Gary Burton | NEA Gary Burton Transcript Music Credits: “Storm,” composed by Chris Swensen and performed by Gary Burton, from the cd Who Is Gary Burton? “Sing Sing Sing,” composed by Louis Prima, performed by the Benny Goodman Orchestra, from the album Sing Sing Sing. “Move,” composed by Denzel Best and Paul Walsh, performed by Hank Garland and Gary Burton from the album Jazz Winds From a New Direction . “Jive Hoot,” composed by Bob Brookmeyer, performed live in London, 1966 by Stan Getz, Gary Burton, Steve Swallow and Roy Haynes. “Boston Marathon,” written and performed by Gary Burton from album Good Vibes. “Crystal Silence” composed by Chick Corea and performed by Chick Corea and Gary Burton from the album, Crystal Silence. “La Fiesta,” composed by Chick Corea and performed by Chick Corea and Gary Burton from the album, Duet. “Duet Suite,” composed by Chick Corea and performed by Chick Corea and Gary Burton from the album, Duet. “Reunion,” composed by Mitchel Forman, performed by Gary Burton and Pat Metheny from the album, Reunion.

Jo Reed: You’re listening to the music of vibraphonist and 2016 NEA Jazz Master Gary Burton. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. Gary Burton is not only a 2016 NEA Jazz Master; he is a musical treasure whose artistry in playing is matched by his generosity as a teacher and mentor. Burton’s four-mallet technique on the vibraphone gave the instrument a new musical vocabulary in jazz. He was one of the creators of jazz fusion in the late 1960s and had a decades-long career at the Berklee College of Music. His range as a musician is remarkable—equally at home with solos, duos, quartets, and chamber orchestras. And he moves with fluidity from country to rock, from tango to classical. But Gary Burton always returning his first best love, jazz. The breadth and depth of his career is even more extraordinary when you realize that Gary Burton was largely a self-taught musician growing up in rural Indiana. Gary Burton: There wasn't a lot of music available to me.

I had started playing the vibraphone and the marimba when I was six. We lived in a larger city at the time. My parents wanted all three of the kids in the family to have the opportunity to take music lessons. And there happened to be a lady that lived nearby who played the marimba and the vibraphone and gave lessons, so that's where they took me. And then we moved to this small town. And in fact, after we moved, I didn't have a teacher, because there were no vibraphone players nearby or anything. And I just was sort of learning on my own. Music was easy for me. I learned already how to read music, and how to manipulate the mallets and play the instrument, so I just kept on going. It was fun. Jo Reed: Music was about to become a lot more fun for Gary when he listened to a record and discovered jazz. Gary Burton: I didn't know anything about jazz, at first, but somehow I stumbled across a jazz record. <Music> It was by Benny Goodman, and I was captivated by it. It was very exciting rhythmically, and they were doing this thing which we now know as improvisation.

They were making up their parts as they played. I was fascinated by that. And so from then on, I was in love with jazz, and I kept trying to find records and copy what I was hearing and see if I could do it. Jo Reed: The vibraphone was invented in about 1930. So when Gary started playing, the instrument was 20 years old, still fairly new but with a strong first generation of players like Lionel Hampton, Red Norvo, and Milt Jackson. And while Gary looked up to and learned from these players, he found inspiration somewhere else. Gary Burton: My first big influences turned out to be piano players. In particular, one of the leading innovators of the day was Bill Evans, who had just started putting out his own records in the late '50s, early '60s, and was kind of the new, exciting thing in jazz. And so I listened to him play, and I said, "If he can do that on piano and make it so musical, then surely I can do something similar on vibraphone." Jo Reed: And the influence of the piano was certainly a factor in Gary’s unique style of playing.

Gary Burton: It also encouraged me to start playing the vibraphone with four mallets instead of two, which was the style of the day—playing two mallets. I played alone a lot because of where we lived, and it sounded too empty. I needed harmony; I wanted it to sound complete. So I started with slow pieces where I could manipulate the four sticks, even though it was fairly clumsy at first. But as I got more dexterity with it, I could play faster songs as well. It became my way of playing the vibraphone. I didn't know that no one else was really doing this at the time until I got to Boston, frankly, and everybody said, "No, nobody plays that way. You should only play with two." But I had found my own way. And I was too far into it to change styles. <Music> Jo Reed: Luckily Gary wasn’t stuck in isolation. He found some people to jam with in Evansville, about an hour away from the family home. Gary Burton: I started finding older, local musicians who were not major jazz players by any means, but they already had been playing jazz for years and a piano player, a bass player and so on.

Pretty soon I proved good enough to get invited to be on some of their gigs. I played in local clubs and local at parties and events and so on. This would be, now, in high school but particularly the last two years of high school. Jo Reed: Still, Gary wasn’t thinking about a career in music, let alone one in jazz. But that was about to change. Gary Burton: I was a straight-A, honors society student. I had kind of settled on going to medical school. And I went to the first ever jazz band camp which happened to be taking place at Indiana University, a few hours' drive from where I lived. It was so great that when I came back home, I went to my parents and said, "I've changed my mind. I'm going to try to be a jazz musician." To their credit, they didn't blink; they were supportive. And when I look back on it, I'm amazed. I mean what parent wouldn't at least put up a fight? My goal was to go to school for jazz and graduate and move to New York. And if I was lucky, I might get to be on a record someday. Jo Reed: That day came sooner than Gary Burton expected.

Gary Burton: There was a guitar player in the country music scene named Hank Garland in Nashville, Tennessee. He also had fallen in love with jazz and had become quite a good jazz player. And he convinced his record label to let him make a jazz record instead of a country record and wanted to team up with a vibraphone player. He liked this idea of the sound of vibes and guitar. But there were no vibraphone players in Nashville. Jo Reed: But Garland knew a musician from Indiana who knew Gary, and Burton found himself auditioning for Hank Garland. It went well. Gary Burton: And he asked me what were my plans and I said, "Well I'm finishing high school in another month and then in the fall, I'm going to Boston to go to college." So he suggested that I move to Nashville for the summer, and we would play in a local club on weekends, and we'd make this record which sounded amazing to me. So that's what I did. I packed up and drove to Nashville and we made the record. <Music> And at the end of the summer, one of the fans of our little trio when we played at the club was a guy named Chet Atkins, a famous country guitar player.

