Jazz listening: Is it about the music? Or is it about the sound?
The thread title says it all. I can listen to jazz recordings for hours on end but can scarcely name a dozen tunes. My jazz collection is small but still growing. Most recordings sound great. On the other hand, I have a substantial rock, pop and country collection and like most of us, have a near encyclopedic knowledge of it. Yet sound quality is all over the map to the point that many titles have become nearly unlistenable on my best system. Which leads me back to my question: Is it the sound or the music? Maybe it’s both. You’ve just got to have one or the other!
Ain’t that the truth. The above phrase has quite a meaning in today’s times.
One of my favorite record stores have been back open to the public for awhile now and it’s time for me to do some crate digging again. I never knew how meditatively pleasing it was for me until it was taken away. I’m ready for all this melancholy to go away. Oh what covid 19 has wrought. There is a tinge of blues in my post here when there shouldn’t be. But I guess that’s part of music and life.
A good sound help me to better appreciate what is not already my cup of tea...Enlarging my understanding musical scope...
Good music the one i love already dont need good sound but they are a marriage made in heaven anyway and like in a love affair, it is love that matters here not the need first...
My sound is so good now, i even listen nowadays the musical genre i listened to the less in the past : complete opera, because i can now see the singers walking on the theater or singing around me in some particularly good recording job...
It is thanks to my room mechanical equalization, because i has been able to control with it and some others device the "listener envelopment " acoustical phenomena ...
Pesky, that's funny. I had almost forgotten my first preamp was a Soundcraftsman with full spectrum equalizer. Had that 4 years and have never had tone controls since.
You can't listen to poorly recorded jazz, you can well-recorded jazz. I tried many times and failed, I can't listen to jazz at all any more. But Like Bill I used to be able to. Those guys are in the endless search of the right notes. Some jazzrock is another matter, even if sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. Mahavishnu Orchestra is the very best.
@whart , You forgot Ornette Colman! You might also like Henry Threadgill, another genius. Try to fine, "Just the Facts and Pass the Bucket." "Too Much Sugar for a Dime," is also a great record. His recent stuff is morphing into neoclassical. In Just the Facts there is this female celloist who pulls off this amazing solo.
Anton99, You listen to jazz and classical alone because most people won't listen to it. My wife will tolerate old Trane and Davis records or the like. I put on "The Art Ensemble of Chicago" and she will puke. She will listen to the Professors solo stuff.
@mijostyn--don’t listen to Ornette C. much- the record I have to hand featuring him is like 4 people playing 5 different songs simultaneously, but I can look at some of his other works, along with Mr. Threadgill (same last name as a old time club owner down here that was Janis Joplin’s sort of shelter from the storm in her early days). Check out Milt Ward and Virgo Spectrum, track title: "The Foreigner," which is up on YouTube. Sadly the record goes for big bucks when you can find a copy-- it is going to be reissued soon. Cecil McBee is on it, along with Carlos Garnett. Another favorite is Jothan Callins, Winds of Change- private label. Callins played bass and worked with Sun Ra, but here he is playing trumpet, Cecil M on bass (again). I guess the space I’m in is between complete cacophony and melody- I don’t mind excursions that are out there, but I do like to come back to a riff, a melody or something familiar to ground the piece. It’s all worth a listen, at least once. And some of the less accessible stuff I will come back to; I guess it’s all relative in terms of your tolerance for "out thereness." By degrees, I guess my palate for more wild, untethered material has expanded through listening and exposure. Sun Ra is pretty beyond my normal range of stuff, some of the free jazz players from the West Coast scene also played more spiritual jazz or soul jazz (to put a label on it): Nate Morgan was a very strong piano player who was loosely affiliated with Horace Tapscott, but released a few records on his own (in addition to doing pop work to pay the bills, like Chaka Khan). I find the back stories, and history of these guys (and women, there, more blues than jazz though there are some strong players today) fascinating.
It should always be about the music. If you want great sound too attend a live performance it’s a lot cheaper than a system that will give an approximation. Then again I think there are lots of people in this hobby who are more sound lovers than music lovers I am reminded of one individual who was bragging to myself that his exceptional and expensive system was so good you could actually hear the subway passing by under symphony hall on one recording of the BSO to which I replied “yah but who would want to”
@jyprez- this "thing of ours" is very gear-centric and about sound. Ideally, it should be in service of the music, but I know there were times that I got caught in the web of listening for sonic spectacularity, it's a trap in some ways if one confines their listening to stuff that sounds "good" on their system. I used to have "demo" records that would show off my system. I hit a point where I was tired of that kind of listening and just started to explore music as an adventure. I can read and play (my chops are hardly what they were) but somehow, after years of classical and a love of early hard rock (I'm a big fan of what I'd call biker bar stuff, the heavier the better, kind of early post psych), I've settled into this soul-jazz groove that is very rich with talent and recordings, and satisfies me musically. I actually managed to avoid hearing "Dreaming with Dean" (or whatever it is called) for a few years until I got caught out during a visit to someone's place-- -very exotic system and when he cued that record, along with other audiophile warhorses-- listening for something that had gone astray in the system, I immediately recognized it, ending my run of Dean-free music. :) In my view, listen to whatever you want, for whatever reason --- who am I to dictate listening choices? I just hit a wall of same old at some point and wanted out of the audiophile "approved" box- the stuff that gets continually reissued because it sells.
