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Old 01-19-2020, 01:03 PM
agfsteve agfsteve is offline
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Location: Northeast Tennessee, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerbie View Post
Never heard, "Left Bank Two." Thanks for posting. It appears to be a tune created by the vibraphonist, Wayne Hill.

Steve, your opinions interest me and I can certainly understand them. Percussionists use the mallet instruments depending obviously on the sound that is desired for the piece. Orchestra bells, xylophones, marimbas, vibes, chimes and even piano all sound quite different. They have unique advantages and disadvantages. One thing that I always liked about vibes and piano was the lovely sound provided by the sustain pedal. Marimba, and especially xylophone, will produce more staccato-like sounds, but vibes had a wonderful sustain quality. And the motor-driven valve added another tasteful quality... a vibrato. So, I saw the vibes as having a much prettier, more musical sound than many of the other mallet-percussion instruments.

I always loved vibes and piano together. The joint efforts of Gary Burton and Chick Corea were wonderful. They've been playing together off and on for decades. Here's a "Tiny Desk Concert" from NPR that shows off the two instruments together...



And here they are performing, "Senior Mouse," a nothing video, but a terrific performance...

I listened to the first piece of the NPR one, and the first minute or so of the second one, and I did not care for them. I think at the moment they are too complex for my ear to appreciate. I think at the moment, as I get into jazz a little bit more (I've liked it off and on for about a decade without really exploring it much), I need to relate it to the music I've been listening to, which lately would be acoustic blues and folk, but also electric blues and your typical classic rock, although I'm growing tired of that (classic rock), to be honest.

So I don't think I've acquired much of the taste of jazz yet. One other thing that my mind naturally seeks out is that I'd like to imagine playing (slowly; badly!) on guitar the melody line of whatever jazz I'm hearing, so it's easier for me to gravitate to tunes where the melody is easy to follow, e.g. it stands out more from the other instruments, and is on the slower side, without a bunch of 64th notes strung together, and maybe is more of a musical motif that stands out, that I can repeat as a "doo-dah-doo-dah-doo..." as I reach for my guitar. So maybe it has to be "catchy", as opposed to free-form meandering.

Those are just rambling theories; who knows why anyone likes anything, really!
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