And also he headed up RCA Victor's record division in Nashville. He came to me and said, "We should sign you to a contract." I was 17, and I left for school, Berklee College of Music, with a record contract in my pocket. So that was quite a summer. Jo Reed: It’s telling that despite the experience of performing and a record contract in hand, 17-year-old Gary Burton was still determined to go to music school. Gary Burton: I had figured out a lot of music by ear and experimentation, but I didn't know how it was really organized. I didn't know what to call things. I knew this chord sounded good, and that one sounded good here. And this one led to that one, but I didn't know why. So I needed information. I felt like I needed to go to school. That turned out to be a wonderful experience. The school was great. It was tiny, but great teachers, great fellow students, and a very active music scene around Boston; that was just as important as the school. Then I ended up having a relationship with Berklee for the rest of my career as a teacher, administrator, and so on as well.

Jo Reed: People often think of New York as the epicenter of the jazz world, but Gary discovered Boston had a lot to offer an eager young musician. Gary Burton: The jazz community in Boston, in some ways, had many advantages over even being in New York. Because of Berklee, there was a student and teacher community in Boston. And the teachers were the best local musicians in town, and they played regularly, so you could go hear your teachers play. If you were actually good enough, you could even get on gigs with them. And I played a lot of dates with some of my teachers. So the scene was very accessible to young musicians in Boston. Jo Reed: But after college, New York City and its jazz scene called, and Gary Burton answered. Gary Burton: Lucky for me, I got a job fairly soon after moving to New York thanks to a wonderful person and musician named Marian McPartland. Jo Reed: Marian McPartland was so taken with Gary’s playing, she called her good friend, the pianist George Shearing, who happened to use the vibraphone in his band. Gary Burton: I had been in New York maybe a month, and I got a call to come and audition for Shearing.

And that got me my first full-time touring-around-the-world. I toured with George for a year. I was 19. And then he decided to stop touring for a while, and suddenly I was out of work and back in New York wondering what to do next. And I went on unemployment. I got two checks, and then I got hired by Stan Getz. And that was my next band, and I toured with Stan for three years. <Music> Jo Reed: Gary joined Stan Getz in the mid-1960s, a time of great change both socially and musically. Gary Burton: Jazz had a big challenge when, what I call, modern rock music arrived. In the mid-'60s, here came the Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones—more sophisticated rock, more sophisticated recordings. A typical Beatles record included a string quartet on one track, some Indian sitars on another. Different kinds of music, different styles of music, different recording techniques—this caught the ear and the attention of a lot of people in the jazz world, because here was something that we could actually appreciate. And it was hard to ignore, particularly if you were my age, 25 years old.

I became a huge Beatles fan, and it gave me a sense of where I wanted to go with my own band when I left Stan's, pretty much, traditional jazz band to start my own. Part of it was just what I was excited about musically, and part of it was cold calculation. I looked at the audiences we were playing for and noticed that I was 25, and they were 40 and 50. And I figured it out, and I said, "Well, by the time I'm 40, they're going to be 80, and they're not going to be coming to see me play." So I needed to find a younger audience, my age. So I had the idea to somehow combine rock and jazz. That was my first band, and the music press started calling the music, fusion jazz. Jo Reed: The sound was pure gold. <Music> Gary Burton: I was thrilled that the public and the jazz fans accepted what we were doing. If we had failed, it would have been an epic failure. I would have looked ridiculous. “Who thought you could do this?” There was a certain backlash from jazz musicians.

You know, rock was the traitor; it was taking away our audience. There was a real sense that we were in danger of being overwhelmed by the rock scene. Jo Reed: But as much as Gary appreciated rock, jazz had pull that was irresistible. Gary Burton: Jazz has one unique factor: it's based on improvisation. Other musics have some degree of improvisation. But jazz music, this is where the spotlight is. The degree of sophistication of improvisation in jazz music is pretty unique to jazz. And that is a real siren call to many musicians. If you have a knack for it and really love the process of how improvisation works, it's really hard to give it up. No other music seems quite as exciting. You become an on-the-spot composer, as well as performer. So there's a lot more room for personal expression. <Music> By ’69, ’70, I had arrived. I was no longer a new thing just starting out. I was now established. And I was able to be more selective about what gigs I would take. I could count on the players I wanted.

I was feeling quite positive at that point in my career, just looking forward to seeing, “Well, where is this going to take me musically?” Jo Reed: It took Gary Burton to the collaboration of a lifetime. <Music> Gary Burton: I've been lucky to have a few collaborations in my career that have lasted for years and years. And a lot of great music has come out of each of them. Certainly, the most significant has been with Chick Corea. <Music> We sort of knew each other, and we ended up in 1972 in Munich at a jazz festival. There were five different musicians who were on this concert, and the concept was that each of us would play a solo segment. But the organizer then got the idea that he'd need some kind of finale, some kind of finish. "Can you all jam a tune together or something?" And it turned out that only two of us had said yes, me and Chick. We came out and we played this piece, "La Fiesta," now one of his well-known pieces. <Music> The audience went crazy. They loved it.

Jo Reed: There happened to be record company executive in the audience that night who was convinced Gary and Chick should cut a record as a duo. Gary Burton: We thought, “Oh, come on. Who wants to hear a whole hour of just piano and vibes? Come on.” Jo Reed: But the rep was persistent and some months later, Chick and Gary found themselves in a Berlin recording studio ready to cut their first record together. Gary Burton: We had put aside three days, because we weren't used to playing together. We thought, "Well, we'll have to work up what tunes to play, and rehearse them, and so on." But, it ended up, we did the whole thing in about three hours. Everything was a first take except for one song we did twice. We sat around listening to the tapes for a while and said, "Well, we're done." So we changed our plane tickets and flew home. And the record came out on this very small German label. It didn't even have a distributor in the US at the time; you had to order it by mail. We didn't think much would happen. It'd be something that would slip under the radar.

Our agent got a call wanting to book a concert for us at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. So we went to the college, to the concert hall, and walked in, and it was huge—4000 seats. I thought, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be dreadful. We're going to have like 200 people scattered out there in this huge place and the two of us up on stage trying to play." It came time to play, and I looked around the curtain at the audience and was stunned; it was full. And then I was panicked about how we would handle that, because there were only two of us on this big stage. So we went out and we played; it was a big success. And we just kept getting more requests for concerts. By that time, I realized that there was something definitely going on with this new duet that we had. And it's turned into a major part of both of our careers. <Music> Over 44 years now that we've been playing together. We play every year. And we do a little tour, make a new record, or something. We've won six Grammy’s playing together on different collaborations of our duet records.

