Here's a trivia question for you:

What does Beardstown, Illinois have to do with jazz and the vibraphone?

I've been tied up with teaching, gigs and recording the next part of the Vince Guaraldi lesson! I need to get a little time and see what comments are going up. I'm glad Piper is around.

Anyway, I think I have a decent performance of the tune, now I need to talk about it and then that part will go up. I'm thinking probably Friday or so, I should be finished.

Hope someone is practicing the piece. I did more of my version which is similar to the etude and will give you an idea. I'm hoping one of you guys will record that actual etude and post it!!!

Anyone on board with "A Sight Reading Etude Per Day"? I'm curious if anyone is using the pages I'm putting up for Sight Reading. If so, please email me or post it here to let me know. I'd like to track the progress if possible but if no one is needing or using it I'll discontinue it.

I have some old Good Vibes mallets that are warped out of line about 3/16". I have newer Mike Balter mallets that have a slight curve also so I am assuming this happens with all mallets.

Do you try straightening them (steam them?), play with them as-is or go out and buy new ones.

Thanks,
Barry

yo everybody,

Bruce is the male version of Marie EXCEPT for the fact that bruce plays vibes for real. Check him out on youtube, vibeman27. He plays good!! And Bruce is American not French.

He's active online, he's positive and in my virtual opinion he seems like a great guy. i'm so happy he's hanging out on the site. many of us know him well and want him to keep us up to date.

i bring that up cause if you see 'cancer update' and you start thinking.... huh????

so even if it seems a little off topic here, many of us on the site want to hear from him!

Here's my second version of Blue Bossa.

I thought I'd record a version of Blue Bossa, since I think a lot of you guys are workingon this tune. If you're working on it you can post your version below. Then we can all talk about it together.
I actually recorded two versions, so I'll post the other one too.

In my Blog I announced that I was gonna check out the tune You and the Night and the Music.
Here is my first recording of the tune. I thought I'd post this now and when I work on it some more post another version.

Some things I noticed when listening to myself here:

- My swing is not really swing. I noticed that my lines don't really swing. I think this has to do with dynamics, also with timing, but probably more with dynamics. The trick is to get a dynamic flow in the line. Just listen to Bobby Hutcherson or Milt and you hear this right away. So I'll be working on that.

I read somewhere that Tony was experimenting with some chorus on some recordings, so I thought I'd post a version of this tune with some over the top chorus...haha check it out!

I recorded a version of Over The Rainbow tonight. So here it is. This is the second time I played this tune. Normally I feel that it's better to learn a tune from cd and work it out a while to really get it down, but I wanted to post something because I've been talking about the fact that people should post stuff... so I felt bad I hadn't done that... So it's not a great version but I guess it's ok and I'll work on a better version soon.