Hard mallets, soft mallets, different mallets on different tunes???

o What are the factors that go into this decision?

Now that I have reentered the world of being a musician who is uninterrupted by a day gig, I have been thinking about what I could offer this site. In the recent post about 4 vs. 2 mallet playing, something surfaced. It occurred to me that much of what is presented here focuses on technical aspects of playing the vibes such as grips, stickings, or composing for the vibes (such as the lines or harmonies we create while we improvise). I would like to focus on the aesthetic elements.

Big shout out to Joe's Shoe and Luggage repair on Huntington Pike right outside Philly.

He went above and beyond to help fix up my old (1977) cases for my M55. He put on new handles, fixed up the straps, patched some holes up, and best of all... He did it at a tiny fraction of the cost of new cases.

He says he is game to work on anything. He does zipper work on soft cases and can order handles for anything we got. He is a local, private businessman and very accommodating.

"You Are My Sunshine" - I love the piano trios with pianists like Oscar Peterson, Gene Harris and Monty Alexander. Straight ahead jazz with an easy and swingin' time feel. Also of course in this category would be the Ray Brown trios with Gene Harris, Geoffrey Keezer and Benny Green. Here's a clip with that style in mind.

Check out the Beginning and also check it out at about 42 minutes.

I figured I'd try and record this from memory, despite only starting to memorize it a few days ago. Lots of little technical errors but the goal was to put up something displaying my level of technical competence at this point. My apologies to David for the misplaced notes and errors. I decided to learn this a couple of weeks ago for a concert gig I did last week with a harpist. I needed a little solo piece to include and I found this, and liked it. Anyway, the first video is loaded. Just beginning this journey so lots to learn.

Here is a list of things on the website, lessons I liked a lot or thought were important. For me it's all of them I guess.

Can any of you guys copy a link of something you thought was interesting and help and put it in the comments? I'll Building on this. This would be especially for new comers to the site or players who don't know what to practice. Pick something from here!

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Looking For Something to Study?

Recorded this on the fly yesterday with the phone for Fourth of July 2018. With some reharm here and there. A beautiful and timeless song.

Peter Weniger and I did a reading of the piece, originally for solo vibraphone. Basically Peter plays the melody and I try to leave out certain phrases that were written in the solo version to avoid too much information. This varies from the written solo because we deviate from the written out solo and improvise a solo together. It's not perfect, which I kind of like but I dig the feel.