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All Of Me / Expressing With SWAM
The 1931 jazz standard. With as much expression in the SWAM Tenor I could manage using the onscreen app controllers.
PurePiano, SWAM Tenor, Trumpet and Flugelhorn and BeatHawk Total Bass.
Comments
@2:00-2-15 ish…Niiiiice.
The song was unrecognizable to me until a few bits towards the end.
Judging by some comments you’ve made in a previous thread, I think you’ll take that as a compliment. If not, then please forgive my unrefined ears.
I’m impressed with how well the dynamics come over for the tenor sax. It’s missing the breathiness of the real thing when played that way, but I think it will be a long time before software is capable of reproducing that level of idiosyncrasy.
Nice work!
Thx @michael_m. Did you listen on headphones? It’s pretty much all breath and key noise in a few places.
Interestingly, I had to freeze the track in Cubasis in real time to get the mixdown to recognize the midi breath data. It just recorded everything as a fully played note. I was pretty surprised that I could get SWAM to do that. There was a bit too much vibrato at points, due to my lack of control of the onscreen slider, but WTH.
@Blipsford_Baubie, haha, thanks and not surprised at all. It would have been appropriate to title this “All Of Something”. It pretty faithfully follows the changes of the song, tho. Older jazz renditions would state the melody first, but I’m too old to waste the precious time 😉😳😎😂
Here’s Lennie Tristano’s take on All Of Me’s changes. You might hear the original song… or not. Maybe I’ll overlay the straight melody over my track tonight for you. Players familiar with playing these standards can hook in without much difficulty. Thanks for listening and taking time to comment. Much appreciated. And respect for one of the best forum names around. Very distinctive!
Lovely stuff. Not sure I agree with you @michael_m , don’t think it will be long before the machines take over. Vibrato seems to stand out on some SWAMs much more then others e.g. trumpet, flugelhorn rather than Sax.
Just out of interest @LinearLineman has this been a record year for you composition wise? I think I count 20 albums but might be wrong!
I didn’t, but I realized some was there. I guess I mean that the breathiness isn’t articulated in the same way as the real thing. i.e. the player isn’t ‘playing’ the breathiness. I can’t think how to explain it better.
I play alto (not very well), and playing quieter passages is much harder than loud passages. I always feel that there’s a kind of exposure in those quieter notes that really requires much more control of the breath, and I really envy anyone who can put the amount of emotion into those passages and keep that breathiness there. Of course, it depends on the reed that is used and it can be eliminated, but there are players who excel at making that sound in such a musical way. Stan Getz comes to mind, but there are definitely others.
Totally agree with you, @michael_m. For now it’s identifiable as artifice. If I were actually a horn player I would have been able to control the sound/breath balance, but maybe if I could control the SWAM better it would be more realistic as well. Still, pretty amazing.
It’s definitely good compared to just a few years ago, and I’m probably just being picky. I just always find it hard to not pick up on those things.
@michael_m, I’ve actually given up on the comparison to the real instruments. A friend of mine once said “a first rate fantasy is better than a third rate reality”. Same with these “emulations”. I prefer to think of them as unique synthesized instruments utilized to create interesting and satisfying sonic results. I had a similar discussion with @Lady_App_titude about reverb. Natural sounds have reverb but it’s only a habituated response. We want it to sound “natural”. But, for me, that’s limiting the scope of usefulness.
I think I only do it with instruments I can play (although that’s quite a lot…) because I tend to be very analytical when listening as part of my ongoing improvement.
You’re right though, it isn’t really a useful comparison after a performance has been committed to a recording.
@michael_m What instruments do you play?
Do we want to take this rose apart pedal by pedal and see how it was made?
https://forum.audiob.us/uploads/editor/gk/e217ymarf1yu.png
For a start, class, what key is Mike playing it in?
The horn playing reminds me of some pre-bebop jazz masters like Dexter Gordon for selecting clever intervals and avoiding running scale and Louis Armstrong (for the vibrato).
The SWAM instruments continue to amaze me for their ability to avoid the uncanny valley and channel the real deal.
Play, or play well?
I play piano, guitar, bass guitar, drums, alto sax, flute, harmonica (better at diatonic than chromatic), mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, trumpet, recorder, Irish whistle.
There are others that I can vaguely carry a tune on, but I wouldn’t include due to really having minimal experience on them.
Also I can play variations on the above, but don’t necessarily have the experience to play them traditionally. Bansuri and dizi would be good examples.
@McD, it is, indeed, in C, tho I read the original was in Bb. What is this “uncanny valley”?
