Believe it or not, I wrote a percussion piece and and playing it up at Millersville University where James Armstrong teaches. He's a great percussionist and a great friend. He really helped me get the piece in shape!

Anyway!!!!! He gave this book of Hymns and Christmas tunes for any of you Catholics or Christians out there!

Would love to get some jewish songs or Kwanza or whatever else you might have!

The book is attached!

Something special happened during the gig I just did tonight in a restaurant.
The place was half-full - about 25 people. I was playing alone, with play-along-home-recorded CDs, split guitar and vibes.
At the middle of the gig I decided to try a new set on vibes, with a lot of the TOTMs and others tunes worked here on the site : Stella, Have You met Miss Jones, All the things, Anthroplogy, Billie's bounce, If I were a bell, Blue Bossa, Bluesette, Soul eyes, SomedayMPWC etc... I was playing most of them live for the first time, then I was a bit nervous...

@0:44. 8 bars of swinging in your face bop.

damn.

Oh man... This is beautiful!! Awesome music... and great close shots on Mike's hands and incredible grip!

Now if you watch from 6'50, it seems he crosses on the left hand and doesn't on the right one... And from 8'55 it looks like he switches his right hand to... some kind of... Burton grip for a while?!! :o)

Wooo!!!!!! Tonight was a HUGE breakthrough because I have finished the introduction!!! (well...at least I have the notes...still have to make it sound smoother and work on articulations and stuff...).

But anyway..

Day 5:
This day...doesn't count. Part of my job involves planning programs for students, and yesterday was my biggest program of the semester. So...I woke up way too early, went too bed way too late, and excused myself from practicing because this event only happens once a year (and it was a huge success!).

Day 6:

This is a series of performances about Tune of the Month – Solo vibes. You can criticize my performance or you can even use these posts as lessons since I play step by step the development of solo vibes according to what I practiced so far.

It’s up to you…

Performance 5: You solo with 2 mallets and in gaps or when you want to fill the chords the 1 mallet play the bass and 1 and 2 plays a 2 note comping. Most of the times you use eight notes to do this trick. It makes sound the vibes richer in harmonic and rythmic way!
Don't judge hard on this one

Feel free to comment or post

This is a series of performances about Tune of the Month – Solo vibes. You can criticize my performance or you can even use these posts as lessons since I play step by step the development of solo vibes according to what I practiced so far.

It’s up to you…

Performance 4a: In this performance I solo with 2 mallets and I sometimes hit the melody with the 4 mallets creating that way a strong harmonic statement.

Hi All-

I always say this, but it's been a very long time since I've posted here. Looking forward to getting back into it.

For the first time since I've had this group Nós Novo (almost five years now,) I have a good video of one of our performances to share with you.

Hi vibists around the world

Does anybody have made experience with the Mike Balter wide bar series mallets? I've bought 2 pairs of the nr.31. They are quite hard, but have a very nice sound. But I've heard that mallets with short handle and big heavy heads will detune the bars from c5 up to g5. Does anybody play thes Mike Balters number 31, wide bar series?
Sandro

This is a series of performances about Tune of the Month – Solo vibes. You can criticize my performance or you can even use these posts as lessons since I play step by step the development of solo vibes according to what I practiced so far.

It’s up to you…

Performance 3a: The left hand continues to play a 2note comping (rythmic way) but now also hit sometimes with the melody.
The right ONLY soloing

Performance 3b: The only difference here is that you add in your solo and one mallet of the left hand

Feel free to comment or post

Thanks