Welcome to the weekly /mu/ jazz Blindfold Test thread. Every

bumping by myself

>Track 1
Well this track is interesting. I wouldn't say I enjoy it, but I am curious. Is it as old as the style of music suggests? Is it all one guy, or are there a few musicians? If it -is- a particularly old recording, then it's interesting from a historical perspective.

I did hear recently that Les Paul was one of the first musicians to experiment with multitracking back before the days of electric recording methods, by recording himself playing along to a gramophone record of himself. I wonder if this is an example of a similar technique? Certainly some of the instruments sound very bassy, as if a lot of frequencies have been lost in the re-recording process.

Musically it was dull though, so if it was anything other than proof of concept then it was a waste of time. Still, nice job surprising me; I was expecting 10 tracks of wanky fusion.

>Track 2
Having mentioned Les Paul, I wonder if this is him? Not sure if any of the instruments are overdubbed here - maybe the guitars, but it's hard to tell. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that the vocalist has been doubled up (or more), and the effect is pretty psychedelic - I like it. Pleasant enough guitar playing too, and the overall sound makes this worthwhile, though I certainly wouldn't choose it normally if I was in a jazz mood. Definitely sounds ahead of its time though. Jazzpossu mentioned last week how some of these tracks blur the line between jazz and pop, and I'm not even sure which side of it this one comes down on.

>>68313985
>Track 3
I think this is a violin dubbed over itself, but the effect is almost like a multi-reed instrument. Awesome to then hear a guy shrieking down his flute - normally I'd think of the sax as being the instrument most capable of taking on the sound of the human voice, but maybe that's just due to conventions of how each instrument "should" be played? Again this piece leaves me wondering what was overdubbed and what wasn't - surely everything other than the violins were live? I would definitely check out more of this album, seems like a catchy take on free jazz ideas.

>Track 4
A Monk tune, but I can't remember the title. Trying to count and I think there are three different tracks here, panned right/centre/left (glad I switched to headphones for this playlist). This piece is glorious, and the most interesting question to me is what order the tracks were recorded in. I think it's reasonable to guess that the right one was first, but the others I can't tell. I wonder how he recorded this - did he have a chance to familiarise himself with each track before recording the next, or was it all completely spontaneous? In any case I love the effect this gets. Monk's compositions lend themselves really well to things like tape loops and rondo forms and multitracking like this - maybe because of how much they made use of minimalist techniques like repetition and minor variation in the first place?

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>>68313011
going to sleep soon but bump with current listen

>>68313998
>Track 5
This is more like what I was expecting to hear this week. I was enjoying the fusion-y big band sound until about 2 mins in when that horrible vocoder scat singing started. The pace on this one is a bit sluggish, and maybe I'm just projecting my expectations but I can't hear the sort of live energy you'd expect from a track like this normally. The drums are really boring, and don't drive it forward the way they should. On the whole I don't get much out of this track, though I do like some of the horn arrangements.

>Track 6
Well that was terrible.

>Track 7
My only guess as to why this was included in a jazz playlist is that maybe it was played live with loop pedals and improvised? In which case it's pretty impressive that it comes out sounding so much like a a coherent composition, but not enough happens in it to hold my interest.

>>68314007
>Track 8
On the one hand, I think it's pretty cool that all the extended techniques the avant-garde explored in the sixties and seventies have been picked up and developed in ways that make them work in the context of more traditionally "musical" sounding pieces. On the other hand, I think it's pretty sad that people have heard all this exploratory and experimental music and thought "I wonder how I can use that to make something that sounds a bit like everything else".

Thouh I'm maybe being a bit too harsh on this piece, which is very nice and relaxing.

>Track 9
This is another really relaxing track, but with some edge to the guitar like Eddie Hazel had on Maggot Brain. Though it's obviously not him. I enjoy this but I couldn't listen to an album of it. Would be nice as an interlude between something heavier though. I got bored before the end and stopped it...

>Track 10
Sounds a bit like one for the electro-swing audience, but the alto (or is it tenor) solo is too interesting for that. Like it when it goes off on its own too, those multi-tonal effects make it sort of sound like guitar feedback, which is cool. Enjoyed the solo with just the percussion effects behind it too. Think this is my favourite this week.

