Most Popular Lessons

Hey Guys,

I thought I'd start a little discussion/lesson on how to transcribe changes to tunes. As a drummer(or a drumming vibist..haha) I have been(and still am) always struggling with learning and transcribing changes and I thought I'd start out here with some tips on how to break it down. As Tony's shrink would say: if you have a big problem, brake it down into smaller problems and the big problem will go away.

Here's a slightly difficult etude that will really work on your independence. The left and right hand is separate for the whole tune. That is they work totally independently.

Here's another etude over the tune 'My One and Only Love'. You put the chords in. It's a chord etude based on quarter notes.

You can see the top note of the chord and the up and down of the melody. You can see where there's a chord and maybe it doesn't have an important note in it, but then on the next beat that chords there. You'll be working on inversions and voice leading.

There's been talk about the Mallet Kat here. Which to me means electronic music.

I know there are varying opinions on electronic music especially pertaining to the vibes.

Well check this out. It's not a midi vibes but this should show you the worlds and places you can go to.

This is one of the most incredible videos I've seen on youtube. And the thing is this is 10 years old maybe? I think. And look what Michael Brecker does.

Wow!

Understanding Tritone Substitutions
by John Mark Piper

To understand the basics of tritone substitutions and how they typically function is an important aspect of music. Having good command of them can help a musician's reading, hearing, performing and memorizing music.

A quick and dirty video lesson. I shot this while in Ireland. The sound is not great and it's EARLY in the morning, I'm tired as you can see!

Joe Locke showed me a cool scale that Olivier Messiaen used to write with. I found out later that it's a MOLT (Modes of Limited Transposition), which is pretty interesting. A major scale transposes into 7 variations and a diminished scale 2 (if I understand this correctly).