Here's a short etude that will help you work on your voicings. It's just a turnaround where you can check out 13ths and b and # 9ths. It's definitely an etude the you should at least put parts of it through all the keys.

I've included a drum only track below.

I left out the bass so you can hear the sounds from only the vibes.

Finally an occasion to start blogging.

Tomorrow I think end of the day Tony is arriving here, of who I'm excited to meet in person.

I taught a general improv class these last few days in Ireland. Really really great students. I teach a lot of adults in the states so I came with a sense of what this would be about. But it wasn't that way at all. The adults I taught in this workshop were very advanced. All very musical.

The thing I've noticed about Ireland is there's a lot of singing. I hung out at vibesworkshop member John Daly's house for dinner and after dinner while we were watching jazz DVD's, his wife, daughter, son in law, and grandson were singing and dancing to youtube videos all night.

Here's the PDF to go along with Dana's Lesson 'Easy Giant Steps Patterns Part 2'.

I'm actually excited for Thursday and to go to Nico's toy shop. A buddy or mine was in New York recently and was at a studio. He emailed me and said he played this instrument and it was so beautiful. It was a VP. He said he was mesmerized by the bars.

So this is an exercise I've done a lot. There's actually 2 exercises going on here.

First I'll take a ballad and play as simply as I possibly can. It's a great way to work on your concentration and even technique. Technique? Yes because every thing is going so slow,you can really work on independence and 4 mallet ideas. But that's also the hard part, that everything is going so slow. Because now the notes become sooo important. You really have try and hear melodies in your mind and play from there. It's an incredible way to practicing improvising.

I got together with my Dad, on Father's Day today and recorded "Loss of Love" by Henry Mancini, as a Bolero.

Barry K - Vibes
Paul K - Accordion
Band-in-a-Box - Bass, Drums, Strings

This is basically a practice recording for me, trying to figure out what to do to comp.

Suggestions appreciated.

Barry

P.S. The title has no meaning to me. I just like the song.

This is a wonderful video of a very young Gary Burton performing a solo piece. I think it's an original composition of Gary's. I'm sure he'll watch the video and comment here on it.

What was amazing to me is besides the haunting beauty of this piece was his technical facility at performing a rubato flowing piece like this. I think the dampening is incredible. Check it all the dampening he's doing with his palm.

--Tony Miceli

p.s. I forgot to give credit to John Daly who caught the video on tv and quickly recorded it knowing it would be valuable to the site.