Lesson

This article will delve into the family of mallet instruments made of tuned wooden bars, and will take a look at three locations where these instruments are prevalent - North America (jazz and classical), Africa (Shona music), and Central America (Guatamalan folk music). This is not meant to be an exaustive list, but will serve to highlight the vastly different music that has evolved in these places, and the fascinating variety of instruments that have been designed to play the music.

I've been thinking about ballad playing, so I thought I'd put my thoughts down on video!

David sent this video over of him demonstrating to a student the idea of playing laid back. So now we get to check it out as well. It's a beautiful solo! I love his lines and his feel! -- Tony Miceli

We now have a very thorough stuff of voicings here! There's so much to learn.

I thought this was interesting and might get some talk going. Schoenberg is a tough one for me. Bartok, Shostakovitch and Stravinski I get, and I can hang with Schoenberg for a bit but not long!

Sometimes, well many times, I listen to music that I want to influence me. I'll do this and then go play the vibes. This really helps me. Listen to Debussy for a while and then start playing your instrument and improvising. What's going to come out? Well, your reflections on what you've just heard.

We're are all influenced musically all the time so use that for your practicing.

Neighbor tones are ways to embellish melodies. A very natural musical thing. This does though take a little practice if you're not already familiar with them.

This is beautiful. Listen to David's ballad playing. The way he comps and solos.

I love the clarity of the chords, the way he I can hear melodies in his chords. The way his lines move the ballad in his solo. This is great stuff.

I"m thinking about all this talk about mallets and sound. So I was wondering how we would classify different peoples sound? I don't mean in a negative way.

I'm listening to Steve Nelson right now, Mike Dirubo's new cd. Ed mentioned glassy, that's definitely glassy.

I dug Ed's duet with Liebman. More round sound right? His new mallets. Who else has a round sound? Samuels right?

We've been studying Joe Locke's tune 'Sword of Whispers'. We've all learned a ton from Joe and his tune.

Here's a pretty complete reference of what we've done.

If you put your version, please let me know so I can add it to this page!

Check out the comments to see what we were thinking!