I am very thankful that Tony Miceli invited me to join the VW and seeing what a great "tool" that it is for all members to have access to answers for their vibraphone category of instrument problems.

Here's my attempt at Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 by Heitor Villa-Lobos, arranged by Ted Wolff.

One critique I have is I have a lot of ringing. I can do the two handed mallet dampening, but I made no attempt on the places where I need to do the one-handed dampening. Something I need to work on. There are other obvious mistakes, but it won't get better than this unless I splice in the good parts of all of the takes I did :-(

I'll continue working on it.

Thanks Ted, for turning us onto this piece, and for the arrangement!

Hello there my dear workshoppers.

I have problems with my damperpad bar, and I've noticed there are some real pros here when it comes to the manufacturing and handy-work side of things, so I'll give this a shot.

Tony asked me to write a short solo piece using the harmonic structure of Bluesette, which moves downward, starting in Bb major, moving to G-, then to F, down to Eb, Db, and finally to B before returning to the top. This piece pretty much follows those key areas, although it doesn't use the same chords.

Diane and Tony played this song on both their sets here in Dallas. I used to play it with this piano player years ago. Its a great tune!

OK, so this isn't vibes related, but it's so nice to see people having fun with music :-).

I usually hate movies about music -- everthing's so serious. If they're about classical music, the main character has to have some debilitating emotional condition that he's trying to exorcise through his music. If they're about jazz or rock, the main character has to be a drug addict. Nobody has fun!

Tom P.

Hey everyone, just sharing that my new Album "Little Green Men" is now available! A quartet with piano, bass, drums, vibes featuring a few science fiction melodies and some jazz standards....

Hope you enjoy it! I'll post a free track for subscribers only next week!

enjoy!

check it out on amazon or itunes or anywhere else you can find it!
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Green-Men-Michael-Pinto/dp/B0042KZJ0K/ref=…

This is a buddy of mine, Massimo. He's a very creative cat. I actually haven't talked to him in a couple years, he was and assume still is a jeweler. He comes from a family of jewelers as I recall, his dad actually being a jeweler for the Pope. Pretty heavy.

Massimo is also a great drummer and composer. Check out the vid. Cool stuff.

The video(s) are going on-site for all to see and the message is, " if you respect your music teacher and his offerings, you can always come up with a "quality conclusion!".

Mike Pinto demonstrates "how to approach playing a melody line, as written, when you are not acquainted with it!". Note the improv's as they improve from the first chorus onward, even with my "jumping in" for a couple of bars and then "getting out", leaving him to continue on beautifully and in the end, the favorable applauds of the listeners!

Here's a pre TOTM lesson on Bluesette. I do this a lot but it's unintentional. So listen and give it a shot. From here we'll head into Bluesette.