and buy new ones.

Thanks,
Barry

yo everybody,

Bruce is the male version of Marie EXCEPT for the fact that bruce plays vibes for real. Check him out on youtube, vibeman27. He plays good!! And Bruce is American not French.

He's active online, he's positive and in my virtual opinion he seems like a great guy. i'm so happy he's hanging out on the site. many of us know him well and want him to keep us up to date.

i bring that up cause if you see 'cancer update' and you start thinking.... huh????

so even if it seems a little off topic here, many of us on the site want to hear from him!

Marie-Noëlle doesn't play the vibes but she loves them as much as I think the rest of us do! She's joined our ranks inside the school and I'm sure will have a lot to say. She's pretty active over at thevibe.net a popular vibe site.

All the vibe players love Marie. When Joe Locke hit's Paris he's sure to meet up and say hello to Marie. She's a great person and a great fan of the vibraphone. And I welcome her to the inner core of the school!

I'd like to see more participation by members too. It's so fun to bring a society of vibraphonists together. I live in Texas and I don't travel much anymore so I don't see a lot of vibe players (though there are some very good ones here) but none of my neighbors and most of my friends don't even know what it is or how to pronounce it. I'm sure that many reading this are in that same dilemma. Keep in mind that it's very healthy for each of us to have some socializing with people who understand the value of the art and support each other during the struggle.

Barryk asked me to talk about how I composed the Vince Guaraldi piece.

Well, I'm not a 'real' composer, so I'm not experienced in developing themes and other techniques that a real composer would use. But I have written a few pieces and arranged a bunch of things.

I just saw barryk's post on the site. He put up a little clip of him playing along with an audio track from a youtube vid. I was really happy to see that.

You know I can post lots of stuff and will, but when you guys get more involved in the site and post audio, and blog, that's when the site REALLY grows and great things happen.

I would love to hear and see what the subscribers here and doing musically. I know JL12 is going to post a Friedman etude that we're going to put in the Good Vibes Book. That's really cool.

I never heard about a technique that I just thought of and tried out.

I was playing a line and let the last note ring out. I took my open palm over that note and fluttered it up and down to get a tremolo. This is analogous to what a harmonica player does with his hands. Sounds cool.

I couldn't find any references to this technique on the web. Tony mentioned that he knows about others that have done this and used their mouths going whaa whaa whaa over the note after you hit it.

I'd be interested about hearing more about this technique (using hand or mouth).

My 7 year old daughter sometimes watches me practice and saw me creating a tremolo by moving my hand up and down over a vibrating bar (like a harmonica player would do to create tremolo). She wanted to experiment with a technique that she came up with by creating tremolo with the damper pedal. She agreed to letting me video tape her demonstration.

Does anyone actually use this technique?

Barry