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The best thing about a jazz swing bass line is it does 2 things. The first is it is supposed to outline the chord changes very clearly. The second is in it's main function it insists on being played on each beat. A great way to study chords and improvisation is to play bass lines. This doesn't have to be strict for our purposes. By this I mean you don't have to stick to the low end of your instrument. If you're not a bass player just play quarter notes and outline the chords. Below is an example of a simple blues bass line.

Here's the Cherokee etude. It's sooo hard, I'm burnt out on it! I give up.

I wanted to play a bass line over a head. You can't do it over a solo really, but over a head I thought it was possible. I think it's a technique that can be interspersed in a tune or solo. I don't think anyone should strive to play a baseline through a whole tune.

www.vibesworkshop.com welcomes Joe Locke. Joe says hello and gives some thoughts on his playing.

Here's a very important exercise to help with chord voicings. Don't skimp on this one. Spend months on this!!

Chienese translation for Chinese Students

開離密集和弦練習(open and closed voicing)

好處：幫助你暢通無阻的演奏各種不同轉位的和聲配置(voicing)
因為練習那些位置上，姿勢上比較高難度的和弦，也能幫助你提升技巧。
如果你覺得在演奏某些和弦姿勢很彆扭，那可能是沒有調整好，要練習調整出更適當的演奏姿勢。

(打開PDF)
以Fmajor7為例：(PDF裡面都有詳細寫出音)

原位F,A,C,E. 然後只把A這個音移到高八度，得到F,C,E,A和弦。
第一轉位A,C,E,F, 然後只把C這個音移到高八度，得到A,E,F,C和弦。
速度要慢慢開始，重點是節拍器開起來，照著節奏打(play in time)。

Well..... We didn't talk about all of the vibraphone techniques but we got a bunch in here!!

Don't know what to Practice? Grab a few of these licks and just go through the keys. Courtesy of bobland.org!

Check out http://bopland.org/ for more!!

There is some symmetry on the pan, Victor talks about it here.

So here's another video of my mentor, Steve Giordano. Again listen to him play. I think you can imagine playing most of this on the vibes. For me, this is where the solo playing comes from. We can learn a lot from the guitar.

Just imagine this was a set of vibes.