>>68313985
>1
indeed a track of some historical significance - all performed by one musician and recorded on acetate disks adding one instrument each time leading to the gradual degradation of sound quality

>2
it is indeed Les Paul on all instruments and his partner Mary Ford on all vocal tracks here

>>68314006
managed to stay awake
>1
ragtime
>3
uptempo rush post bop with some nice flute
>4
layered piano vibezzzz
>5
good swing but too prog rocky not fond of organ
>6
outro? unnecessary applause
>7
acoustic vortex
>8
milky sax
>10
bass saxophone?

>>68314007
>7
is a thoroughly composed piece for a soloist with self-recorded backing tracks

>>68314195
Fair enough. I kind of liked the overall sound but the piece didn't do anything for me I'm afraid

6. I's a live recording so I'm guessing what's being done here is looping. It's not very interesting though, I expected something more but it never goes anywhere.
7. This sounded good, and I enjoyed it, but I think if it had more variation it could have been a very good track. Instead, it doesn't really stand out.
8. It's like a collage of sounds, I like the concept behind this, but the result is nothing special.
9. Wasn't too sold on the ambient background until the guitar started to play. The combination is very good I really dig the sound, maybe my favorite this week. Doesn't feel too jazzy, I guess it's a jazz guitarist fluent in other styles as well.
10. I don't really like the dubbing in here either. Or maybe it's the melody, it sounds a bit goofy and the track is too long.

Interesting stuff.

can we talk about ethiopian jazz? very top notch

I'll start the reveals in a couple of hours, so there's still time to take part

>>68317664
What are some of your favorites?

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>>68317664
I saw Hailu Mergia live a few years ago - his story is pretty interesting going from one of Ethiopia's top jazz musicians in the 70's to driving a cab in Washington DC for decades and then being rediscovered by the Awesome Tapes from Africa -label and getting another chance to tour again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Q5VzSYHQI

Ethio-jazz is pretty cool, but also very repetitive since the soloing is often just noodling around on those distinctive pentatonic scales they use

Link for next week.

http://www64.zippyshare.com/v/H05kPqfI/file.html

The theme is Pacific Jazz Label made by jtg

>>68318506
Cool, I've heard a grand total of 7 Pacific Jazz albums, so I'm looking forward to hearing more.

>>68318506
>>68318653

I'm not sure if I could name any single album that I'm sure is a Pacific Jazz release off the top of my head.

Looking at the discography, there are several familiar albums, but it's not really a label I know anything about. Should be interesting.

I guess I'll get started with reveals in about 30 minutes unless someone is still listening...

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Track 1
Sidney Bechet's One Man Band - The Sheik of Araby
RCA Victor - 1941
Sidney Bechet - tenor and soprano sax, clarinet, piano, drums, bass

Starting out with one of the first releases making heavy use of overdubbing with early jazz clarinet and soprano sax legend Sidney Bechet playing all six instruments in this 1941 recording. This was recorded on acetate disks with one layer added on each recording pass making the audio quality of the first recorded tracks get progressively worse.

Bechet says of the recording: "I started by playing The Sheik on piano, and played the drums while listening to the piano. I meant to play all the rhythm instruments, but got all mixed up and grabbed my soprano, then the bass, then the tenor saxophone, and finally finished up with the clarinet."

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Track 2
Les Paul & Mary Ford - How High the Moon
Capitol Records - 1951
Les Paul - guitars
Mary Ford - vocals

Recording technique and electric guitar innovator Les Paul probably affected the course of popular music in the 20th century as much as any other musician. This recording of How High the Moon from 1951, made on a modified Ampex tape recorder before proper multi-track equipment consisting of twelve tracks of Paul's guitars and Mary Ford's vocals, was a huge hit being on the top of Billboard's chart for nine weeks and getting a lot of people thinking about the possibilities of music created in the studio instead of recording technology just existing for capturing the sound of a live recording as if you were there.

