Marimba

Marcel posted this exercise in a comment to barryk.

I thought I would turn it into the EOTM!

here's marcel's comment:
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I often look into exercises of rudimental or technical snare drum books to aply to the notes and caracteristics of vibraphone in different ways. This last days I took one to practice combination of simple and double strokes and I think that works very well to practice C major (or any mode with the same notes!).

This is a performance of a composition from a great friend of mine from Germany Matthias Schmitt.
While not vibes, it is a mallet piece with choir which in our idiom (jazz) seldom to hear.

I hope you enjoy it.
-Todd

Get on your computer and check out David Friedman and Bob Becker this Wed., August 3, 2011 at 6pm! UTC/GMT -5 hours

We will be live from the University of Delaware.

You're welcome to come to the University of Delaware and hang with us, in person!

Click here for a map of the school

I've recently discovered an excellent new software product for music notation that (I think) competes favorably with the expensive packages like Sibelius and Finale. It's called Muse Score and it is distributed as a free download. You can find it here: Muse Score.

The interface is logical and seems to be well thought out. You can save your files in a variety of formats including .pdf and .xml. As far as I can tell this product will work for anything you want to create, from a simple lead sheet to a full orchestral score.

Short answer: Probably not, but if we do all the things we should be doing as players, we will impress an audience. It should be a byproduct of what we are doing, not the focus.

Somewhat more diffuse, longer answer:

Performing music, specifically jazz, is an artistic form of communication.

There is a lot in the prior sentence.

Here is our first EOTM by David Friedman. I'm hoping David will become our EOTM man. He has all these creative ways of playing scales and doing exercises. So let's see if we can get him to be our EOTM CEO.

Here's the first one. This is a great idea actually. If you practice one of these exercises each month and just for the month I would argue that technically it will alter your playing for the better. I'm going to do it also!

Check out the pdf below.

This is a very interesting and demanding interlude,written by the great composer/arranger Frank Zappa.It is a incredible exercise on playing a single line melody,using uncommon intervals.
This version appeared on the "Apostrophe"album,as part of a tune called "st Alfonzo's pancake breakfast".It begins approximately at 1:09 and it was performed by the great Ruth Underwood.

It is a standard piece in the Zappa repertoire,and it was played by all the percussionists that played in the Zappa band.