Roger Beaujolais Italian Trio

This project was spawned during many visits to Italy over the last 10 years. It came together over a period of time & I started writing tunes that I thought would fit in this harmony-less trio format that also played to the strengths of the three of us. I love harmony so, when writing tunes for the band I tried to write tunes where I could play harmony behind the melody. As much as possible anyway. I’d never had to do that before & it sent me off in different directions to ones I’ve been to lately. Also, technically, some of it was new territory for me.

A lot of vibists start young, have many youthful years where it’s all about learning technique. Then they go to college & have another 4 years to refine those skills even more. My life & career have taken a different route. I had a full time job when I first started playing vibes aged 24. It was only when I left the job & around my 26th birthday when I started to use 4 mallets. That was the time when I started practising more intensely. Although my time was limited as I had a young baby, no money & a part time job. Two years later (after cramming in as much basic practice as possible as well as learning about music theory from scratch) I managed to scrape the money together for a car & 3 days later did my first gig. Since then I’ve had so much practising to do for the specific gigs that I was doing (so I could make a living) that I’ve only had a limited amount of time to work on music & technique that wasn’t directly related to the gigs I was doing. I missed out on a lot.

It just goes to show that as you get older it’s still possible to learn new things & also see music from a slightly different angle!