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Henry Wilson (my student at NEC) playing a vibes solo of Papirosyn

The solo piece played by Henry Wilson is called Papirosn. It is an old Yiddish Theater song about a little boy trying to get by in the ghetto selling cigarettes and other things. Henry changed the harmony and melody quite bit for this arrangement, which he calls a work in progress.

It's great to hear such a diverse collection of solo repertoire on the VW site, and Henry continues to make excellent progress with his journey into all styles and possibilities.

Introducing my NEC student, Henry Wilson, playing Prelude to a Kiss

Henry Wilson is an up-and-coming vibes player who studies with me at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He came to me with lots of excellent skills and we've been diving into solo jazz repertoire as well as some groove ideas inspired by my African and Balafon styles (many balafon lesson videos on the VW site to explore).

Down the road, we hope to post some videos of Henry in action. For now, please enjoy and comment on this lovely rendition of Prelude to a Kiss.

Cumana - Vibes and MIDI Accordion with BIAB by BarryK and PaulK

Attached is me (Vibes) and my Dad (MIDI Accordion) playing a Latin tune called Cumana written by Barclay Allen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumana_(song)

In the late 80s, I bought a kit to retrofit MIDI into my Dad's electronic accordion (_lots_ of soldering). We resurrected it recently, and it still works! I also created a MIDI Thru box that splits the MIDI to allow it to control up to 4 different instruments, which can be turned on/off via switches on the accordion.

The 2 Methods of Moving Chords Around (AKA "planing")

Hello everyone,

Here's another lesson about voicings. The common theme of all these recent lessons is trying to extrapolate as many different possible voicings as we can out of a sing idea. You take any four notes, and you can do all these things we've talked about so far:

-add extensions
-alter notes
-invert the chord
-use drop 2s, drop 3s, drop 2+3s, etc.

And now we'll add planing to the list! This is when you move a chord through a scale, or just move it chromatically.

The 3 Types of Spread Voicings Lesson: Drop 2, Drop 3, and Drop 2+3

Hello everyone,

In the last lesson, I explained how to methodically go through all possible extensions for a chord, and, in this one, we will look at the different options for rearranging those notes. You can use inversions, and spread techniques, including drop-2, drop-3, and drop-2+3.

Choruses on Orthinology (How High The Moon) based upon Tony's written out chorus

Some choruses based upon Tony Miceli's written out chorus which is available for download from The Vibes Workshop. The first chorus is Tony's written out solo while the subsequent choruses are improvised using some of Tony's specific notes, phrases and ideas from his written out solo. Tony's solo was posted as "Orthinology Simple Solo" very recently.