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.

Yep, there are several different blues scales. They each have a unique quality. Of course they do, any grouping of notes will have a quality that's unique and different from other groups. For instance play a major scale. Now flat the 3rd. Just changing one note is going to uniquely change the sound of that scale or grouping of notes.

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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We will do 7 weeks of bebop tunes with assignments. If anyone completes all the assignments they will get a vibes workshop certificate of completion.

July 11 Fried Bananas
July 18 Donna Lee
July 25 Scrapple
August 1 Crazeology
August 8 Groovin' High
August 15 Tricotism
August 22 Au Privave

The sheet music for the 7 weeks is attached to this post.

Ok do you want to really learn and work on stuff during the summer?

Here we will discuss basic chord voicings.