Jo Reed: So why is it that some musicians click and play together as though they born to it? Gary Burton: The musical connection that I have with Chick Corea is something that's unique in my history. You have some degree of rapport with any musician you play with. On a scale of one to 10, with some players, it might be two or three, "Ok, we can play together." With somebody else, it might be six or eight. "Yeah, we really can feel a lot between us going on." With Chick, it was 10, almost from the beginning. Improvisation is like, in a way, like having a conversation with someone with one big difference. When you talk back and forth with a friend who you know well, and you can even jump ahead. You can guess where they're going to go next, because you know them so well. But when you're playing music, you talk at the same time. You're playing at the same time. But you're having, nonetheless, this conversational interaction. <Music> It's just a unique thing that the two of us happened to find each other.

Jo Reed: Gary Burton is also a groundbreaker in jazz with his decision to be open about his sexual identity. Gary Burton: There have been very few openly gay musicians in jazz. I was certainly one of the first. There are others. There have been others. But it's a rarity compared to – even pop music seems to have more opening gay musicians and performers than jazz does. That was just, in a way, the nature of the music. For me, the music itself was so powerful and attraction that I had no doubt that this was what I wanted to do. And whatever it took, I was going to go for it and see my way into it. Jo Reed: Gary Burton also took on a whole separate career as a teacher, then dean, and finally vice president at the Berklee College of Music. He worked this second job for 33 years, retiring in 2004. Gary Burton: I started doing clinics or master classes. I found that talking about the music and being in the role of the teacher was pretty natural for me. So I called Berklee, my alma mater, and said, "What do you think about me moving to Boston and teaching?" So they thought that was a great idea.

The idea was to teach and continue touring during the vacations, and weekends, and so on. And I almost killed myself the first couple of years fitting so much stuff in. I didn't want the jazz world to think I had dropped out, so I filled every weekend and filled every vacation period. But I was really enjoying it and getting a lot of ideas about music from the experience of working with the students. There's so much excitement that comes watching young players that can't wait to get to the gig each night. Every night is a new thrill, and it rubs off on us old-timers when we're around that. I call it the unpredictability of youth. It's one of the great sources of energy and inspiration that I have found in my career. Jo Reed: Jazz has a rich history of mentorship. It makes sense because for decades, you couldn’t study jazz in a school; you had to learn on the bandstand. Gary Burton: I learned about mentoring, I think, from Stan Getz, who had a history of hiring young players to play in his bands. He hired me when I was 21 years old. He hired Chick Corea as a young player, and many others through the years.

While Stan himself wasn't really very verbal about musical things, he was a great role model, musically, with his playing. I felt like a learned about the business, as well as about the music, from Stan. It was a natural thing for me, then, to continue on with this same kind of approach to being a band leader. And it tied in with my teaching, as well. Soon I was teaching students, and in some cases, hiring them when they graduated to be in my bands. Sometimes they found me, and that was the case with Pat Metheny. <Music> Jo Reed: It turns out Pet Metheny was a great Gary Burton fan. The two met when Gary played a festival in Pat’s Kansas hometown. Metheny in college at the time in Miami, and he hopped a bus, and showed up in Kansas ready to play. Gary Burton: He sounded really good, very promising for a student, and I could see the talent was really strong. His last question was what should he do. I said, "Leave Miami [laughs].

Go somewhere where there's a very active jazz scene—where there's a lot of other players—either New York or Boston.” And he showed up in Boston a few months later, and he started just playing locally. And within a year, he was joining my band. We ended up playing for three or four years together as he developed into the Pat Metheny who went on to form his own bands, and his own records, and so on. <Music> But this seems to be my history. I find young players and not always, but sometimes, I can just extrapolate where they're going to be 10 years from now. I can hear it in what they're playing. And I want to share in it and play with them. It's always inspiring to come across a young player who's discovering their talent and to see it develop and helped. Sometimes, I think, they don't even need me. They would get there anyway. But I flatter myself to think that I played a part. Jo Reed: There is no doubt that Gary Burton has played a big part in the careers of many musicians. And he’s played a big part in expanding and enriching the music, itself.

But Gary also believes deeply in legacy and the importance of keeping that legacy alive. Gary Burton: Jazz musicians from my generation are in a very unique position. I was lucky enough when I was starting out to meet, and get to know, and even play with some of the giants of jazz—the people who created this music almost out of whole cloth. Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Lionel Hampton – I knew these musicians, played with some of them, were given advice by them, were friends with them. And now, my generation is the bridge to the young musicians of today who we're their last connection to the beginning of jazz. We were there, so we can tell them stories about the musicians, and we can share our experiences with it. We have a big responsibility, frankly, to pass on our experience to the next generation who are going to be carrying this great music into the future. <Music> Jo Reed: That was 2016 NEA Jazz Master and vibraphonist Gary Burton. You've been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

2016 NEA Jazz Master and Vibraphonist One of the great jazz virtuosos take us through his musical journey. Download podcast: Gary Burton — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm vibes Gary Burton (born on 23 January 1943 in Anderson, Indiana) is a jazz vibraphone player, known for developing the innovative technique of playing the instrument with four mallets, rather than the usual two. He studied with Herb Pomeroy at the Berklee College of Music, where he met the composer and arranger Michael Gibbs, with whom he subsequently collaborated frequently. Burton, who released his debut album in 1961 at the age of 18, spent the early parts of his career playing… read more Equipment for Gary Burton The Musser M-48 2009 Marks the 60th Anniversary of Gary’s Introduction to Musser Mallet Instruments! At age six Gary began studying marimba and vibraphone and his first instrument was a Musser student model. Soon after, he moved up to the then newly manufactured Century model marimba and vibraphone, and he has continued to play Musser instruments throughout his career.