Here's a pretty interesting article on the story behind this recording and other Les Paul's recording innovations:
http://www.soundonsound.com/people/classic-tracks-les-paul-mary-ford-how-high-moon

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Track 3
Roland Kirk - 3-in-1 Without the Oil
from Domino (Mercury Records - 1962)
Roland Kirk - saxophones, whistle, flute
Andrew Hill - piano
Vernon Martin - bass
Henry Duncan - drums

Keeping true to this weeks gimmicky theme, but not making it strictly technology related there are a couple of examples of musicians playing multiple parts simultaneously. Rahsaan Roland Kirk was well-known for playing two or three horns at the same time. Here's an example from one of his early examples with the one-man three saxophone horn section playing the theme to this track and then Kirk switching to flute for the soloing.

While undoubtedly a cool trick in a live situation, I've always wondered whether it was really worth doing in the studio recordings as much as Kirk's albums feature it.

Here's a video of Kirk doing his thing:
https://youtu.be/yIIw65ccl94?t=45s

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Track 4
Bill Evans - Bemsha Swing
from Conversations with Myself (Verve - 1963)
Bill Evans - pianos

Later on overdubbing and studio trickery started to get more serious considerations as a new way of making music, although in jazz it never really caught on.

Some noteworthy examples that rely on studio techniques are Lennie Tristano's album Lennie Tristano that jtg mentioned here >>68298957 and Bill Evans' album Conversations with Myself featured here on track 4.

Here Evans is playing Monk's Bemsha Swing - it's a pretty interesting take. The heavy stereo separation of the different piano tracks is nice because it gives some visibility into what's going on, but it does make this a bit taxing to pay constant attention to.

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Track 5:
Quincy Jones - Hummin'
from Gula Matari (A&M Records - 1970)
Major Holley - vocal & bass solo
Toots Thielemans - guitar & whistle solo
Check here for the rest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gula_Matari

Here's a lighthearted track from Quincy Jones' 1970 album Gula Matari with two doubled up solos. First up the scat solo that a couple of you picked up as a vocoder effect, that I believe is just Holley doubling up bowed bass and scatting - a technique he pretty frequently used in his solos. Here the bass gets pretty much buried in the mix with another bassist and all the rest just giving the solo this quirky sounding effect.

Here's a clearer example of how his signature trick sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyfb1JuhdOI

After that, recently deceased Toots Thielemans shows off his prowess in playing guitar and whistling simultaneously in his solo.

Overall a pretty fun track, I think.

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Track 6:
Jaco Pastorius - Slang
from Weather Reports' 8:30 (Columbia - 1979)
Jaco Pastorius - bass

So eventually technology allowed musicians to loop parts live, so of course some jazz musicians had to try it. Here's a very self-indulgent solo from Jaco Pastorius from Weather Report's live album 8:30 with Jaco using an MXR digital delay unit to give his solo some backing. I've seen positive references to this track multiple times - in retrospect it's difficult to think this being a good example of anything or receiving such applause - the delay gimmick seems to add very little to this. An interesting piece of fusion history.

I also learned when compiling this, that Jaco does a very similar thing on the full video release of Joni Mitchell's Shadows and Light live recording - mercifully left of the Shadows and Light live album. You can listen to the audio of that on YouTube - actually has a much better sound quality than the Weather Report record:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HHjJG7yWBE

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Track 7:
Steve Reich - Electric Counterpoint, III: Fast
from Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint (Elektra Nonesuch - 1989)
Pat Metheny - guitars and basses

Minimalist composer Steve Reich was a pioneer of tape loop based compositions in the 1960's so it was only natural that he would eventually do some compositions for musicians backed up by recordings of themselves. This is the third such 'counterpoint' composition, composed for Pat Metheny in 1987. Here in the third movement Fast Metheny is backed up by 7 guitar tracks and 2 bass tracks.

While on a recording any novelty value of one person playing multiple tracks must have been very small by the late 80's, I think the piece does gain something from all the guitar tracks blending together with a unified sound.

