Skip to main content

Nobody Else But me - Lesson 1 - Get Your Time Together

Ok this is super challenging. Here’s what I did. I recorded the vibes first with no click track and then I added bass after. This was HARD.

The lesson is

Beginners

  • To memorize the melody
  • Record the melody then do something over top of it. Snap your fingers on 2 and 4. If you play drums get brushes and play along, or do what I did and that is to play a bass line.

Advanced

a good play-along

Do you guys know about Allan Cox's "Meet The Bass Player" play-along tracks?  They're very basic - bass and guitar - recordings of 12-bar blues and rhythm changes in a couple of common keys. 

The thing about them that is most useful is that they cover a very wide range of tempos - 40 bpm to 340 bpm (yikes!).  I use them for drum kit practice, but it occurred to me that they might be useful for vibraphone as well.  I don't know of another play-along thing that covers that range of tempos.

Comping Lab Lesson #1: Dropping "Bombs" and Making Your Block Chords Swing

Hey Everyone!

New series on comping. In the first few of these lessons, I'm just going to be talking about rhythm while comping and techniques to get a good feel. Obviously, metronome work, recording yourself and listening back, playing along to records, etc. will all help you get a good feel in the minutia of things, so make sure to practice all that, but here are some interesting, tangible techniques to add into your comping to give it some more swing on the macro-level.

Let me know if anyone has any thoughts!

Practice Material - Shapes and Patterns of Music

This is a project I've been working on for a long time. I'm offering it up as new practice material while isolated due to Coronavirus Lockdown. It's about 1/3 complete but it's a LOT of practice work.

I came up with the idea about 35 years ago, then put it out in a very rough form with intentions of someday making it more user friendly. In the past few years, I add to it it when I feel like messing with it. It's great practice material and is very challenging. I thought I'd add it to the mix here at VW for folks looking for something different to work on while held up at home.