I recently bought Jim Casella's vibraphone arrangement of Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1, which you can get from Steve Weiss. Aside from being a beautiful piece, I found it to be a great exercise in mallet dampening and independence. In particular, in some places you need to dampen AFTER the following note has been played rather than just before.

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I'm giving away 3 copies.

Here is a nice little exercise. This will help anyone, but especially if you're beginning to improvise and you're trying to construct more fluid lines. Good luck!

This is the AABA structure of Sophisticated Lady according to the Real Book, with an attempt to include some of the descending 7th chords that characterize this piece. My timing's crap and it needs a solo section.

So, there's this lick I'm struggling with -- see the attached PDF and mp3 (from midi). I want it to go at about quarter note equal 160 (the speed of the midi), but I'm not even close, maybe about quarter note equal 100-120. Any suggestions beside repeat until I get it or die of frustration? (there has been a lot of this so far :-)).

Chord Scale Chart from The Complete Guide To Improvisation

Here is a chord scale chart that lists available chord scales for various chord types. This is a two page excerpt from the Chord Scale Theory chapter of the book.

Chord Scale Chart: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0TwrpqjL6dQRkxaT05WWHRqdlE/edit?pli=1

Here's another etude on Footprints. This one isn't a chord melody; it's a simple outlining of the chords in a cool, hypnotic sounding kind of way, which I think is kind of neat for this type of TOTM. It has a straight 8th feel, and a slight reharm of chords towards the end to help stick to the one chord per two measures motif. Enjoy!