In 1964, Gary suggested the concept of a vibraphone which used a full-size keyboard but employed a collapsible frame, and thus was born the very popular M-55 Pro model vibraphone. Until the M-48 vibraphone was introduced in 1992, the M-55 was the most popular instrument of the Musser line. Gary designed the M-48 first for his own personal use, but demand was great enough to warrant manufacturing it for the commercial market and it has now become the best-selling vibraphone for Musser. The intent was to create an instrument with a full keyboard that could be packed in extremely small cases for convenient transportation, and at the same time have a very stable, professional instrument suitable for major concert performances. Gary’s vibraphone since the late eighties has been the M-48 model, and he alternates between two sets of keys, one tuned to A=440 and another to A=442, depending on the tuning situation he encounters as he tours and performs. (The traveling cases for Gary’s M-48 are constructed of black fiberboard, and were designed by Gary to obtain minimum dimensions.

They are fabricated for him by the S&M Case Company, Lawrence, MA.) Gary Burton Mallets When it comes to mallets, Gary explains that it is a very personal matter. “Most players go through a long period of experimentation looking for the right combination of weight, distribution, thickness and stiffness of shafts, type of wrapping and hardness. There are so many possibilities. I made a lot of my own for years, and adapted ones I purchased. Finally, a young man who called himself Bill Marimba showed up at a concert one day with a set of mallets based on the type I had been using at the time, and they were exceedingly well made. And, they sounded great and felt great.” Gary began using Good Vibes mallets manufactured by Bill Marimba and has continued with this same mallet design to this day. There have been transitions in the ownership of the Good Vibes name and Gary Burton mallets over the years. The Good Vibes company eventually was purchased by Musser, and in due time the materials used for Gary’s mallets were not available, so his model was discontinued.

More recently, the Vic Firth company has been manufacturing Gary Burton mallets according to Gary’s specifications, though there have been occasional changes due to availability of hard-to-find materials in some instances. Gary says he prefers a fairly stiff shaft, though not the dowel rods that some players like. “I want at least some flex in the mallets to absorb some of the shock of the attack on the bar, otherwise I begin to feel the results in my arms and elbows. But, I don’t want the shafts too whippy, either. It’s a delicate choice. If the shaft is too thick, it feels uncomfortable and clumsey, and if it’s too thin, there isn’t enough stiffness to play right. It has to be just right.” A medium hard rubber ball with 100% nylon wrapping is Gary’s preference. “Nylon never wears out, so it’s the best wrapping for the mallets. The only problem is that pure nylon yarn is rarely manufactured these days because of laws banning it’s use in making clothes due to it’s tendency to be highly flammable. But, it’s definitely the best material.

My guide for the right hardness of the mallet is that I want to be able to play across the dynamic range from very soft to very loud with a minimum of change in the tone of the instrument. A mallet that is too hard sounds good at soft levels, but becomes clanky and unpleasant at louder volumes. A mallet that is too soft just doesn’t have the bite to cut through at higher volumes. Again, it has to be just right.” Being a jazz musician, Gary doesn’t carry a large assortment of different mallets with him as a studio musician might. “Since I don’t know from one moment to the next what dynamics I will want to play, I need an all-purpose mallet that I can use to my advantage in all situations.” The Burton Home Keyboard Instrument Gary’s other instrument for home use is a Yamaha DGII Electronic Grand Piano with Disklavier. He finds it very useful for learning and developing new material, for exchanging pieces of music with friends, and just for enjoyment.

“I majored in piano when I was in college, and while I don’t play piano in professional circumstances, I still enjoy playing keyboard music and find it has been very helpful to my concepts of vibraphone playing over the years.” Burton’s Microphones Since 1972, Gary has used two Neumann U-87 or U-89 microphones when recording, so all record releases for the past two and a half decades have been recorded with Neumann microphones. On live concerts, he is fairly flexible regarding choice of microphone. “I usually go with whatever the sound crew prefer, almost any high quality micorphone is suitable for live performing when the effects of a large hall, natural reverberation, leakage, and many other factors make a high degree of subtlety elusive. Also, I have never been attracted to using pick-up’s on my vibraphone. Decades ago, when microphones were pretty primitive, I would have liked pick-up’s, I suppose, since the micophones didn’t help much.

But, today’s microphones are quite adequate in all but the most high volume on-stage performing, and the instrument’s dynamic range isn’t compromised as is the case with pick-ups.” Gary Burton, Author and Resurgent Jazz Musician - The New York Times The New York Times Music |The Jazzman With a Debt to Nashville Search The Jazzman With a Debt to Nashville Gary Burton, Author and Resurgent Jazz Musician Continue reading the main story Photo Gary Burton, the groundbreaking jazz vibraphonist whose autobiography, “Learning to Listen,” will be published next month. “I’ve always been something of an outsider,” he said. Credit Jimmy Katz SOUTH YARMOUTH, Mass. — There’s a moment in “Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton,” an autobiography due out on Sept. 3 from Berklee Press, that depicts the author’s earliest encounter with Miles Davis. It happened at a summer jazz festival in Mr. Burton’s home state, Indiana, and probably could have gone a little better. The year was 1959. Mr. Burton was 16, a precocious vibraphonist enrolled in the first Stan Kenton Jazz Camp.

Davis was playing the festival with his sextet, which had just made the album “Kind of Blue.” “As he paced around on the grass behind the stage,” Mr. Burton writes, “I snapped his photo with my Brownie camera, flashing the bulb in his face, to which he simply replied, sarcastically, ‘Thanks, kid.’ ” It’s only a passing exchange in the book, but it captures something essential about Mr. Burton. “I’ve always been something of an outsider,” he said recently, within the first two minutes of an interview on Cape Cod. “I came from a farm town, playing an instrument most people don’t even know. I was this young kid, and all the members of the bands I played in were in their 40s. And I was gay, although I hadn’t quite figured it out at the time.” What’s emphatically true of Mr. Burton, who also just released an excellent album, “Guided Tour” (Mack Avenue), is that he now fits the profile of an ultimate insider and savors his stature. He has won seven Grammy Awards, sharing all but one with the pianist Chick Corea. ( They received their most recent this year.

