I have had an ongoing discussion with the handful of students and friends who have come to me over the years about the nature of what we are doing as jazz musicians, how to study it and how it fits into the whole music in general. Recently, Tony and I were discussing some of this offline and he encouraged me to put this out here in this forum for discussion.

I love that idea.

Here's my drop 2 Danny Boy. I use it on the head, and just solo not worrying about all that.

So now I need to write this out for you guys. OK!!!

I'm swamped so bad with gigs. But I'll get it done real soon!!!! I need to work more to help me support this site!!!! HA HA, but it sure is fun, hanging with you guys.

And I have 3 great Irish friends here. Of course Mr. Joe Locke who has become a great inspiration to me. I mean huge! And what a great friend. He feels like a brother to me.

I played with the guy who taught me more about the vibraphone than any other teacher! He's a guitarist named Steve Giordano. He's amazing and a phenomenal musician.

We gigged last night. Here's a version of Falling Grace to check out.

There was a really old guy out there who kept coughing and asking what our names were!

Ok, I know Barry is a sentimentalist. So I'm going to try and crank out a drop 2 arrangement of 'Oh, Danny Boy'.

Then we should all work on that, solo on it and post it for Jon Daly and Ireland.

Maybe then we need to have a vibe hang with Pints. Although In my house I might have to do Non Alcoholic beer, but I'll still act drunk if you want.

Hopefully tonight I can crank Out Danny Boy in Finale.

Anyway let's see what kind of arrangements we come up with.

Here is the best take of the night (out of 15) of my work on arranging Danny Boy. I start out with closed voicings, then repeat with open voicings using Drop 2 of the previously played closed voiced chords. The melody uses mallet dampening. I decided to not exclusively use chord melody because it would sound too choppy. Instead, I mixed between chord melody and chord accompaniment under the melody.

I exchanged a couple nice emails with Gary Burton. He was suprised to see his video of Chega. I would imagine that that would be pretty heavy if you didn't know it existed and saw it after all this years. That's the 60's?

I'm a Gary fan from way back. When I first heard Chega, I almost cried and died. I had never thought it was possible to do that on the instrument. I'm not alone am I?

Joe's off in Idaho or somewhere playing a tribute to Lionel Hampton. I told him he better smile and grunt alot. Any other advice for Joe. I hope he plays Stardust. I know one of his solos is a transcribed Lionel solo!! I would LOVE to hear Joe copping a Lionel solo.

This is a free trio improvisation recorded at a Loft concert here in Berlin with two of my more avanced students, Martin Krümling, drums and Tim Schaefer, bass. I play with them off and on and they really inspire me! This is our 2nd try at a totally free piece. It's a little long, but.....

after tonys version with strings this is difficult to post but here you go!

enjoy.....!

Here's my 2nd version of Sword of Whispers. But this is without the strings.