Hi All,
I'm happy to tell you all that I will be playing Dana's and Marie-Noelle's "Soulflakes" in my December show. Dana has also given me permission to play his "Christmas Time Is Here."
I'll post more about the show in a few weeks.

Here's a lesson on breaking up chords, and leaving notes out.

For this month's "chords and harmony" topic I've written up an article focusing on tensions and several ways to use them effectively when comping. Some of the areas discussed include:

• using tensions to indicate major or minor tonal center
• available tensions for maj7, min7, min7(b5), dom7, and dim7 chords
• adding tensions to a blues progression

Hope you find it helpful.

Although this is xylo lesson, if you're a begining vibe improviser definitely check this lesson out.

[Ed will be posting here shortly!!]

Here's my review of the many things we discussed with the blues.

This is beautiful!! Illya Amar worked on that Chaplin film "Easy Street" and played solo vibes on the whole movie. This vid is an excerpt. I warmly invite you to watch it entirely (around 20 mn?) from his website: http://www.illyaamar.com/video.html

I'm sure Chaplin would have loved it: clever, right, clear, musical, moving or percuting, but all beautiful! The more I listen to Illya the more I love his playing!! Go Illya! - Enjoy guys!

Hi All,
Here's the November 6 and 9 line-up:

Behn opens the show with "Overcooked."
Then David Friedman with "Rios."
Gary Burton/Rebecca Parris and "Au Privave."
Pat Metheny and "Blues for Pat" (no vibes)
Cecelia Smith
Arturo Serra debuts
Chuck Redd
Arthur Lipner
Dave Pike with a great version of the pop hit "Spooky" which I dedicate to an old friend
Milt Jackson
Red Norvo

second hour:
Nick Mancini
Teddy Charles
Tony/Libby McDowell and a very "today" arrangement of an old song, "Blue Skies."
Bill Ware
Scott Peters
Tyler Blanton debuts
Cal Tjader
Hendrick Meurkens

So we're about to start studying chords and harmony. In my usual fashion I have no idea what we're going to do. I figure it's like this: There are a lot of vibe players here and we can collectively use all our minds together and really grow. It's really not just up to me, it's up to us. All in all we're making a huge collection of information about the vibraphone. We are all working and learning about this instrument and passing the information on!