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I'm always looking to see and hear how people play in different situations and whether it holds my attnetion.

David Patrios is a great mallet player. Just look how he plays in this duo!

He's on a .... is it a Balifon? Or do I just call it a marimba? I don't know.

But he makes great melodies.

This just reminds me what we need to make music. We don't need 4 mallets going on all the time. For most of us that's a good think. We need strong melodies with chords interspersed!

Hi folks,
I wanted to take a compositional approach to the TOTM this time. I find it can be insightful to compose a melody over a tune you're working on. For this one, I was trying to keep it simple- stay with a few basic rhythmic themes. I used some 4 and 5 note groupings discussed in previous lessons and used some Lee Konitz inspired melodic ideas. I always hear Lee's type of melodic playing over this tune, especially at a slow/ medium tempos. Love it!

Had a little time today before a class at Berklee. Practicing some improvisation with the concept of Tension Resolution on Autumn Leaves. With this concept I'm focusing on using one tension and chord tones for each chord change and making to sure to resolve the tension to the nearest chord tone. It is a simple but effective improv technique that sounds the changes with a melodic flow. I'm playing 8 measures out front to establish the context of the song.

Dampening etude #3

In day 3, the rhythm changes slightly. Make the articulation of the two quartet notes fat, but keep the eighth note short.