Lionel Hampton talking about recording on vibes for the first time

Thought this might be interesting to vibe players. Lionel talks about the instrument being a 'new addition to the percussion family'. That sounds weird to me!!!

This is from his Autobiography on Warner Books.

Right away Louis took us on a recording session with him. We did "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy," "I'm in the Market for You," "Confessin' (That I Love You)," and "If I Could Be with You for One Hour Tonight" for Okeh and Columbia in July, and then we did one cut, "Body and Soul," in early October. But the recording session I remember best was on October 16, 1930. We were recording for Okeh, and the recording studio was also the NBC studio and sitting in the corner was a set of vibes. Louis said, "What's that instrument over there?" And I said, "Oh, that's a new instrument that they're bringing into percussion, into the drum department. They call it a vibraharp, some call it a vibraphone." At that time they were only playing a few notes on it-bing, bong, bang-like the tones you hear for N-B-C. All that big beautiful instrument and nobody could do anything with it.

To give you a little history of the vibraharp: It was invented about ten years before that. It looks like a xylophone, but the vibrato is produced by the rotation of electrically operated fans at the upper ends of the resonator tubes. It hadn't been used for anything except incidental chime notes-the intermission signals on radio programs -but it was important in those early days of radio. With all the programs live, and since it took quite a bit of time to switch from one studio to another, the intermission signal filled the gap. I'd never played it, but I'd heard about it, seen it, and just hadn't gotten around to trying it out.
It is still probably the most misunderstood instrument in music. People don't know whether to call it a vibraharp or a vibraphone or a xylophone. Both vibraharp and vibraphone were originally trade names. Vibraharp was the oldest, and that's what I've always called it. To avoid the problem, just call it the vibes.

We started to record, and then the equipment broke down or something - equipment was always breaking down in those early recording studios. We're standing around waiting ofr the technecians to repair the equipment, and Louis noticed the vibraharp again. So he said, "Can you play it?" I was a young kid, full of confidence, and I said, "Sure." So I looked at it, and it had the same keyboard as the xylophone had. He said, "Pull it out in the middle of the floor and play something on it." So I pulled it out, and Louis plugged it in. Everybody's standing around waiting to record, and I played one of his solos, note for note, that I had taken off one of his records. That ear training came in handy. And boy, he fell out. He said, "Come on, we going to put this on a record. You can play on this record."
Eubie Blake had sent Louis a copy of his song, "Memories of You," and I played the introduction on it. I'm playing vibes all through that. That's the first time jazz had ever been played on vibes. Not long ago I met a guy who said he had the original record that I played on, and he's supposed to get it for me.

Cool huh.

Open Air Headphones, GREAT but BEWARE

Have any of you guys recorded in the studio with open air headphones? They're headphones with holes in them. So you can hear sound on the outside as if you didn't have phones on. Get it? Now you can hear your accoustic vibes accoustically and hear the band in the phones. They're totally great, however there are 2 problems.

Since the phones are open, they leak. Vibe players are a little further away from their instruments then others so we're pretty much ok. If a bass player uses them sometimes the sound can get onto the recording from his phones. In otherwords the headphones mix is on the bass track. It's pretty quiet and usually doesn't matter. HOWEVER, then you go to punch in a vibe mistake, faintly you hear the old part through the bass mics! Not COOL. So be careful.

SF Jazz Collective

Someone turned me on to this cd. Hutcherson is on it and it's really great. I found it on Itunes. Anyone else have it ? What do you think?

My kid made more money than I did Saturday Night!

Here's vibe news. My son busses tables at a fancy after hours club. I played at a restaurant playing tunes. I made 150, he made 170!! He's 18.

East Coast Vibe Summit

I just got an email from a vibe player named Ken from california. He was telling me about the vibe summit they had out there.

Anyone interested in a vibe summit here on the east coast? IS THERE ONE HERE? I recommend my town Philadelphia. We could have it at the University of the arts where I teach. I could get a few guys to show up I think. How do they do it on the west coast?

Just curious to see who's sincerely interested. Who would really and honestly come.

thevibe.net

What happened to thevibe.net? If you know then email me. I'd be glad to make a new home for all of us but I wish Jerry would get up and going again. Anybody have any news?

I will publish the news feed for this blog as well as a more general news feed. If you have vibe news send it to me and I'll publish it!

the Pedal!

I just did a lesson with a student. Actually a great student, his name is Behn Gillese. You'll hear about him some day. We talked about the pedal and about how vibe players really don't know how to use the pedal. It's really easy to stereotype a vibe player. Leave the pedal down and just play. There are so many subtleties with the pedal that it's an art in itself.

Guess I could try and write a book about it and make a few bucks. I don't have the time at the moment. Tom Beckham calls one style flutter pedalling. That's when you just flutter the pedal a little bit to give your sound a legato sound.

I flutter mine on the beat a lot. I never knew it, until someone pointed it out. Now that I think about it, I like that style, it kind of puts all the notes in a nice little package. Something like that.

Make sure you're experimenting with the pedal and that you understand that it's very unsimilar to a computer byte. 0 = off and 1 = on. There's a lot more to it than that.