) He played a pioneering role in the birth of jazz-rock. His bands have been incubators for important younger artists, including the guitarist Pat Metheny. During a more than 30-year affiliation with the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he helped change the game for jazz education, which has in turn transformed the broader landscape of the music. Continue reading the main story Partly as a result, the sound of jazz’s ascendant mainstream — a music at once harmonically sophisticated, rhythmically streamlined and un-self-consciously earnest about blending traditions and source materials — bears Mr. Burton’s influence. “Most young players today aren’t coming from one school or another; they’re coming from a wider place,” said the saxophonist Joe Lovano, who holds the Gary Burton Chair in Jazz Performance at Berklee. “Gary was always coming from that wide place.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Burton, who turned 70 this year, lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He has done little to cultivate the air of mystique of Miles Davis and other major figures in jazz. His is an approachable sort of enlightenment, easy to grasp and easier to take for granted.

“My upbringing was always: Be nice, be courteous, try to make people feel good,” he said. Often when he meets people for the first time, they’re surprised to learn that he’s a jazz musician. “You look like a schoolteacher,” they tell him. “Learning to Listen” sheds new light on his unusual entree to jazz. He happened to grow up in a town with a marimba and vibraphone teacher, and he began lessons at the age of 6. His family developed a traveling act around him, playing state fairs and rural talent shows. (Among his tricks was a version of “Flight of the Bumblebee,” jackhammered on the marimba while blindfolded.) By his teens, Mr. Burton had become a fixture at local honky-tonks and jam sessions. One of the players he impressed was the saxophonist Boots Randolph, who arranged an introduction to Hank Garland, the great Nashville session guitarist. Garland, who had been thinking about making a jazz album with vibraphone, invited Mr. Burton to spend a summer in Nashville.

They nearly played the Newport Jazz Festival that summer, with a contingent including the guitarist Chet Atkins (a riot threw a wrench in that plan), and the jazz album that Garland eventually released, “ Jazz Winds From a New Direction ,” became a minor classic. Through the interventions of Atkins, Mr. Burton landed his own record deal with RCA. So it happened that two of his first jazz mentors were, in fact, not jazz musicians but legends of country music. He made his debut album, “New Vibe Man in Town” (1961), while studying at Berklee. And it wasn’t long before he found top-flight work as a sideman, first with the pianist George Shearing and then with the tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, who had just recorded “Getz/Gilberto,” another album of remarkable synthesis between jazz and a different musical tradition. Its crossover success meant that Mr. Burton soon found himself on tour with one of the hottest groups in jazz.

He used that platform well , dazzling audiences with his four-mallet technique — the Burton Grip, as it’s now known — and serving as musical director for the band, which in its classic configuration had Steve Swallow on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. Manfred Eicher, founder of ECM Records, said he saw Mr. Burton in the Getz quartet and “was immediately struck by his melodic imagination as a soloist and, of course, by the phenomenal technique which was always at the service of lyrical expression.” Photo The pianist Chick Corea, left, and Gary Burton, who have won six Grammy Awards together. Credit Jonathan Chong Mr. Burton carried those qualities into his own career as a bandleader, along with some key insights. “One of the reasons I felt encouraged to try combining rock and jazz,” he said, “was that I had watched Stan combine musics for three years. And I said, ‘I want to do something that my age group can relate to.’ ” Inspired by the energy of the mid-to-late-’60s rock scene, he formed the Gary Burton Quartet with the guitarist Larry Coryell.

The group’s first album, “Duster,” was released in 1967, with Mr. Swallow and Mr. Haynes. Later the quartet solidified around a lineup with the drummer Bob Moses, turning heads during a tour of Europe. (In the book, Mr. Burton recalls that they stopped on Carnaby Street in London for proper Mod attire.) Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Burton said he had felt slighted over the years by historical accounts of jazz-rock that begin with “Bitches Brew,” the dark haze of an album that Davis made in 1969. At the time, the Gary Burton Quartet was duly credited for breaking new ground; the 1968 DownBeat Readers Poll anointed Mr. Burton the Jazzman of the Year. The guitarist Bill Frisell, who saw Mr. Burton’s band that summer, recalled the moment as formative. “What Gary did was kind of a blueprint for so many things I still do,” he said. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Mr.

Frisell is actually one of the few guitarists of his stature who hasn’t passed through a Burton band. After Mr. Coryell’s departure came a succession of them, including John Scofield and Kurt Rosenwinkel. “To me he was the epitome of what a great modern musician should be,” said Mr. Metheny, who connected with Mr. Burton in his late teens, becoming first a prize discovery and then a trusted peer. “He is a bottomless pit of ideas and melody,” Mr. Metheny added. “I think this gets a little bit lost because of the nature of the instrument he plays. With those four mallets flying around and the notes ringing the way they do, sometimes I feel like folks might miss the actual content of the ideas and the lines and are kind of wowed by the sight of it all.” One argument Mr. Burton makes in his book, and that he repeated in conversation, is that he also popularized duo and solo performance on instruments other than the piano. This isn’t an impregnable claim, but it’s true that Mr.

Burton won his first Grammy for “Alone at Last,” a masterly solo vibraphone album released on Atlantic in 1971 — and that his continuing duologue with Mr. Corea, initiated around the same time with the ECM album “Crystal Silence,” has been broadly acclaimed. “It also helped to crystallize some music and sound directions for ECM,” Mr. Eicher said. For more than a decade of that label’s early history, Mr. Burton was one of its marquee artists, alongside the pianist Keith Jarrett, with whom he had recorded. What’s instructive is the difference between the two. Mr. Jarrett has cultivated a public persona of reclusive and mercurial genius, rarely straying from the same few collaborators. “I might have ended up much more like Keith had I not gone into teaching,” Mr. Burton said. “But the one thing that happens when you teach, particularly when I went to Berklee, is that you are accessible to lots of people.” From his institutional perch at Berklee — where he began as an instructor in 1971 and retired as executive vice president in 2004 — Mr.

Burton made accessibility his doctrine, expanding the curriculum and the student base beyond strict jazz protocols. Where the policy stopped was at his private life. Mr. Burton’s second marriage, which had produced two children, ended in the 1980s, and he began to come to terms with his sexual orientation. “I thought I might lose some of my foothold in the business,” he said. Instead, when he came out publicly in 1994 on the public radio show “Fresh Air,” Mr. Burton received a tide of congratulations. At the time, he was forging a collaboration with Astor Piazzolla, the master of nuevo tango, who urged him to tap into a deeper vein of emotional expression. Among those who noticed a new forthrightness in his playing was Mr. Swallow: “There was a kind of breathing out that he was able to do, when the truth was told, that worked to his music’s advantage tremendously.” Mr.

