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Hi All,

The recent discussion around Tony's post about Jason "Mallet Man" Taylor has me wondering what people here really think about the balance between letting the music speak for itself and showmanship.

In "check this out" I've put three performances with contrasting levels of showmanship and art. Two are way on the showy side -- Jason Taylor and the Ian Finkel performance on "History of Mallet Instruments". The third, Elio Villafanca, is what I would consider to be the standard "here's the music" style.

Man I've been working on the tune Beautiful Friendship and it's kicking my ass. The melody, and the phrasing feel really unique to me. And I'm trying to play the tune right down the middle and it's really really hard.

I'm finding I have to kind of study all the spaces in the tune so I can play the melody right. Next the tune's second A doesn't resolve which is a little unusual. And sometimes I want to resolve it just like the last A!

Here's another lick for January. It's in 2 parts. The lick is attached to each part as a pdf and I play it. I would advise transcribing the lick yourself first and then checking the music.

I usually don't even put the music up but this lick is a little more involved.

I wrote this as an etude to study chords and comping with roots. This etude goes through the chords of Blue Bossa in a way that uses lots of up partials and scale tones. The pedal is down for most of every bar. Use common sense with the pedal. I think you can learn a lot about comping and about chords with this etude.

Check out the end of this video. These kids are so proud. It's pretty cool.

And it looks like one of the percussion groups Gary grew up with! Lots of players and lots of instruments!

I want to go to school there!

Ok I thought I'd post this one because I'm soloing and comping. You'll get an idea of what I'm doing!

But I won't even post this one on youtube. I look the FATTEST on this one. So this is for subscribers only!!

Only subtle fat jokes allowed. Let's see how subtle and cunning you can be.

I'm going to study stage presence of this cat.

This is a trip and a half. Power to him.

Check out Pianist Tom Lawton's solo. Tom is a true genius like Gary.

Tom transcribes and memorizes solos by playing along with them on the dashboard of his car on the way to gigs.

He can do tricks like play a tune and play each hand in a different key, take solos and everything with each hand in a different key. He can hear anything and play it back and transpose things like Bartok excerpts on the spot and put them in solos.

Music does not exist in a vacuum. As musicians we all need other people to appreciate our playing skills and our compositions. A musician's highest goal is to make music that will reach a large audience and maybe, just maybe, make a difference to those who hear us.