/BLINDFOLD TEST/

bump

this week's is certainly one full of gimmicky things and limited interplay - interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this rather controversial theme for our weekly jazz thread

>Track 1
Well this sounds pretty early for multi-tracked jazz. Also there’s a weird sort of vibrato under the whole thing. I’m guessing all the woodwinds must be one player multitracked. I don’t think I know of anybody who was doing this sort of thing as early as this sounds. There’s definitely sort of an unnatural feel to it all. I can’t say that I really liked this one very much.

>Track 2
So it’s How High the Moon turned into a sort of country shuffle. Were the vocals from Ella Fitzgerald’s version? Maybe it’s not Ella. I think that’s just the vocal version of this I’m used to hearing. This mostly just sounds very commercial to me. Or like it would have been very commercial in the 60’s. Nice vocal harmonies I suppose.

>Track 3
So I guess those horns must have been multi-tracked at the beginning. I like this piano playing I think. This must be Rahsaan though. It sounded like there was a slide whistle in there. I like this one I think. There’s an element of tradition and bluesiness to it but the piano is also doing some fairly modern things. Mostly, it just sounds like they’re playing with conviction.

>Track 4
This is Bill Evans’ version of Bemsha Swing from Conversations with Myself. It’s always interesting to hear Bill play Monk’s tunes because their styles are so different from each other but obviously Bill had a lot of respect for Monk. The other thing that’s interesting about this one is the way it’s done almost as a round. Overall though, it gets to be a bit much I think. There’s so much going on that it’s difficult to follow. This is one of those albums that is very interesting to listen to, but not always enjoyable.

>>68298449
>Track 5
Reminds me a bit of David Axelrod or that sort of 70’s thing. Very good groove. This vocoder-type effect is interesting. I’m not sure how much I like it here but I was enjoying the track quite a bit up until then. Guitar/whistle solo is ok but really nothing interesting beyond the novelty of “whistling along with a solo!” Trombone solo was also not great. The rhythm section was definitely my favorite part about this track. They sounded great and I especially liked the small flourishes from the electric piano. The arrangement of the horns was good too. The solos were a disappointment.

>Track 6
Must be Jaco. As far as looping goes this isn’t too bad. His feel is great but it’s still really just playing to a backing track. I don’t really get all the “noise” stuff in the middle though. The sound quality isn’t great so maybe it worked better when you were there to hear it.

>Track 7
For some reason I think this really works well with guitar. For some reason the guitar tone just works really well to build up this sort of moving texture behind everything else. Metheny does some stuff like this, but based on the sound of the guitar I’d say it might be Frisell. I know Marc Ribot has done a lot of overdubbed stuff too… could be him. I like it but I think it would definitely be tiring to listen to a whole album of this sort of thing.

>>68298473
>Track 8
Well so far everything just sounds way too vague and indistinct. Also the timing of the looping is just a tiny bit off, you can hear the disparity with some of the clicking of whatever’s doing the more percussive sound. Once it all layers in it’s kind of a neat effect I guess and I see now how all the vague sounds combine to create sort of an atmospheric effect. This sounds like someone wanted to make smooth jazz by overdubbing only sax noises. Gimmicky but it kind of works and I guess that’s the theme of the week.

>Track 9
When this started I was expecting to not like it, but I actually kind of like the effect with very fuzzy effect with the chords. It’s a bit odd how most of the time it’s tonal and then occasionally it just kind of goes completely atonal though. It feels a little bit random. I’d say this one also went on much too long. I only wanted about 3 minutes of this. I could see this being Marc Ribot as well.

>Track 10
So this is a looper track kind of thing. The tone is interesting on the sax playing the melody. Well I like this sax player especially his solo in the middle was really good. But as you’d expect, this is just missing something without the accompaniment being able to respond to what he’s doing. It’s basically the same as playing along with a backing track which is fine for practicing but you’d never want to actually perform with a backing track.

>>68298449
>2
was certainly a commercial success in it's time

>3
is indeed Rahsaan

>4
correct - for an album based around an overdubbing gimmick, it is rather interesting IMHO

>>68298473
>6
is indeed Jaco - I was trying to think of some early uses of looping in a live context and remembered this. In retrospect it's kind of surprising that this has been a fairly well-known track.