Burton, who married his longtime partner, Jonathan Chong, in Provincetown, Mass., the day after our interview, taps into a wellspring of expressivity on “Guided Tour.” His strongest album in more than a decade, it features a band he first assembled in 2010, with the astonishingly fluent guitarist Julian Lage and a sturdy rhythm team made up of the bassist Scott Colley and the drummer Antonio Sanchez. This group will appear at the Blue Note next month with a few featured guests — including, on Sept. 21 and 22 , Mr. Coryell, reuniting with Mr. Burton for the first time in 45 years. So it may seem as if the current jazz landscape is experiencing a Gary Burton moment, though that will depend on your vantage. “If you watch him chronologically, he was always doing something new,” said Mr. Lage, who is 25 and has been a Burton protégé since he was 12.

“And if you look at him in retrospect, he was always establishing the new tradition.” A version of this article appears in print on August 25, 2013, on Page AR16 of the New York edition with the headline: The Jazzman With a Debt to Nashville. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Gary Burton On Piano Jazz : NPR Gary Burton On Piano Jazz Gary Burton In The Studio Embed Embed <iframe src="" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> January 23, 20151:19 PM ET Grant Jackson On this episode of Piano Jazz, innovative vibraphonist Gary Burton stops by the program to perform a set of tunes by Antonio Carlos Jobim , Duke Ellington , Rodgers & Hart and more. Gary Burton was born in Jan. 23, 1943, in Anderson, Ind. He taught himself to play the vibraphone and began his recording career at 17, backing guitarists Hank Garland and Chet Atkins. Following a brief stint at Berklee College of Music, Burton joined George Shearing , followed by a two-year stint with Stan Getz .

In 1967, Burton left Getz to form his own band, having already recorded three albums under his own name. With his new quartet, Burton began working in a new direction, combining jazz, rock and other influences into what would become fusion. The quartet expanded in subsequent years to include guitarist Pat Metheny, bringing a very electric guitar sound to prominence as a lead jazz instrument. In addition to work with his own group, Burton also performed in duo format with bassist Steve Swallow, guitarist Ralph Towner and pianist Chick Corea . Burton and Corea have worked together in various projects for nearly 40 years. His five Grammy awards, 13 Grammy nominations, hit records and multiple accolades from the jazz press are a testament to Burton's musical talent and vision. But Burton has been equally important as a jazz educator, having worked at the Berklee College of Music in Boston for nearly 30 years — first as a percussion teacher, then as dean of curriculum, and finally as executive vice president. In 1989, almost 25 years after he left his studies to join Stan Getz, Burton was awarded an honorary doctorate from the school.

Burton has also maintained an interest in discovering and encouraging new musicians. In addition to Pat Metheny , Burton gave big breaks to John Scofield , Jerry Hahn and Mick Goddrick. Guitarist Julian Lage began working with Burton at age 16, and is currently a member of the New Gary Burton Quartet, alongside bassist Scott Colley and drummer Antonio Sánchez. Gary Burton is also a noted innovator on the vibraphone. He developed the "Burton grip," a unique technique using four mallets over the usual two, which allows for a more pianistic approach to melody and harmony. Originally recorded April 19, 2004. Set List "O Grande Amour" (A.C. Jobim) "Blame It On My Youth" (O. Levant, E.

Heyman ) "Yesterdays" (Kern, Harbach) "Sophisticated Lady" (Ellington, Mills, Parish) "My Romance" (Rodgers, Hart) "My Funny Valentine" (Rodgers, Hart) "Windows" (Corea) Vibraphone pioneer Gary Burton learned to listen to himself -- and the music | Minnesota Public Radio News Vibraphone pioneer Gary Burton learned to listen to himself -- and the music Gary Burton Photo courtesy of Mack Avenue Media Gary Burton has long put his insecurities behind him. At 70, the jazz vibraphonist is as comfortable in life as he is on stage, where he has been a pioneer on his instrument and a leading improvisational voice. Burton, whose quartet performs Wednesday and Thursday at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, has had a storied career — in large part because he plays an uncommon instrument. That worked to his advantage, earning him a recording contract at 17, a spot in pianist George Shearing's band at 19 and the opportunity to work with saxophonist Stan Getz at 20.

He pioneered several technical and musical developments on the vibraphone, a mallet percussion instrument with a warm tone that in the right hands delivers a range of colors and emotions. But Burton's great professional success was accompanied by personal struggles. Conflicted about his sexuality since he was a teen, Burton avoided addressing his attraction to men because he was afraid doing so would thwart his career, a subject he addresses in his recently published autobiography, "Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton." In the late 1950s and early '60s, jazz musicians embodied cool, and the music they made was on the cutting edge. But the jazz world was very much a macho environment — so much so that even the great songwriter Billy Strayhorn, a close friend of bandleader Duke Ellington, was scorned by some members of the band. "I struggled with this from puberty on — mixed feelings and attractions — and just knew that being gay was not compatible with a career in jazz," Burton said.

"And I was having a great start to my career and I just felt like I can't even think about this, I can't even allow myself to consider this possibility." Gary Burton Photo by Jimmy Katz/Mack Avenue Media His childhood in rural Southern Indiana, in a conservative part of the state where there was "no support, no acceptance of any kind," convinced him that he had to deny it. "I just constantly suppressed all feelings of that nature, and convinced myself that I was basically heterosexual but I had this kind of extra aesthetic. After all, I'm a musician and artist. I can appreciate men as well as women. But it was kind of a convenient rationale for me not to have to deal with my feelings." That changed in the 1980s, when after two marriages and two children, therapy helped Burton realized that he had always been gay. He said that after going through therapy, he had "an aha moment." In 1994, he spoke publicly about his sexuality in an radio interview with Terry Gross, host of the show "Fresh Air." "By then, the climate had changed considerably," he said of the growing acceptance of gay musicians in jazz.

"And of course, today it's really changed." He recently married his longtime partner, Jonathan Chong. Having fixed that part of his life, Burton became free to explore music, and life, without any inhibitions. In his autobiography, he also offers his thoughts on the creative process. The book is very much about his musical journey, which began in Indiana, where Burton got his start on the vibraphone. "It was just fate," Burton said of his choice of instrument. "My parents wanted us children — there were three of us — to get to take music lessons. And my older sister played the piano already. So when I was six my parents decided to find me a teacher of some other instrument. And I didn't know one from another at age six of course. But there was a woman in the town I was living in at first who played the marimba and the vibraphone. That's where I was taken to get lessons.

