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What's up vibesworkshop? As many of you know, I am up in Philly studying with the man himself, Tony Miceli. Tony and I spend a good deal of our lesson time in conversation about the instrument, music, and life. He asked me to start a blog and discuss things that I am working on and some concepts I use while arranging and playing. So this is entry numero uno. And I wanted to talk about arranging.

(Note from Tony) - my students have to do lessons each semester and submit them on the site. Sangwon speaks much better Korean than English so he's doing his lesson in Korean.

(Note from Tony) - my students have to do lessons each semester and submit them on the site. Sangwon speaks much better Korean than English so he's doing his lesson in Korean.

I recently acquired a marimba, and started messing around with some stuff!

Forgive the mistakes at the end of the video. I don't talk about phrasing much near the end, and I meant to... All of these neighbor tones can lead to "1". But, they can also be placed anywhere to disguise the arpeggio by not having the start of the arpeggio (C in the example) start on the downbeat, or a strong beat. The latter being which is how I hear them used more often.

One side of technique seems to be about faster harder and louder. On most gigs I do there's at least one tunes per set, usually that require fast loud and hard. People talk about these tempos and volumes as being unmusical, but I don't think they are. Especially when incorporated in a set of music, they seem to fit well. It's when the whole set becomes fast loud and hard that things get to be a drag. If my wife is in the audience, when I get through the set she usually says to me, that was a lot of testosterone being thrown around that stage.

Here's an exercise I used to do. Play it fast, hard and loud. That's the key. Sounds a little like a Steve Reich piece. Build up speed, play each pattern longer, etc. etc. etc. Stamina.