>>68298493
>8 & 10
yeah - using looping live is a pretty challenging beast since you end up with some really repetitive structures or something really abstract and easily become a prisoner of the loops

>>68298803
I was hoping this one would be on there. I've always thought it was one of the more interesting early uses of multitracking .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFJJR7ntjQs

>>68298957
that would have been a good one - I actually listened to the first two tracks of that album when looking for stuff - I don't know the album very well, but they didn't really feel suitable

1. This reminds me a lot of dixieland style early jazz. I didn’t even know over dubbing would be a thing with this kind of jazz. It doesn’t really stand out to me in any way. If I didn’t know the theme I don’t think I would think there was anything special about this one. 2.5 stars.

2. This has a very pop driven sound. Because of the lyrics I know the tune is how high the moon. Maybe it’s Lambert Hendricks and Ross but I guess that wouldn’t explain overdubbing. There’s nothing really very special about this one either. It just sounds like pop-jazz. 2 stars.

3. Could this be Sam Rivers? I know he sometimes plays flute and piano and saxophones so maybe he did an overdubbed album. This one is definitely my favorite so far. The piano playing reminds me of McCoy Tyner which I like. Once again if I didn’t know there was some kind of overdubbing I probably wouldn’t guess it. 3.5 stars.

4. This is what I was expecting to hear. I know this one is from the Bill Evans album where he overdubs all the parts but I don’t know which track this is. This one isn’t my favorite but it’s still pretty good. Even when there is a lot going on you can usually hear how he is still kind of playing the melody in one of the parts. 3.5 stars.

5. This 70’s big band fusion. I have no idea who would do stuff like this. The combination of vocals and guitar makes for kind of a cool sound that almost sounds like a synthesizer sometimes. I also like the idea of the whistling overtop of the guitar solo. It was very bluesy and had some nice rhythms. Overall pretty cool. 3.5 stars.

>>68299399
6. Now some live overdubbing. I think it’s Jaco Pastorius and I’ve never really liked his playing that much. It works sometimes with groups, but all of his solo stuff like this just sounds pretty self indulgent. 2 stars.

7. I like the way the guitar patterns all come together to create one sound. But this seems like more of a composed piece more than what I would call jazz. I liked it though. 3.5 stars.

8. It’s cool how the very soft saxophones all combine to make it sound almost ambient. It sounds like synthesizes when they all combine. But I didn’t think that the lead saxophone part was very interesting. I couldn’t really follow his melodies or anything. 3 stars.

9. This one is pretty cool. It follows patterns but then it does a lot of unexpected dissonance and you never really know what’s going to happen next but it all has a pulse happening underneath it. Pretty cool overall. I probably wouldn’t think of this one as being jazz either but it might be my overall favorite of the week. 4 stars.

10. More sax overdubbing. There’s something I like about this one more than some of the other ones. I think just the lead sax part is pretty cool and I liked his solo. I could follow it but he did some nice rhythmic things. Pretty decent. 3.5 stars.

>>68299442
Overall thoughts-

I haven't listened to very much of this kind of overdubbed jazz besides the Bill Evans album so I thought it would be interesting to have a full playlist full of it. I did end up thinking that a lot of it probably wouldn't qualify as jazz but that doesn't make it bad and some of it was actually very enjoyable.

>>68299399
>2.
Lambert, Hendricks and Ross were actually in the running for this list as their album SIng a Song of Basie from 1957 had each overdub many vocal lines for the harmonies

>4
yeah, you got the right album

>>68299442
>7
is definitely one more suited for /classical/ /blindfold/ - composed for and performed here by a notable jazz guitarist and his pre-taped clones, though. It's also from one of my personal favorite albums in any genre, so there you go.

>>68299469

I personally think it's an interesting thing for jazz and improvising musicians to try to find value in.

The sheer novelty value of individuals recording many tracks like in tracks 1 and 2 grew old very quickly and really hasn't offered that much to jazz - one of my thoughts going into this week is that overdubbing and other studio production techniques and transistor-driven effects were really a big part of the downfall of jazz as a really popular music genre and guitars taking the place of saxophones as the versatile lead instruments.

Miles and Teo Macero did a lot of studio trickery on Bitches Brew - it works in the sense that you don't really notice it, but at the end of the day it doesn't really add that much. Goes to show how important that human element and live interplay really is to this genre, I think.

