What is happening in the Vibes Workshop Discord this week!

Gary Burton reacts to a video of his solo playing that he has never seen — his 1974 Norway video, on clarity, dampening, and the two-guitar band.

Members hunt for rattan — wrapping mallets at home.

2-5-1s, engraved by AI — voicing exercises in 9 minutes flat.

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 4

We've reached Week 4, the final lesson in our study of "Body and Soul"!

Over the past three weeks, we've developed two different sets of voicings and begun combining those ideas into a complete chord-melody arrangement.

Last week, we introduced what I called a "simple" chord melody, although there was certainly plenty of challenging material to work through!

Continuing my slow march through Tony's 15 week lessons - here's lesson 4.

"Talk about chord melody".  This is where you accompany yourself by playing some harmony behind your melody line.  It's a good skill for comping for yourself when soloing, for doing more interesting and melodic comping for others, and for solo vibes playing.  The assignment here calls for leaving out the roots (except on min 7 b5) which leaves room for some nice tensions.

🎵 Play A Great Standard In One Month – Body & Soul – Week 3

Over the past two weeks, we've been developing our approach to "Body and Soul" by exploring different four-mallet voicings throughout the entire form.

Week 1 focused on voicings that loosely followed the melody, while Week 2 introduced another set of options emphasizing closed voicings and practical comping underneath a soloist.

This week, we're taking those ideas and putting them together into something a little more involved:

Friedman 5 - better dynamics than the first 4. Weird aspect ratio because I had to edit the video so it wouldn't upload as a short.