@Blipsford_Baubie, here is the track with a straight piano melody over it. I left the second half as was. The jazzers training is to hear the melody like a tape recording in the head while improvising from a deeper place.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4c8fn1zi1qid3kw/All of me melody.wav?dl=0
@michael_m, I’m envious. I’m a musical outlier. Not much natural talent as an all round musician/
Yes, I did realize that you skipped the head and went straight into soloing.
(Did I get the lingo right like a real cat?😎)
I had a much easier time hearing the changes in my mind on Lenny Tristano’s take. I’m sure that because he wasn’t comping himself made it easier for me to hear them changes. Also his faster tempo made it easy to hear the changes. I think it’s easier to get lost in the vast space of a ballad, at least for me it is.
You took the time to play the melody over your original for me. Thanks for taking the time to do that and for allowing me to save it to my own drop box.
It was much more evident to me after listening, and I hope my original post didn’t infer that those were not the correct changes. That was not my intention. I was thinking out loud out; I was surprised at myself that I wasn’t hearing the changes even knowing what the tune was. It was meant as a compliment.
I want to improve my musicality, so I’ve already stated that I tend to get lost easier with ballad tempos.
Also, that you’re using different instruments for the voices. That I’m sure is also a culprit. I can lock in easier on piano or piano and bass and one other horn.
Also, were you reharmonizing? Because if one borrows chords from the relative key or substitutes chords here and there, it’s still considered playing the original changes right?
You are, indeed, a hep cat @Blipsford_Baubie. I certainly wasn’t offended by anything you said. No worries. Your take on ballads v uptempo stuff makes a lot of sense, tho, I think, if I just posted the piano track you would have heard the changes more easily.
One of the things that got to me when I was learning from Connie Crothers was restructuring the phrases of a melody. For example, making the last note of a phrase the first note of the the next phrase, or making the first note of the next phrase into the last note of the first. Lyrically, using I’m In The Mood For Love, it would be something like this…
I’m in the mood for for love,
Simply because you’re near me, hon-
-ey but when you’re near
-me I'm in the mood for love.
Crazy, huh?!… so, I did that with the sax phrasing… one phrase bleeds into another while the underlying piano is sticking straighter (but not perfectly straight) to the changes. You can hear that, I think if you listen just to the sax part and my straight piano melody.
So, it’s no wonder you had some difficulty hearing what tune it was. In my defense, lol, the first three notes are the opening to All Of Me, but after that it’s anyone’s guess. Connie didn’t teach me that concept, but I did discover it because she had me play just the straight melody of tunes both in the right and left hands. There wasn’t a lot of room for creativity when you’re limited to just the straight single note melody. So I messed around with dynamics, note length and, as the case here, phrasing.
Lastly, yes, I was reharmonizing, tho it wasn’t done by thinking. It's more tactile from years of playing long lists of different chord voicings through all twelve keys. It is more feeling different shapes of my hand/fingers as I play, and often I am just experimenting with different shapes.
This was fun, sir. Thanks for your interest and analysis. Happiest of New Year’s to you!
It’s from animation, where the audience for instance accepts Snow White or the little mermaid even though their movements and expressions are obviously not realistic. But then, with modern CGI, when trying to make ultrarealistic animation or worse, to insert animated versions of real actors into live action films, the effect is off-putting because the figures look or act non-human or zombielike - too realistic, and thus not realistic enough.
For instruments, the analogy would be a «brass» patch on an analogue synth, versus a simulation like the SWAMs. On the first, you can do whatever to the sound to get the effect you want, because it isn’t really brass, just brass-inspired, like a cartoon. On the second though, if played without expression, reverb etc, people hear zombie brass instead.
Thx @JudasZimmerman, that was an excellent explanation. I had to look up this theory and found the origin by the Japanese roboticist who first proposed it in 1970…
Masahiro Mori (1970/2005), a Japanese roboticist, coined the term “uncanny valley” in an essay Bukimi No Tani. There, he wrote that:
Climbing a mountain is an example of a function that does not increase continuously: a person’s altitude y does not always increase as the distance from the summit decreases owing to the intervening hills and valleys. I have noticed that, as robots appear more human- like, our sense of their familiarity increases until we come to a valley. I call this relation the “uncanny valley.” (p. 33
This fascinates me because of a discussion about reverb I had with some folks, particularly @Lady_App_titude that we had on my post The James Webb. Now I understand what was being driven at and what I disagreed with. The comments were about adding reverb to horns because they have natural reverb (tho I’m not sure they would have reverb in an anechoic chamber. I think the “natural” reverb might be not from the instrument but only from its interaction with the environment.
For me, to reverb or not to reverb was a choice not a necessity. Maybe that’s because i don’t think of even the SWAMs as “real” instruments… just sonic simulacra that are useable tools with beautiful or unusual sounds.