The composer writes: "The third movement returns to the original tempo and key and introduces a new pattern in triple meter. After building up a four guitar canon two bass guitars enter suddenly to further stress the triple meter. The soloist then introduces a new series of strummed chords that are then built up in three guitar canon. When these are complete the soloist returns to melodic patterns that result from the overall counterpoint when suddenly the basses begin to change both key and meter back and forth between E minor and C minor and between 3/2 and 12/8 so that one hears first 3 groups of 4 eighth notes and then 4 groups of 3 eighth notes. These rhythmic and tonal changes speed up more and more rapidly until at the end the basses slowly fade out and the ambiguities are finally resolved in 12/8 and E minor."

This neat YouTube video with the score makes it easier to understand what's going on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TKVpUSWCug

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Track 8:
Kornstad - Oslo
from Dwell Time (Jazzland Recordings - 2009)
Håkon Kornstad - saxophone, electronics

In more modern times overdubs have pretty much lost any novelty value - some musicians use them, many make a point of capturing that live feeling and band interactions. Meanwhile looping is still being explored in more nuanced and stylish ways than Jaco's show of bravado from the late 1970's.

While loops and electronics open up a lot of possibilities for solo performances, especially in recordings that value get lost - if something might as well be an overdubbed track recorded over many takes - why not go for something more elaborate? It feels like it's necessary to know how the recording was made.

One musician known in the Nordics for this kind of stuff is Norwegian sax player Håkon Kornstad who was on my mind because I'm seeing his new project Tenor Battle soon where he plays tenor saxophone and also sings operatic vocals.

Here's a video of him playing this composition Oslo live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujARw25Gm8o

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Track 9:
David Torn - Reaching Barely, Sparely Fraught
from Only Sky (ECM - 2015)
David Torn - guitar

Ever since the heyday of Les Paul, guitarists have always embraced effects and technology, so felt wrong not to have some contemporary loop-using solo guitar work here.

This is from guitarist/composer/producer David Torn's recent solo guitar album Only Sky. Torn has done a lot of soundtrack work playing on original scores of movies like The Big Lebowski and Velvet Goldmine, There's a lot of very abstract, echoey close-to-ambient guitar playing on it - this hypnotically repetitive blues motif based track is maybe the most straightforward thing on the album.

Torn originally caught my ear when I heard his 2005 album Prezens with Tim Berne on sax, Craig Taborn on keyboards and Tom Rainey on drums - I certainly recommend checking that one out to anyone who liked the feel of this, but was hoping for more substance. Another great album of his is Cloud About Mercury from 1987 with Mark Isham on trumpet and King Crimson alumni Tony Levin and Bill Bruford - recommended for anyone who likes "future jazz" style music like Jon Hassell or Nils-Petter Molvaer or who hopes 80's King Crimson had been more of a fusion jazz band.

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Track 10:
Pauli Lyytinen - ...And He Woke Up in Petroskoi
from Machinery (Eclipse Music - 2016)
Pauli Lyytinen - tenor saxophone, electronics

One recent release from my local scene to close off. Saxophonist Pauli Lyytinen's solo project Machinery consists of compositions built around extended saxophone playing techniques and electronic effects.

This joyful set ending track is a solo arrangement of a tune written for a jazz-rock quartet. It's a little bit tongue-in-cheek - Petroskoi being a small town on the Russian side of the border - with a slavic/balkan/Tom Waits-y feel to it - original has some surf rock guitar in it, too.

While again, this kind of begs the question of why do this with loops rather than a larger band or a backing track, it is a very fun solo piece to see live when you can see him build the different layers and also leaves some nice space for actual improvisation.

and that wraps it up for this week - thanks to everyone who posted in the threads and see you next week for some Pacific Jazz.

Also feel free to post some of your favorite uses of looping of overdubbing in jazz.

>>68320174
>Andrew Hill - piano

Wow. I definitely thought this was a recording from the late 70's or 80's. Pretty cool that it was Andrew Hill on this. I've been digging into all of his sideman work from before his own Blue Note records were released but I forgot that he played on this one.

>>68321302
>his 2005 album Prezens with Tim Berne on sax, Craig Taborn on keyboards and Tom Rainey on drums
I didn't know about this. I haven't listened to much from Torn but I will have to check that album out.