Most Popular Lessons

This section will cover grooves. Ethnic and other grooves. When it comes to ethnic grooves like Latin and Brazilian ones, I don't consider myself an expert. This is mainly for the reason that I didn't grow in Brazil or Cuba. Those musicians are the real experts!

However I have played with many great musicians who were truly experts in these styles. They gave me tips and advice and ways to learn and adapt the music to the vibraphone. This is what I can pass along to you.

We now have a very thorough stuff of voicings here! There's so much to learn.

In order to learn a blues, you'll have to get some sort of system to help you remember the notes as well as to help transpose them into different keys. There are a few different types of blues scales, however in this podcast we'll focus on the minor blues scales. In the key of F the notes would be: F Ab Bb B C Eb F.

Joe Locke has made available free lead sheets (for a limited time) from his catalogue.
Included is music from:

Force of Four
Rev-elation
Sticks and Stings and others, at the link below:

http://www.joelocke.com/shop/

Is something like this helpful for you?

check the link above

(I've added audio and video performances of Bluesette above)

Below is a lesson plan to help you study this tune. Post some recordings here. Remember, recording yourself is a great way to work on perfecting the lessons below. Don't underestimate the power of recording and posting your work here. It's crucial to your success.

Here are some ideas for the tune Bluesette and how to study it.

Beginners:

• Memorize the melody.
• Practice root position voicings of the chords. Play them in time.
• Work up a chord tone solo

Simple ear training! Download this zip file, unzip it, add it itunes or burn it to a CD. Set it to random and then follow the notes. Pause them in the beginning. Figure each note out with as few tries as possible. DON'T GO FISHING! That's what I call it when someone just starts hitting random notes to figure out the pitch they just heard. Take your time.

If you play a wrong note, sing the wrong note and then sing the note on the cd. Check out the difference and then play the right note. Make sense?

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Here's the plan:

Today is March 15th: Deadline is March 25th.

Play this track. Wear headphones when you record. Don't record the track.

Count off with the 2 bar intro. But count like this. 2,3,4,1,2. Make sure your counting is on. Then play 2 choruses of a blues solo audio or video.

Then send it to me. After March 25 I'll put it together with my backing tracks and make a video out of it.

If you are in, please put your name in the comments.

When you send me the file title it like this.
Blue-YOURNAME

Here we will discuss basic chord voicings.