i was a little upset that i did not manage to play the head right on my first post.i kept practicing and took care of all the advises from the first post. so here´s another version of the song, i´m much more pleased with. still not perfect and after listening i thought, wow i could do some rests and play much cooler instead of doing those 8th notes chain scale licks but at least i can play something that fit´s over the tune and sounds more or less a bit be bop style.

tarik

How about we build a list of Essential Blues heads. The must knows.

Billies Bounce
Bags Groove (of course)
Sonymoon for Two
Straight No Chaser
Footprints
Berks Works

I'll stop there. what others? it would be great if we had a list of 20 of them, major and minor

I once again learned a valuable lesson. I learned about instrument sound. Using soft sticks and playing loud creates a lot of instrument noise.

I was in the studio with Diane Monroe playing duo. So nothing covering up my sound. I was hitting hard with my soft mallets. And we heard noise from the instrument. Partly from me playing over the damper bar. I had to switch to harder mallets to get the sound I wanted!

Here's a clip of Joe and I playing my original composition Hope. Joe plays a beautiful solo introduction on it as well as great lines over the Gb drone. Here's a copy of the lead sheet in case anyone wants to follow along: http://www.edsaindon.com/documents/hope.pdf

OK, so here is another related post with some images of my current setup... To even keep a trio going, unfortunately I still find it a big pain to transport vibes around. I have really refined my case situation over the years (packs into 3 cases, plus the end-frame), but I really wish it was lighter! The Yamaha YV3710 is a great pro instrument, but it is not very light.

Hey VW,

Tony is always encouraging folks to share what they are working on, and I like being able to do that on the site.

today i tried to practice be bop...

wow those abershold guys are so fast, i sucked on the head. it´s so difficult to think that fast on those bebop tunes...
if someone has a tip besides practicing slowly (i know and did it already but those abershold guys refuse to play it slow), i would be thankful :)

tarik