I gave myself the Coffee Shop Test tonight. That is I'm playing solo in a coffee shop what would I play. Here's what I did.

I like coffee shops because if you play in them they're very low key. No one is walking expecting anything heavy. I always tell my students to go get a gig in a coffee shop. So when I do my imaginary gig at a coffee shop I feel pretty relaxed, as opposed to my pretend gig at Carnegie Hall.

Then I tried to get a little Mainieri sound happening with the EQ and modulation.

Yes Tony you're right, good question: who is Joe Porter? Huh?

Melody 12 Keys. Should be simple if you know your modes and know the tune.

Angelo, J, Vaglio

With Tony Miceli's help, I am trying to get my first blog video into this edition. The song is: "A Touchof Your Lips", that I used to play frequently, years ago when someone requested it. Please let me know if it came through okay.

Thanks, angelo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0LDQzxYLvU

Kind of makes learning tunes a lot simpler doesn't it?

Oh man... I got this from Joe Locatelli on Face Book... I missed this program early September... though the gig is from 2007... Remember, that same gig when they did "Old Folks".

Enjoy!

- M

PS: I love Bobby's look when listening, the "duet tribute", and those beautiful solos: what a gang!! :o) More soon I'm sure! ;-)

This is another song from that same gig as mentioned previously.

Joe

I've been playing jazz vibes for about a year and a half now. This is from a recent gig. This was the first time I've ever played this song on vibes.

I'm posting it and maybe one more track. The reason I'm posting it, is because I'm trying to improve on improvising. I come from more of a drumset background and I find I often approach improvising more from a rhythmical background. My girlfriend told me I need to try to be more "melodic" tell me what you think,

thanks,

Joe

Here is something I would like to talk about and open up for discussion.

I think with every lesson and study that there is a hidden field that doesn't get talked about quite enough, and the hidden field is average time required for the lesson. We can pick a general number for this, that is the amount of time most musicians should put in for the required task or study.

What's great about this site is that a week can be a month or a year!!!

Check out this Parker lick. I thought it would be interesting for your guys to play it through the keys and learn from it. Very simple and to the point, but it weaves through the changes like Bach!

I won't tell you guys any more about it, why don't you figure stuff out and post it in the comments.

I'll give a free pair of my mallets to the first person who posts a record of them playing it without stopping and through all the keys.