For all the vibes history nerds out there, who played vibes on Ella Fitzgerald's "Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas?" My guess is Victor Feldman, as he's worked with Ella and Frank DeVol (the conductor/arranger) on other occasions, I think. He was even in NYC (where it was recorded) around the same time it was recorded (1960), although he was mainly in LA, right?

I could be totally wrong, so someone let me know if they know or have any guesses! I am very curious!

The last 4 measures!

The solo piece played by Henry Wilson is called Papirosn. It is an old Yiddish Theater song about a little boy trying to get by in the ghetto selling cigarettes and other things. Henry changed the harmony and melody quite bit for this arrangement, which he calls a work in progress.

It's great to hear such a diverse collection of solo repertoire on the VW site, and Henry continues to make excellent progress with his journey into all styles and possibilities.

Henry Wilson is an up-and-coming vibes player who studies with me at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He came to me with lots of excellent skills and we've been diving into solo jazz repertoire as well as some groove ideas inspired by my African and Balafon styles (many balafon lesson videos on the VW site to explore).

Down the road, we hope to post some videos of Henry in action. For now, please enjoy and comment on this lovely rendition of Prelude to a Kiss.

Attached is me (Vibes) and my Dad (MIDI Accordion) playing a Latin tune called Cumana written by Barclay Allen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumana_(song)

In the late 80s, I bought a kit to retrofit MIDI into my Dad's electronic accordion (_lots_ of soldering). We resurrected it recently, and it still works! I also created a MIDI Thru box that splits the MIDI to allow it to control up to 4 different instruments, which can be turned on/off via switches on the accordion.

I've been working a lot on vibes trio playing lately due to gigs, and it's fun trying to adapt pianist techniques to the instrument and make the trio sound full. In here, I use some dampening (check out the very end specifically), some sliding, a solo stride section I got from Emmet Cohen (although I'm sure pianists did it earlier than him), and a modulation up a half step. This is Irving Berlin's great tune, "All By Myself."

OK, a bit of a clickbait title, yes, but it's true! All three voicings I'll show you in this video have no third, which is usually the one note we absolutely need! We shall explore why that's the case.

Hello everyone,

Here's another lesson about voicings. The common theme of all these recent lessons is trying to extrapolate as many different possible voicings as we can out of a sing idea. You take any four notes, and you can do all these things we've talked about so far:

-add extensions
-alter notes
-invert the chord
-use drop 2s, drop 3s, drop 2+3s, etc.

And now we'll add planing to the list! This is when you move a chord through a scale, or just move it chromatically.

It was time for a new Vibes-Solo Video and i always liked this melody.
It's seems so simple, but...