Reflections on my 1st professional gig playing the malletkat

This is my account of how I brought my mallet abilities to a level where I could be paid to play. 

The question was this: do the practice techniques and curriculum I teach work?

It is important to stress that before I began working with the malletkat, I had taught myself elementary xylophone. You can hear my efforts here: Early Jazz. Furthermore, I know the music that I was hired to play as I’ve played and taught it for decades on the piano. So, I wasn’t starting from scratch.

Here is the process I followed.

1. I took a few mallet lessons with Rick Dior. He showed me a grip, rootless voicings, and suggested graded repertoire, both jazz and classical. I sheaded it until I knew it inside and out. in other words, I did the work. He encouraged me to enlarge my harmonic and solo vocabulary. This will be in a future blog post.
2. I researched jazz mallets players like David Pike, Gary Burton, Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, and others. I listened carefully to their phrasing, pedalling, and general approach.
3. I work on the jazz mechanics as outlined in the 1-page jazz warmup. You can download the pdf here.
   1. 12 major scales and a few selected bebop scales. I worked tirelessly playing the broken chords and scales with expressive intention. Far from being a chore it was a thrill to hear my growing expressive abilities distract from my technical limitations.
   2. 60 jazz chords; solidly for comping, and broken for soloing.
   3. The 24 rootless ii V I chord progressions in major and minor keys.
   4. Minor Blues scales in the keys of a, d, c, f, bb, eb
   5. Playing the guide tones consisting of 3rds and 7ths through many chord progressions.
4. I played a lot of technical exercises to develop my hand eye coordination.
5. I watched YouTube videos playing the vibes. You can see which ones in previous blog posts.
6. I practiced tunes primarily by playing along with professional performances. I call this the Bill McBirnie method. His method of practicing is to pick a tune, load up a number of YouTube recordings and spend the afternoon playing along and transposing as needed. I practiced the chord progression patterns in step 4 with software programs.
7. I worked on phrasing and being expressive within the limitations of my mallet technique and agility. I credit this and knowing the tunes as the primary factor in the success of the evening.

 
My Future plans.

1. Building and retaining repertoire.  
2. Enlarging my harmonic vocabulary.