"I learned the vibraphone at that young age and it became so natural to me, so part of me," he said, "that even when I went through a period later of doubting that it was the best choice for me and I played piano some and I tried paying a few other instruments for a while, nothing felt as just naturally mine as my vibraphone playing." Burton's book chronicles his experiences with guitarist Hank Garland, Shearing and others. He recalls tough times with Getz, whom he describes as an abusive bandleader plagued by drug and alcohol abuse. But as the touring manager for the saxophonist band, Burton also learned that he knew how to take a band places. At 24, he formed the first of his many ensembles, and turned toward music. A Beatles fan, Burton was perfectly placed in history, in between the originators of jazz and the rock era, much like pianist Chick Corea, a contemporary with whom he has performed annually for 40 years. "I managed to get to know and in some cases work with some of the originals, some of the pioneers of jazz," Burton said. "I knew Duke Ellington, I worked opposite Thelonious Monk a lot.

I knew Dizzy Gillespie. A lot of the founders of jazz were people that I saw in person, got to know in person and connected with. That to me was the perfect bridge to my generation and the generations that followed who would not have the opportunity to get to connect to the original roots of jazz. I feel it was lucky timing for me both as a musician and as a vibraphone player as well." Burton expanded the vibraphone's use in jazz and also created "the Burton grip," an approach to holding four mallets that most players use. He is also known for his work at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he served as an instructor, dean of curriculum and executive vice president. His tenure there put him in touch with young players who would become rising stars, among them guitarists Pat Metheny and John Scofield. Working with them, he said, has helped prevent his music from becoming stagnant and repetitive, a common trap for older musicians. "One of the problems when you're a bandleader is you play your own music. You play with the same musicians night after night, year after year and it's easy to get kind of stuck in a rut stylistically," he said.

"Everything starts to sound the same. But in an atmosphere like Berklee new things were happening all the time. Students were constantly asking me questions, challenging this, challenging that — suggesting things I wouldn't have thought of. And I found it to be a great atmosphere for a creative environment." Burton, who has turned his attention to teaching improvisation online, is on tour to promote his latest recording, "Guided Tour." His quartet includes Julian Lage on guitar, Scott Colley on bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums — new music made possible by his dedication to a new instrument half a century ago. "The vibes were only 20 years old when I started taking lessons in 1949 and there was a lot to be discovered about how to play the vibes and how to use the vibes and different instrument settings," he said. "And I got to be the pioneer of the vibraphone to a great extent because if I hadn't discovered these things someone else would have in time. But it was open to me to have a shot at." IF YOU GO: WHERE: Dakota Jazz Club, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis. WHEN: 7 and 9 p.m. tonight and Thursday.

• More information at dakotacooks.com NEA Jazz Masters | NEA NEA Jazz Masters Born on January 23, 1943 in Anderson, IN Tabs Bio "In my early years, I was fortunate to have known and even play with some of jazz’s pioneers. Now I am being recognized as an important figure in jazz history. It is a great honor to be included with the many great artists who have been named Jazz Masters." Vibraphonist, bandleader, and educator Gary Burton's four-mallet technique on the vibraphone gave the instrument a new musical vocabulary in jazz and a fuller, more piano-like sound than the traditional two-mallet approach. He was one of the progenitors of jazz fusion in the late 1960s, and had a decades-long educational career at the Berklee College of Music. Burton taught himself to play the vibraphone and, at the age 17, made his first recording in Nashville, Tennessee, with legendary guitarist Hank Garland. With the help of Chet Atkins, another leading Nashville guitarist, Burton secured a record deal with RCA and released his debut album, New Vibe Man in Town, in 1961 while studying at Berklee.

At 19, on a recommendation from Marian McPartland , Burton joined pianist George Shearing’s group, and then worked from 1964 to 1966 with Stan Getz. As a member of Getz’s quartet, Burton was recognized by DownBeat magazine as "Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition" (1965). In 1967, he formed a quartet featuring Larry Coryell, an electric guitarist, as one of the soloists. The quartet's first two albums in 1967—Duster and Lofty Fake Anagram—changed the jazz landscape by adding rock elements to the music. In 1968, he won DownBeat's "Jazzman of the Year" award. During the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Burton continued to experiment with his sound, recording Carla Bley 's album-long piece A Genuine Tong Funeral; performing in various configurations, such as solo, duos, quartets, and with chamber orchestras; and continuing to work in other genres such as country, rock, tango, and classical.

At the same time, Burton continued to mentor notable guitarists in his bands, including Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and Julian Lage. In 1971, Burton embarked on an education career at the Berklee College of Music as a teacher of percussion and improvisation. In 1985, he became the institution's dean of curriculum. In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee and, in 1996, he was appointed executive vice president, a position he held until his retirement in 2004. After his retirement from Berklee, Burton formed several new bands and expanded his collaborations with Chick Corea , Pat Metheny, and other musicians. His Generations band in the early 2000s featured young musicians, and in 2012 he assembled the New Gary Burton Quartet (with Julian Lage, Antonio Sánchez, and Scott Colley) with which he records and performs. Burton has received 22 Grammy nominations and won seven Grammy Awards.

Selected Discography Gary Burton: Jazz Improvisation Course - Berklee Online Gary Burton Author & Instructor Born in 1943 and raised in Indiana, Gary Burton taught himself to play the vibraphone and, at the age of 17, made his recording debut in Nashville, Tennessee, with guitarists Hank Garland and Chet Atkins. Two years later, Burton left his studies at Berklee College of Music to join George Shearing and subsequently Stan Getz, with whom he worked from 1964-66. As a member of Getz's quartet, Burton won Down Beat magazine's Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition award in 1965. By the time he left Getz to form his own quartet in 1967, Burton had also recorded three albums under his name for RCA. Borrowing rhythms and sonorities from rock music, while maintaining jazz's emphasis on improvisation and harmonic complexity, Burton's first quartet attracted large audiences from both sides of the jazz-rock spectrum. Burton's burgeoning popularity was quickly validated by Down Beat magazine, which awarded him its Jazzman of the Year award in 1968, the youngest ever to receive that honor.

