I think her timing was her style, but her pitch…ay yai yai
I have a very close friend who is an accomplished classical pianist and author. She would love to play jazz, to improvise. She listens a lot and I keep a steady diet of Bill Evans, etc going in.
But if there’s not a chart in front of her, she’s lost. It’s not that she doesn’t know where the 1 and 4 are. It’s been a lifetime of unidirectional training and she just can’t find the groove. But we’re trying and she’ll get it. It’s timing.
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Hi Ron… That sounds like my first wife! Classically trained and very accomplished musician. She could play any “blackest of notes on the whitest of paper” (as my Dad used to say). She had the highest of grades and a degree in performance… And to my surprise, she envied and could not reproduce my meager, self taught efforts to improvise on blues harp or guitar or bass. Something about the “improvisation gene”?
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Andrew Bird - Fingerlings 4!
I was classically trained on the piano by members of “the guild”… operative word here is “trained”. While I took accompanying courses in theory… they taught me jack… nothing. I could site read, move my fingers and make my parents and their friends go “oooooo”. Even with the theory classes, I had no idea when … say the underlying cords were changing in the classical pieces I was playing. To me, everything was a linear progression of what I was supposed to do. When it came to playing music, I sucked. playing what was on a page was not making music. Even Frank Zappa called the players he would hire for recording dates “technicians”.
When I went to college, picked up the guitar, drank tons of beer, smoked stuff, and jammed with friends,… guess what? I learned to play music. I learned some brainless patterns over cords and I was freed to play music. I learned about the vertical component of chord changes, the concept of key and and progressions lit up in my head. Then it was a matter of “connecting the dots”. I called it “targeting the tonic”… you could play anything… noodle like crazy, but then target the tonic or the root of whatever chord was playing… and music came out (OK, it was crude, but it was music to me). Pot helped.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
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I find I sound much better when my audience has been drinking.
Improvisation was a necessary and respected skill for many centuries. It was not until relatively recently it was dropped as a part of classical training. Many teachers have brought it back however.
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A million years ago, when I thought there was only a 1, 4 and 5, I played in a blues band and we always urged the crowd to drink-up, 'cause da drunker you git, da better we git"
Update: Casino Royale… guys, I played this again the other night… you really should seek this out. It really is a system tester… Harry Pearson is spot on about this recording.
On CD, there are a few versions, I have two… one is not so good, the other is fantastic.
Do not get the Kritzerland version.
Get: Varese Sarabrand version… wow.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
Lots of favourite tracks there. I go for short segments of specific sounds - percussion, strings, brass, vocals, on top rate recordings.
Here are key ones:
http://www.linnrecords.com/recording-xenakis-ix.aspx (percussion and metals)
http://www.linnrecords.com/recording-kuniko-plays-reich.aspx (marimba)
https://phronesistrio.bandcamp.com/album/parallax (track 2 for piano, others for bass, this was recorded in Studio 2 Abbey Road and is exceptional)
https://realworldrecords.com/releases/tincian/ (female vocal - sung in Welsh so don’t actually listen to the words)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liquid-Spirit-Gregory-Porter/dp/B00CKOZ8QA (male vocal - boring lyrics so don’t listen to the words either)
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67691/2 (violin)
All on HD downloads
I have one or two others for brass etc.
Did this last time when I changed whole system but speakers, total listening time per system was 20-25 minutes. I smile when people say they spend weeks testing one component - I listened to 3 systems and was done in 90 minutes.
Hey, check this out…
Peace
Bruce in Philly
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I enjoy positive enthusiastic people and Steve fits that bill, at least publicly. He does mention one of my favorites, Elvis 57.
I have this:
Now that I sold my turntable, I’m gonna have to pick up the DSD download of it! Great sounding and great music.
I watch him every morning while drinking my coffee. Much better than starting the day with news.
Just picked up on this thread and saw the mention of Brubeck’s “Time Out” album.
One of my go-to’s is the Brubeck album recorded live at Carnegie Hall (Feb of 1963 before they “fixed” the hall and messed up the acoustics).
The piano, sax and bass are mic’d, of course, but you can hear the hall acoustics when Joe Morello lets loose on the drum kit. The applause between tracks actually sounds like hands clapping instead of rain on a metal roof.
On these tracks, I focus more on the retrieval of hall ambience and the waay in the background nuances that add to realism.
Also, the photo on the album cover shows how the stage was set up and the drums, bass, and Dave’s piano appear in the soundstage in the same relationship.
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I just sat listened to Frank’s “Only the Lonely” and “Point of No Return”… wow, great music and great sonics. BIG B I G S O U N D. Want to know what ambiance is? Play these records.
Peace
Bruce in Philly
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Only The Lonely is magnificent but one must be of high spirits before dropping the needle (phonograph!).
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Great find. Thanks for sharing!
You’re most welcome.
Heh. I actually “found” it around age 14 when I bought the original vinyl. The “Take Five” album was my introduction to jazz at a young age and helped to launch me into this idiotic hobby 
. Brubeck was so prolific that this release kind of gets lost in the discography, but it’s by far my favorite.
The vinyl album was trashed by repeated playing on all sorts of cheap god-awful reproduction equipment from the 60’s that a teen-ager could afford, but I eventually replaced it with the double CD set.
Not the last word in SQ given today’s technology but it’s a remarkable live recording given when it was made. The liner notes delve into the recording process a bit. Thankfully, Brubeck was an artist (and bit of a control freak) who actually cared about how the recordings would sound.
Enjoy
Mail](https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986) for Windows 10
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OK, speaking of setup tracks, this thread triggered a recall of the recent RMAF, where one room sported this sign:
(Sorry Diana Krall fans, but this was too good not to share …)
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Many guitar shops have a similar sign stating No Stairway to Heaven.
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“No Stairway! Denied!”
Peace
Bruce in Philly