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How Leigh Stevens is Ruining My Life :-)

I can't believe how much I'm learning about the vibraphone. I spent the day with Leigh Stevens at the Malletech factory and once again learned so much about the instrument!

Leigh had me play the Omega for a bit. It sounded great. Then he told me to hang on for few minutes. He turned the heat up on the room. I went from sixty five to 70. Then he had me play the Omega and it sounded So much better.

Creating a Solo with Tension Resolution - "All The Things You Are"

Here's an improvisational technique of creating a solo based upon the use of tension resolution. This excerpt (pages 68-71) from The Complete Guide To Improvisation showcases a step by step process of creating a solo on the standard "All The Things You Are". This improv technique can create rich, forward moving lines that sound the changes while avoiding licks. I use this concept with my students and get good results fairly quickly. Other solos in the book include "Stella By Starlight" and "All Of Me".

Spring Valley Kids (first attempt at video)

Help! I'm trying to figure out how to get good sound on video. Please skip the mic placement advice, I know about that. This is worse than that. I need help with equipment and programs. I have Macbook, Garage Band, good mics, 2-channel Focusrite digital interphase that I'm using. I just go directly from the headphone jack of the interface to the mic jack of the canon camera. I tried using Garage Band and Imovie but I had a delay problem/sync between the video and audio. How can I learn this?

Master musician Jim Hall passed

Just saw that guitarist Jim Hall passed away. Very sad. A master guitarist that played with musicality, subtlety, nuance, taste, understatement, clarity,...the list goes on. Many guitarists revered Jim Hall. I would like to add that although I didn't know Jim, he seemed like a real gentleman and beautiful person. Gary, maybe we could get your thoughts about Jim since you knew him and recorded with him? Thanks, Ed