Walt Dickerson's daughter, Liz, is a friend of mine. When we first met, we were talking about him and I wrongly assumed that the tune Elizabeth was written for her; it was not... he wrote it for his wife (Liz's mother). Liz also told me that day that her favorite recording of all the ones her dad did was not Elizabeth, but rather one called Bacon and Eggs.

I asked my students to prepare 2 tunes each and then come over and stream the performance onto Facebook. And we did. I'm very proud of these students.

I posted this before. But I can't find it!!!

I've added my student Oliver Mayman playing the pattern. Check out what he does with the pattern.

I think there is so much in Balafon playing for vibe players to study! Don't think about where you can play patterns over and over. Well, you can, but the point is to have that independence when accompanying yourself, or playing counterlines!

Attached is the pattern that Oliver is playing.

I've listening to this cd. I really like is. Here's clip from youtube.

He sounds good right?

Just found him.

Do you guys do Google Alerts? I have one for Vibraphone news. It's cool. Google it and discover new vibe players and pass them along to us :-)...

Hi all,

Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" with solo vibraphone techniques via Gary Burton. In working on the solo vibraphone book during my sabbatical, I revisited some of the techniques and concepts that I learned from Gary. A few are: filling in the 8th notes between the melody/improv with left hand voicings (left hand jabs), single notes, broken arpeggios and/or counterpoint. (Gary does this a lot in his solo versions of Jobim's Chega de Saudade and O Grande Amor). Also the use of runs and arpeggios to break things up a bit.