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Bicylindrical / Homage to MJQ
“Rickety but rhythmic” is how John Lewis described The Cylinder on the seminal 1960 Modern Jazz Quartet’s European Concert double album. The sight of jazz musicians in tuxedos... the black against white contrast, all gave a new elegance and place to modern jazz. As a 16 year old I was profoundly inspired to play like its minimalist genius piano player, Lewis. It has taken decades to come even barely close.
MJQ broke with conventional jazz but did not lose the sound and passion of straight ahead improvisation and cogent heads. Milt Jackson’s vibes were a steadying force majeur as he cascaded fluent and imaginative flights of percussive tonality and complexity. The rhythm section of the great bassist Percy Heath and the delicate contrivances of drummer Connie Kay brought a pulse that stimulated the best in the Lewis Jackson lead team.
MJQ and, particularly, The Cylinder inspired many up and coming jazzers. Horace Silver immediately comes to mind. But John Lewis stands out as a composer that understood all genres of music. I am indebted to him.
The refs to Cylinder come in around 2:00 into my track. I added my own direction of “Pushed Jazz” with soft synth additions. I realize I am far from the first to fuse jazz with synthesized instruments, but, my aim is to add more overt synthetic pushthrough as less “swinging” and more electric currents in jazz based lead lines and less traditional synthesized “orchestral” vibrations as supporting elements. Once again, Future Drummer works for me as an iconoclastic jazz drum machine. It takes a bit of fiddling but uniquely futuristic jazzelectro accompaniments are very possible.
Comments
Ooh. Complicated! ( in an interesting way.)
TOP MARKS HERE.
But I do wander off into musical neuroses. It's not personal to anyone but me.
One of your best efforts to synthesize the essence of a piano trio jazz performance.
Now my neurotic reactions to loose timings.
The Future drummer choice helped me (though I would love Jazz Drummer but that would demand precise piano playing for me to "go there"). Your sense of time is very close to the romantic pianists... it's fluid like time around large bodies in space... a bit warped.
This one got past the "forth wall" without the usual cognitive dissonance of bogus saxes or confusing timing.
I get the same timing problems with D'Angelo's music but I do realize he's really trying to break with
conventional concepts of groove. I've I can learn to appreciate that as a strength maybe I can move forward to accept the music's feeling and stop judging it's "precision".
The mass audience still prefers spot on grooves.
It would be nice to throw a chorus to the Vibe player(MJQ = Milt "Bags" Jackson) and just use 2 mallets... no chords.
@Svetlovska, thank you for listening and appreciating. Lewis went for simplicity... I guess I’m still not there!
@McD, your drummer’s training and slight OCD will never let you go when it comes to this musical “looseness” or “fuck it, who cares” attitude I have employed with much getting myself off the hook success. Posted in the death thread about Richard Teitlebaum I read this just now:
“In attempting to define his idea of indeterminacy, John Cage said that he likes to be in a situation in which he literally doesn’t know what he is doing,” Mr. Teitelbaum wrote in 2006. Likewise, he explained of his own work, “by creating an interactive situation in which the performer cannot consciously comprehend or predict the outcome of his actions, his/her mind will bypass more superficial levels of thinking and rational control to reach something deeper.”
Perhaps it is a shillobeth I use to adhere myself to those who know a lot more than I do but have wound up in the same place. A place of surrender to just what happens. Btw, I don’t employ this POV when driving a car.
Actually, I had an aha moment with adding the drum track on this and Samsara. Often, in the past, I could not figure how to get the drums to line up with the first beat of the measure in my tracks. That added to your bedevilment, but was, once again, p an “oh, that’s interesting” moment for me. But, and we don’t know how these ideas happen, I realized I could highlight the drums and move it a beat or two or three to line up better with the instrument tracks. And I do it all for you McD!
Thanks for the high marks!
Adding the drum tracks as a last step just insures it's probably not going pass my smell test.
I listen for how the solo instruments are playing in relation to a rhythm section groove.
So adding one after the solo's are fixed just opens the door to something more like John Cage and a lot less like John Lewis.
But you got lucky with this one which means you made a groove and kept good time. Shifting midi drummers just slightly on IOS is really tricky. The desktop DAW's seem to have better features for nudging MIDI and audio clock alignments.
See... you don't have a MIDI fixed "one" which is the whole idea for BPM/Time signatures/metronomes.
You free hand the tune as a feeling which is best just published unless you can also free hand a drummers part, IMHO.
When I see you used a drum app, I usually just wait for the next project and skip the frustration. I do thins with anyone that has bad time sync.
Most do ambient music which just shoots the drummer.
Many quantize and everything get aligned with MIDI BPM/time signatures.
But a few brave souls hit record and hope everything works out. You can hear it I'm sure when it does.
Otherwise, you tent to dial back the messed up drummer on "horse". The record company would stop any live recordings with these drummers on the way down.
Now a trumpet player or a singer can still work while totally fucked up: Miles, Lady Day... The white wanna bees like Ricki Lee Jones and Amy Winehouse decide they sound better fucked up: authentic.
Sad but people reward the behavior giving them booze from the audience.
"It don't mean a thing, It it ain't got that swing."
"Rhythm is the music of music."
It's not OCD by the way. We out number you on this point. People in the rhythm section with shitty time work alone.
@McD, listen to Samsara. It worked well in that one. I have taken to making my drum tracks simpler. No fills, easier on the jam intensity. Folks in the Tristano school consider the drummers pretty much just time keepers. Does that work for you?
Of course. I'm all about the observance of time! Lennie's school is all about the quest for the gnu.
Keep up... no slow back a tad... listen! Don't make me come over there. Just feel the pulse through your loins. Sit right on top of it. (Do I sound like some ex barking instructions?)
It helps to oscillate some appendage. How does that feel?