What a great week I had. What a pleasure getting to meet players from all over the world. This was incredible for me!

First off, let me thank John Daly. Without John this wouldn't be possible. You know Ireland is an amazing place to me. People are helpful and totally down to Earth. John is at the top of the list. He's incredible, I've never really met anyone quite like him. This workshop would not happen without his energy. I was also talking to someone in the workshop who said that the Limerick jazz scene has John to thank as well. He's a mover and shaker!

I had a truly great time at the Ireland workshop - Tony is a master vibraphonist and definitely a missionary preaching the gospel of jazz! I certainly learned a lot from him as well as the other players at the workshop. No man is an island and it is vital to be able to connect with other players in order to grow and mature as a musician. It was quite a blast meeting other mallet players from all across Europe!

I thought I'd try recording a video of stride playing Ive been working on. But I cannot get any audio on the iMovie.

I use the iSight camera in the iMac and iMovie.

I can see the input level working fine. But it does not record.
Any help would be appreciated.

thanks

I just got back from Tony's course in Ireland and I want to take a minute to write about the experience.

Here's the second piece I recorded today.

This piece seems really hard for me on this vibraphone. I think I'm going to try to record this at my school whenever I get a chance to go there within the next month.

As requested a video of my old jenco vibraphone. I really like the sound on this old beast. It is extremely challenging to play a piece like this on it however because the bars are so tiny.

Other than mallets what do I need to bring to the workshop in Delaware? Real Book? Manuscript paper? I thought I would put this up as a blog entry in case anyone else coming to the Delaware workshop was wondering too?

Hello everyone,

Here's a version of an old classic played with a four to the bar feel reminiscent of such pianists as Dave McKenna, Teddy Wilson, Errol Garner and George Shearing. I have a lot of fun playing these kinds of tunes in this style where the left hand keeps the time and the right hand solos with rhythmic syncopation. There's a version of us doing Sweet Lorraine also in this style although it's a little slower.

I realized after a week of teaching that if I had to boil all this down to a couple sentences, It would be the following:

Do something
Make it into something
Create a finished product and present it

That seems to be the theme of this week. I realize that that's a difficult thing to do, easier to say than to do. If you're gigging then you're doing that all the time, if you're not gigging, then you need to find other ways to do this. That was a big part of this week.

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