Frits is one of the cats in Holland. A great player. He's also partners with Nico Vanderplas and they're now making the best vibraphones in the world. That is according to Joe Locke and John Piper. And Frits plays his 'you know what's' off. Check out this video.

If the vibes are half as good as Frits plays, look out.

I went to college and have a degree. However some of the best learning I did was off the street. Listening to musicians teach tunes to each other. That's a true lesson in analysis! Someone on a bandstand teaching a tune to a bass player in a about a minute. That always blew me away and I learned a ton from that.

Tonight, our local jazz station played Henry Mancini's Love Theme From "Romeo And Juliet" (A Time For Us). I thought I would give it a try on vibes. It's in Gm, so I got to work in a different key.

Suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Barry

Joe Locke - Force of Four will be performing at Smoke, in NYC, December 4. 5 & 6.
(w/ Robert Rodriguez, Johnathan Blake, Ricardo Rodriguez)

Smoke: http://www.smokejazz.com/

Here is a brand new interview with Joe Locke on jazz.com for you to view.

http://www.jazz.com/features-and-interviews/2008/11/13/in-conversation-…

Here is a pretty extensive discography of Joe Locke recordings. Some are hard to get a hand on, but this will give everyone here a pretty good basis of getting stuff by Joe Locke.

I'll try to post amazon links to the records I can find there for everyone to check out.

Chris Farr had did an online class tonight where he talked about Dominant Chords.

Here's the link to the video

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HERE'S THE CHAT FROM THE CLASS

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I frequently encounter students that are working on 4 mallet playing, but they're having trouble bringing the technique into their soloing. The play the head with four mallets and solo with 2.

Bringing all the mallets into play is a difficult but doable task. When you work out 4 mallets over a head you're already working on this problem. All you do then is examine how you used the mallets on the head and start applying it to soloing. It's a process that can be done. In this audio podcast I talk about that.

Watch the workshop here

Chris is a monster sax player. Played with Maynard Ferfuson and Jill Scott just to name 2 groups. He's a Philly guy and is probably the best young tenor around here.

He'll talk Wed. about playing over dominant chords and how he approaches them. It's based on the lesson I have up here on Dominant Chords, the lesson is linked under 'Check this out'.

My practice time is inversely proportional to the number of posts per day on this site. So keep it down ;-). I had a nice practice tonight. Some scales, some tunes.

One thing led to another and I started playing Norwegian Wood in 6ths. I think I might add this one to my office's Christmas party cocktail hour gig. Enclosed is an arrangement I came up with. I later heard the original and found I played it in the wrong key (C vs. original E). I think I might keep it in C since it lays nicely.