I think this is one of Chick's best tunes. I've got a download file of the piano accompaniment and a pdf leadsheet available at http://tedwolff.net/armandos-rhumba-playalong.html so you can work it up and play along. Enjoy!
Ted

This is what woke me up this morning: beautiful!! My vibist friend Norbert Lucarain used to play in a band like this with flamenco rhythm section, vibes/marimba and a dancer. Victor is obviously having a great time and showing all his talent there!! I love the part with the dancer, the way she mixes flamenco with a bit of ballet, and the way they 'play' together: a lot of fun!!! Enjoy! – M

Here's another composition of mine, "Dream Dance", and a rough mix recording. When I was writing this I thought it'd be easy to perform, but it turned out to be quite difficult. My original idea for the solos was to play once through the mode cycle, spending as long as the soloist wished on each mode. We decided that'd be too many cues to make reliably, so I switched it to this chorus form, 8 bars on each mode.

I often practise montuno because I love that music. I used to play them only the melody with the left and right hand. In this montuno I finally manage to work on how the left hand can accompany the montuno played by the right hand. Studying solo vibes really gives you freedom to do stuff many styles.

Thanks

Dimitris

This is a series of performances about Tune of the Month – Solo vibes. You can criticize my performance or you can even use these posts as lessons since I play step by step the development of solo vibes according to what I practiced so far.

It’s up to you…

Performance 1: The left hand plays a 2note comping but it has more but it has a more rythmic accompanimment idea than harmonic one. It is some kind of a ghost note thing that I took playing the piano.
The right hand only soloing with one mallet.

Feel free to comment or post

Thanks

Anyone playing the 2nd weekend of November? I think I'll be in NYC then!

This is an exercise that i decided to write down, in order to share with everyone here. The title " Keeping It Close," is a reference to a concept i try to keep in mind when i improvise, especially on fast tunes with many changes. In essense what i set out to do it play all of the changes of the tune with in an octave of the vibes, without jumping around at all. this concept came from listening to horn players like parker and coltrane, taking notice how fluid there lines are in a very small range, but yet they place the notes so the harmony of the tune and also a line is created.

Here is another tune that I am working on for my accordion/guitar jam. It is a Bossa Nova called "My Little Boat" by Roberto Menescal. This is a neat tune where the changes descend chromatically, so you get a chance to work on multiple keys within the same tune. Here are the changes that I worked out. Please correct me if I am wrong.

|BbMaj7|BbMaj7|Asus A|Asus A|
|AbMaj7|AbMaj7|Gsus G|Gsus G|
|GbMaj7|GbMaj7|Fsus F|Fsus F|
|Dm7 |Abdim |Cm7 |Adim |

Barry

Here is Gary France, our Australian member on his mallet kat playing life his composition "Repercussion".

Gary commented for us this picture from his Face Book album: "Repercussions was a film that I composed, a 42 min sound track. We then presented a version where I played a set of digital instruments, mallet KAT etc live with the film, along with an actor and dancer. I have quite a few more projects that I will post from time to time."

Very cool huh? Go Gary!! :o)

Man...I think this blog thing is really helping me. Tonight I wasn't going to spend a ton of time on Afro Blue, but then I said "No, I've got to work on that transcription so I can post!!!".