The analogy I make is to verbs… “They are pretty” becomes “They pretty”. “They pretty”, however has its own meaning and connotations. If I wrote it as dialogue in a play we wouldn’t say it is the uncanny valley, though there are some who would be repulsed by it for various reasons. However, if it was a two year old saying “they pretty” it could be charming… or at least normal. Still, I understand it now with acoustic apps like SWAM that the attention to realism draws the mind away from the cartoon acceptance, you describe, of synthesized replicas of instruments. V-e-e-ry interesting!
Thx for the explanation, but I wonder why I don’t have a problem with it? I guess I could have sex with a robot, too. .. but could @McD? 😳😱😉
I haven't been following this thread, but have only skimmed the basics because I was tagged a few times in the course of it, apparently in connection with a comment I made about reverb on horns and the word "natural." I never used the word natural. For me, the purpose of reverb is just to make things sound "better", sweeter, more pleasing. This may or may not be something similar to a natural space. Some of my favorite reverbs are Lexicon algorithmic reverbs, which just sound cool, but not necessarily natural. Reverb makes things more exciting. As opposed to dry, which would be more dull.
The other issue I mentioned in the James Webb discussion was "expression." I'm glad somebody else brought up the concept of the uncanny valley. I thought about it, but didn't want to get into a long discussion about the concept.
But basically, for me (and I think most people), it doesn't matter if your horn solo is fake or real sounding, analog, digital, modeling, whatever, but you want it to be EXPRESSiVE. For example, the synth solo on Steely Dan's Home At Last is very synth sounding, but the subtle things, the nuances, is what makes it as expressive as a horn player. You'd rather hear a solo played expressively (vibrato, swing, dynamics), even on a synthetic sound source like an analog synth, than something played with no feeling on a perfect simulation of an acoustic instrument. HOW it is performed is more important than WHAT it is played on.
To an extent. But that's where the uncanny valley comes in. A timbrally cruder simulation like an analog synth, may be more pleasing than a closer approximation (e.g., a 90s ROMpler limited horn sample). A simulation that is "almost there" elicits that "creepy" response. In short, you don't want your simulated instruments to sound like this:
Thx @Lady_App_titude. I appreciate your thoughts and the stimulation of the discussion. We all make our own choices, of course. Otherwise one person’s meat wouldn’t be another person’s poison. Unless we were all vegans, I guess, then they’d be the same! Happiest New Year to you😘🙏
@LinearLineman as always great, great and a very, very good sax, give the sax a little more release and sustain and it is top notch. Trumpet is great and piano is as always unreal good. My girlfriend finds it very nostalgic. We are enjoying it at the moment with a glass of champagne. Happy newyear to you master.
Back atcha, LL.
Of course, sometimes failed simulations of the past can become nostalgic and en vogue, if you wait long enough. Hence, the whole Vaporwave movement and such, which promotes a renewed appreciation for the crunchy old 90s ROMpler sounds of yore. I admit, this last year has moved me to fire up my old Roland modules for the first time in ages.
As a matter of fact, I am a veggie who phased out meat many years ago, but not a vegan. I shall toast you with an expensive little piece of cheese tonight at midnight. (The good stuff, not Velveeta.)
L'Chaim!
Ah, @Frenq, that sounds so sublime and kind of you to include me in such a tender moment. Sometimes it's really damn good to be alive. Best to you both and a wonderful, productive, year to come, 🙏🥳
Haha, I suspect that expensive cheese may have quite the uncanny olfactory valley for many.
In most cases I would agree, but I think there’s sometimes the case for playing non-expressively. Late 70s / early 80s new wave comes to mind - some was played all legato and with little expressiveness, but I wouldn’t want to hear it any other way.
I’d say something similar to you, but more along the lines that music should be played with the amount of expression that sounds right for the piece of music.
@michael_m, interesting remarks. I certainly can see the lack of expression in the work of guys like Philip Glass. I always felt his music was like sticking your finger into an electrical socket. You feel the current, the energy, but there’s no expression.
I can find great emotional content in a well designed chord progression and the polyrhythmic ideas of Philip Glass suck me in... it's trance inducing with a core of
emotional touchstones from the chord choices and voice leading.
I'm sure something in this 3 hour collection will move most people... poke about it you ain't feeling' it. At 1:32, "The Hours: Dead Things" gets me like some Chopin does.
I can see how the simplicity of the music might offend someone that has serious piano chops.
NOTE: Some romantics like to go crazy with the rubato tempo shifts but I like my Glass to be
like layers of perfect crystals. It makes the changes in rhythmic choices more effective for me.
@McD, Glass is one of my favorites. I reference him because his music does not have the emotional button pushing of Chopin. I find the music very moving, however. It expresses many things without a lot of expression. Art can do the same.