I'll be covering the following topics:

Sound production
Phrasing, with and without dampening
Thoughts on sticking
Practicing concepts
A non-traditional scale approach
Arranging jazz standards for the vibraphone

(I'm glad I'm going! - tm)

Here are 2 versions of mine for Woody 'n' You. The second is attached. I liked it the most, but I flip the beat around in the middle, so I'll make that the alternate take!

PART 2 - I don't like version one and have deleted it and put the alternate take up. Our kindest and toughest critic send me an email and said it didn't pass the test. I actually like this version a LOT better than the first, even though I flip the beat in the middle.

Part 3 - Now I'm listening to it on the bus and I don't hear the beat drop. Maybe I didn't flip it. What do you think?

Here is another of my tunes that we ran a trial run of at our last concert. It's called Waltz for Dasha...

Enjoy!

James

Here's the next tune for the Tune of the week series.

I saw Barry's post and thought it would be nice to do Mood Indigo this week.

Try to do a version like Barry did, so playing block chords. Voice the melody with four voices. If I have time, I'll make a video lesson on block chords. I think Tony has a lot of video's where he talks about this and also the drop 2 lessons by Dana are also a study in block chords.

I'm pretty busy this week, but I'm still gonna try to do as much as I can.

CU

TJ

For my (Tony Miceli) part of the workshop I'll cover many of the things that I cover here.

Stride Vibes
Lines (clarity)
Learning Tunes
Playing Tunes in 12 keys (How easy it really is)

I'm always interesting in talking about getting players to break down there playing and see where they are at. This is great for practicing, that is learning how to find where you're at with something and then build on it. Too many players jump right in and build on confusion. To me that's no good.

Here's all the info for the 2010 Summer Workshops.

Yikes,

This is a very special post I'm making this time... I just finished a cool chat conversation with David Friedman: what a nice man he is!

In the middle of it, he said he was willing to hear another tune where I would sing. But when I sent him the file he said: "Put it on the site for everyone to enjoy!". I didn't want to, mainly cos' there's no vibes in it, but he said I could "blame it on him"... Well, isn't he David Friedman, The King of Dampening? Oh man...

I was playing around with some open voicings and heard Mood Indigo, so I decided to work on an arrangement. The is a very rough work-in-progress (i.e., the result of just a couple hours of working on it tonight). I spliced the A and B sections together, after a bunch of takes of each section.

The A section is an exercise on chord melody. The B section is an exercise of stride.

BTW, I didn't like the melody of measure 7 as written in the fake book. I listened to some other versions and altered it a little. Hope it is right. I still have learn the melody.

Ok, I know I'm too early posting this, but I have a gig tomorrow for which I have to leave somewhere in the afternoon because of traffic, so I thought I'd post this quick version of Woody N You.

To Be honest, I didn't really study this tune a lot this week, so it's just a quick version, and I think the first Triet version...haha Well I think a fourth track of vibes will really make you nuts!

I actually wanted to arrange a version for 3 vibes with some contra lines etc. So I'll put that on my to-do list.

TJ

Here is a video I made today just talking about learing tunes.

I guess there are a lot of drummers on the site that already know a lot of tunes on drums, but switching to the vibes is like learning them all over again.

Here I talk about something I'll be experimenting with myself and I hope some of you guys will find this usefull.

TJ