Skip to main content

Forum Topic: Lines Festival - Extended Plagal Progressions by Drew Johnson

Extended plagal progressions are recurring in many standards. A plagal cadence is the motion from the IV chord to the I chord. Some tunes that have extended plagal cadences are... Blues for Alice, All of Me, All the Things You Are, Emily, etc. Once you pick this sound out, you will hear it all the time... it usually just sounds like a chromatic walk down, and in a lot of ways, that is really all it is.

Here are some lines that are a jumping off point for tackling this progression. This was compiled by Bert Ligon.

Hope ya dig it!

-Drew

Forum Topic: Using General Harmony in Solo Vibes

Hey all!

This question is specifically targeted at Tony, but I figured I would post it here so that everyone can benefit.

My question is this....

When playing solo vibraphone and you want to play general harmony, then does it a good idea (or even almost necessary) to start accompanying the specific harmony for yourself?

Triste by Tom Phelan

Here's "Triste" from my trio gig last Friday night with Mike Ball on bass and Jack Morash on drums. It's a little noisy -- I had the record levels too low and so I had to boost it. Sounds OK on earbuds but it seemed a little distorted on my car CD player. Hope it works. Enjoy :-).

Tom P.

More On Lines IMHO

My final this year in improv class is simple. Students will play Have You Met Miss Jones in 4 keys. Head, Solo, Head. Sounds like it could be simple. But for them it proves to be very difficult.

They have to play in time, and they play solo and they have to make the changes. Those three things in combination are apparently difficult. Well no apparently. Those are difficult things to pull off. Keeping everything in time, and making your line sound like the tune and doing it all yourself with no help.