I see a lot of interest with jazz musicians over here in doing effect, loop and electronic driven projects and gigs, but not a lot of it is getting recorded for release - I think a lot of stylish effect use works much better live where you can see the musician interacting with himself or a digital ghost of himself at least.

A lot of the best jazz gigs that make heavy use of loops I've seen have been duos, but couldn't think of a really good recording like that to include here.

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are you guys familiar with Keith Jarrett's home studio album No End where he plays all instruments on these fusion'y jam tracks that are mostly guitar driven? Sort of sounds like a very lo-fi Mike Oldfield album with world music elements,

Recorded in 1986, released in 2013 - it's a pretty strange record to exist - I had a track from it on the list for a while, but then kind of decided that the only thing interesting is getting to reveal that it's Keith Jarrett jamming at home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRu7YWg-9I

>>68299819
I've never actually seen anyone do this live but it does seem like it would work better in that context

>>68299924
I've never heard of that but it sounds interesting enough that I might look it up

>>68299966
on a similar note, I recall the topic of Jarrett playing soprano sax came up in these threads earlier and I stumbled upon a pretty cool track for people who like musicians playing in stylesyou wouldn't expect with not only Jarrett playing just sax, but also Charlie Haden playing acoustic bass with an absolutely filthy wah-wah effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM4AJUW9nqU

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>>68299924
I haven't heard that one but I've heard Restoration Ruin and some of Spirit which also has Jarrett playing all the instruments. I was kind of expecting one of those tracks to be on this playlist.

>>68300182
Haha yeah I've heard this one before. That wah wah is a little ridiculous but I guess it's kind of a cool effect. Plus the combination of Dewey Redman and Jarrett on saxes works surprisingly well.

>>68299927

this week's chronological arc goes basically from pioneering recordings utilizing multiple overdubs of a single musician and/or singer as a novelty thing to contemporary use of looping as a live tool - I believe 8, 9 and 10 are all essentially live (in studio) solo recordings using loops with no previously recorded parts or after-the-fact overdubs and minimal editing

1. Weird track, it sounds early and bluesy but I don't know what the hell is with the recording quality. Anyway it's stopping me from liking this more.
2. I think the vocals on here would sound better too without the effects. Makes they sound like a mashup, but maybe they are. And well, I don't really care about much in here either.
3. Oh, this has to be Roland Kirk, definitely sounds like him playing the flute and I guess it was also him playing more than one instrument earlier in the track. I always like to hear him play, and the rest of the band in here does great too, I liked this.
4. Two pianos? At first the music kept changing the channel in the headphones and it was a bit annoying. I'm glad it stopped. It gets a bit messy, feels like too much going at times. A bit hard to listen but it also follows a melody and that makes it easier. I feel it needs more listens.
5. Groovy. It's a big band playing fusion, which I never tried to picture but I like. I also do like the vocals in here. And the horn solo was great. I think it could be a trombone or something but I'm not sure. And it keeps being pretty good until the end. This was nice too.

Gonna have dinner and sleep soon but will probably finish tomorrow.
Can somebody explain the theme to me also? There's been some weird sound effects in this list so far and stuff like two of the same instrument being played, so I guess something along the lines of that.

>>68300184
that's also a really weird Jarrett album to exist! I had forgotten all about it. Sometimes I've been thinking whether it might be a hit with /mu/ folk that listen to Nick Drake or Tim Buckley

I considered a bunch of one-man-band type albums, but it kind of felt like that that's a story line in this theme that hasn't really been going anywhere much artistically, only gotten easier and cheaper to do since this week's track 1 was recorded in 1941, apart of course from people now being able to make nice YouTube videos of yourself playing many parts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI_3zbbpj8Q

>>68300571

the theme is essentially at least one musician playing multiple parts on the track in one way or another, whether it's overdubbing or live looping or whatever

>>68300571
you are certainly hearing this week's theme in 1 and 2 - both are early recordings with sound-on-sound style overdubbing before proper multi-track recording equipment

>>68300620
That's an interesting one! I think I remember you mentioned that idea some time ago now in one of these threads. I'll keep at it tomorrow morning. I'm pretty curious about what's in this playlist but I need some rest.

>>68300182
It might be interesting to do a playlist of jazz artists playing an instrument other than what they're mostly known for

>>68301176
That one could be interesting.