During a subsequent association with the ECM label (1973-1988), the Burton Quartet expanded to include the young Pat Metheny on guitar, and the band began to explore a repertoire of modern compositions. In the 1970s, Burton also began to focus on more intimate contexts for his music. His 1971 album Alone at Last, a solo vibraphone concert recorded at the 1971 Montreux Jazz Festival, was honored with his first Grammy Award. Burton also turned to the rarely heard duo format, recording with bassist Steve Swallow, guitarist Ralph Towner, and most notably with pianist Chick Corea, thus cementing a long personal and professional relationship that has garnered an additional four Grammy Awards. Also in the 1970s, Burton began his music education career with Berklee College of Music in Boston. Burton began as a teacher of percussion and improvisation at Berklee in 1971. In 1985 he was named Dean of Curriculum.

In 1989, he received an honorary doctorate of music from the college, and in 1996, he was appointed Executive Vice President, responsible for overseeing the daily operation of the college. After eight years at RCA Victor, five at Atlantic Records, and sixteen at ECM Records (resulting in two more Grammy awards in 1979 and 1981), Burton began recording for GRP Records in 1988. In 1990, he paired up again with his former protege Pat Metheny for Reunion, which landed the number one spot on Billboard magazine's jazz chart. After recording a total of eight CDs for GRP, Burton began his current label affiliation with Concord Records. Departure (Gary Burton & Friends) was released in 1997 as well as Native Sense, another duet collaboration with Chick Corea, which garnered Burton's fourth Grammy Award in 1998. Also in 1997, he recorded his second collection of tango music, Astor Piazzolla Reunion, featuring the top tango musicians of Argentina, followed by Libertango in 2000, another Piazzolla project.

His 1998 Concord release, Like Minds, an all-star hit featuring his frequent collaborators Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Roy Haynes, and Dave Holland, was also honored with a Grammy win, Burton's fifth. His vibraphone tribute CD, For Hamp, Red, Bags and Cal, was released in March 2001 and was honored with a 12th Grammy nomination (to date he has a total of 15 Grammy nominations). His 2002 release was a unique project with Makoto Ozone, Burton's pianist collaborator of the past 20 years. For Virtuosi, the pair explored the improvisational possibilities of classical themes, including works by Brahms, Scarlatti, Ravel, Barber and others. In an unusual move, the Recording Academy nominated Virtuosi in the Grammy's Classical music category, a unique honor for Burton and Ozone. As Burton announced his retirement from Berklee College of Music in 2003 after 33 years at the college, he formed a new band and began touring regularly.

The Generations band featured a line-up of talented young musicians, including then sixteen-year old guitarist Julian Lage and Russian-born pianist Vadim Nevelovskyi. Burton recorded two CDs with the group titled Generation and Next Generation and the band toured steadily from 2003 through mid-2006. Since then, Burton has focused his recording and performing efforts on collaborations, with old friends and new, including tours and recordings with Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Makoto Ozone, Spanish pianist/composer Polo Orti, and French accordionist Richard Galliano. Armistad Suite with Polo Orti and the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra was released in spring 2007. L'hymne a L'amour with Richard Galliano was released on the Camjazz label in August 2007. The double-CD live concert recording with Chick Corea, The New Crystal Silence, came out in 2008, resulting in the sixth Grammy for Gary Burton at the 2009 Grammy Awards.

Corea and Burton toured full-time from September 2006 through spring 2008, and continued off and on playing concerts in the USA and Europe in 2009. Next came collaborative project Quartet Live, reprising the Gary Burton Quartet of the 1970s with Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow, and Antonio Sanchez. Having already toured in Japan, USA, and Europe, this group made their third tour with performances in the USA and Canada in June 2009. Plans are already in place to reunite and record and tour again in the near future. Meanwhile, Burton toured again with Chick Corea in 2010-2011. June 2011 saw the release of Common Ground, Burton's first release on Mack Avenue Records featuring the New Gary Burton Quartet. The new group reunites the vibist with guitar star Julian Lage with the addition of drummer Antonio Sanchez and bassist Scott Colley. The group will be busy touring throughout 2011. For more information, please visit: Jim Odgren Instructor Jim Odgren is Academic Assistant to the Dean of the Performance Division at Berklee College of Music.

Odgren is an alto saxophonist who doubles on tenor and soprano saxophones and flute. Throughout his fifteen-year career at Berklee, he has taught in the Performance Studies and Woodwind Departments. From 1980 to 1983, he toured throughout the world and recorded two LPs (Easy As Pie and Picture This) with the Gary Burton Quartet. Since then, he has recorded and/or played with Kevin Eubanks, John Scofield, Kenwood Denard, Jim Kelly, Victor Mendoza, Oscar Stagnaro, George Garzone, and many others. In 1989, he received the Dean of Faculty Award for his work in improvisation at Berklee. In 2002, Odgren released his own CD, Her Eyes. He is author of the instructional DVD, Accelerate Your Saxophone Playing, and coauthor of two books, Berklee Practice Methods: Getting Your Band Together, with Berklee Woodwind Department Chair, Bill Pierce. Odgren graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1976. Prerequisites Completion of Basic Improvisation or equivalent knowledge and experience.

You should have some experience with improvisation on familiar standards (i.e., improvising on the blues form and simply constructed standard songs). You should have some familiarity with chord symbols and the common chord scales. Required Textbooks None required Software Requirements A basic audio recording tool that will allow you to record yourself playing along with a background track and save the recording in MP3 format. You will have a tool to use for this purpose inside the learning environment. Alternatively, you can use software like Audacity, GarageBand, or a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Notation software such as Finale, Finale NotePad, Sibelius, etc. Alternatively, you can opt to hand-write your notation and scan it for submission.

Mac Web Browser: Firefox (Recommended), Chrome, or Safari PC Web Browser: Firefox (Recommended), Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Edge Hardware Requirements All Users A printer is recommended, so that you can print out music examples used in the course A scanner may be required if you are going to hand-write your assignments Mac Users OS X 10.7 or higher 2 GB RAM 500 MB hard drive space Sound card Windows Vista SP2 or higher Intel Pentium 4 or higher 1 GB RAM 500 MB hard drive space Sound card

Question: What instrument does jazz musician Gary Burton play?
Answer: Vibraphone