Etude over Giant Steps with some voicing ideas.
-Tyler

.... just wanted to share my experimenting with my GoPro camera and vibes recordings - hope you'll enjoy - eventually I'll post more - also of my midified Deagan Commander II.

This is not revolutionary impro. It's an exercise.
The deal here is to record first the vibes with no click, just inside time feel. In a second time I record the piano to check if it's match all together. This is a very good exercise inspired by Tony Miceli and Dave Friedman. ;-)

Chord Tone Soloing on Coltrane's Giant Steps. Some practice techniques and concepts include focusing on motives, soloing with chord tones while limiting the range to an octave and chord tone connection in which we go up and down the entire range of the instrument with 8th notes and go to the closest note in the new chord.

A few things to also think about: start a phrase in different places of the measure, avoid hitting beat 1 too much, use syncopated figures, connect from chord to chord (especially during a key change) with stepwise motion, use of motives.

This etude is deceptively SUPER hard!!! I think when we have chord melodies, we rely heavily on our knowledge of voicings, and that helps guide us through tunes.

But when you do something with two voices, it's almost like there's more to think about in some strange way. Anyway, try this etude to see whatI'm talking about :)

A student of mine needs a vibraphone in Argentina for future gigs. Does anybody know any vibes players there?

Original composition from David Kovins' book Vibraphone Portfolio published by Keyboard Percussion Publications