Lesson

(I've added audio and video performances of Bluesette above)

Below is a lesson plan to help you study this tune. Post some recordings here. Remember, recording yourself is a great way to work on perfecting the lessons below. Don't underestimate the power of recording and posting your work here. It's crucial to your success.

Here are some ideas for the tune Bluesette and how to study it.

Beginners:

• Memorize the melody.
• Practice root position voicings of the chords. Play them in time.
• Work up a chord tone solo

part 2

blackbird and bluesette

Here’s a technique I use called “hammers” – it’s a guitar embellishment technique that works nice on the vibe, giving a sort of note bending effect.

Early Gary Burton records such as “country roads” show him using this “sound”- that’s how I learned of it

It’s one of those “sounds” you use sparingly. The audio here is pretty lo-fi but you’ll get the idea

Part 1 shows the technique
Part 2 shows the technique used over Blackbird, and Bluesette

A tritone splits the octave in half. A very common sound are major triads between the tritone split. In other words, F maj and then B maj. This lesson talks about that relationship.

A quick video of a way to practice getting your Brazilian comping together.

I had a great talk with Ed via email. We talked about whether the vibraphone was on it's last leg or not.

I won't go into our conversation yet, because I'd like to hear what you guys have to say first.

I waited for New Years day to post this. What's the future of the instrument? How do we save it? Can it be saved? Is it fine and I'm just trying to create hype? Is it truly a babe magnet???

Check the link out right above this. I've been having a discussion with Tony F about some things. Here I read the letter and comment on it. In the link under 'Check This Out' you'll fing the written dialogue.

I kept his name anonymous because I wasn't sure he wanted it known. I see though he published our whole conversation, which I think is cool!

I know some of these topics we've been talking about are a little over some of your heads. Which is fine, I'd like to help get you further up the ladder, so you can understand more of that.

With that in mind, What questions do you have that might help me when making up lessons for this site. Let's stick on the more basic side of vibe playing in this topic.

What do you think?

Check out the first part of this video. Matt is a local guitar player. What struck me is watching him play solo and realizing that would totally translate to the vibes. There's a major conceptual study there in playing the vibes solo.

I've learned so much from listening to guitar players play and especially play solo. They have the same problems we have. I just thought I'd show you guys this.

Here are a bunch of lessons on licks. There's also a lot of talk about licks on this site, players have different opinions of them as you'll see if you look around.