I listen to a lot of jazz, especially swing, bebop and hard bop. Because many of these recordings were made in the 40’s-50’s, in medium quality studios, the sonic quality is “ok”, but not something you’d listen to because of the sound quality. For example I was listening to Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain” a few days ago on vinyl, and was thinking “wonderful music, what an awful recording”. But it’s kind of all over the place. Most Monk stuff is not well recorded, but most Ahmad Jamal is.
I remember jazz mainly by album. There are so many combos of this guy playing with that guy or that quartet or quintet. I like the classic bebop or hard bop more that the fusion/funk/modern whatever you want to call it. Although there are some that defy categorization.
I almost never listen to an album just because it sounds good or is renowned. If I don't like it (A Love Supreme for example or Birth of the Cool) I don't like it. Sorry. Not into big bands. But I am not a fan of just one instrument being played.
Of course there are songs whose titles stand out on my favorite jazz albums but not nearly like rock and pop stuff.
I am the opposite, but learned about rock from my XM radio display. Yes, I know, you have better sources. So do I, but the jazz selection is awesome, and the info, especially for jazz, is educational. The Polk costs about $50.00 on eBay, and service is $60 for the first year.
Interesting that people for whom it really IS about the music - namely professional musicians. Rarely have very sophisticated audio systems. Even when they can afford it
Jazz is a music you listen with your soul. I have been equally moved by listening on great systems, not so great systems and live performances. After 50 plus years and hundreds of listens to A Love Supreme, Kind Of Blue and many other classic recordings from many great players. They are still a fresh spiritual experience every time I hear them. Every single note John Coltrane played deserves complete attention he is sharing his soul and his gift from God with us. IMHO
I grew up listening to jazz. Learning names like Miles, Trane, Gordon, etc. it rubbed off. As an adult jazz is 90% of what I listen to. Playing trumpet in school, my first influence was Freddie Hubbard’s First Light LP. What a trumpet player. What an album, and some of CTI’s finest work in 1971. I’ve studied both jazz piano and jazz guitar. One doesn’t have to be a musician to know jazz, but studying does give one insights. I’ve been listening to jazz for 58 years. And I’ve not scratched the surface of available music.
Your experience interests me because I grew up learning to play trumpet & baritone. I dabbled with the french horn but found the mouthpiece tiny and the instrument kind of stubborn. Never got as far as improvisational jazz though.
But learning music theory changed my life forever. It informs our listening enjoyment immeasurably and led to one of my life's greatest passions.
Freddie Hubbard's "Sky Dive" was one of my first non-Miles trumpet recordings after college - on CTI. Yikes, I was captivated.
A few issues back The Absolute Sound had a Editor Column (guest I think) that discussed three types of listening. Made perfect sense to me. I'll paraphrase: (1) Listening to and for the best possible sound imaginable; (2) Listening to and for the best possible performance; and (3) Listening for the best possible sound of that amazing musical performance.
I'm definitely in the third group. How good can you actually get a Robert Johnson recording to sound, but oh man, when you listen to it, the musical finesse of his playing defies the ages.
Good, no great sound is wonderful and sublime, but without being coupled to good musicians creating great music, forget it. That is why I could never stand this 1980's elevator type jazz music. No heart, no soul, no matter how it sounds.
Can anybody find a link to TAS column. I have not had any luck.
The music. It’s always about the music. Back in the day those cat's created a music unlike any other. They were nothing short of geniuses for the amount of great music they created. Each band, each musician had something different to offer, and their individual styles were unique. And one could identify them by their signature sound. The music had a solid 30 year run. Everything moves on and nothing stays the same.
"If it’s not about the music. You don’t actually appreciate jazz. Stick to Kenny G."
I agree. Kenny G's music as presented to the public via his recordings is nothing but electronic, drenched in artificial digital reverb bunk. However, he does have talent. I saw him give a performance on the old Arcenio Hall show one night. No electronic enhancement. Just straight-ahead jazz. The man was terrific. Kinda reminded me of Sonny Stitt. Who knew??
i rewatched the 9th episode of ken burn's jazz documentary... was reminded of clifford brown, lester young/lady day, horace silver... what a lovely show and the talent of these artists was tremendous... they shaped the jazz we listen to today
My cousin turned me on to jazz when I was just a kid. I remember when I really hated Monk. Then one day, the lightbulb went on in my heart and he became a genius.
The artists you mentioned are among my favorites and are still my go-to's to this day. I love the giant tenor players from the big band era. Some that come to mind are Charlie Ventura, Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, and certainly Lester Young.
Same thing with the big band singers who went solo in the late 40s and early 50s. Doris Day, June Christy, Jo Stafford are examples. Due to the times, the Black singers didn't get the immense credit they deserved. Some of us caught on early though. Mabel Mercer, Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine, etc.
Check this out ... The beautiful Dinah Washington:
But also if you’re looking to bridge jazz into anything you could focus on later Jazz Funk records by Byrd, Corea, McCann, Hancock without having to get too serious with Fusion.
oregonpapa, good for you for having the courage to not get on the “beat up on Kenny G” wagon. I like good perspective. As we all know he has been a punching bag for a long time, for many claiming the Jazz higher ground. It gets tiresome. His recorded output is mostly drivel and that soprano sound......😱; almost as weird as his hair. He is not what can be considered a good Jazz player, no Coltrane, Stitt or many many unknown players out there, but as you say he actually does have some talent. I’ve heard it. He has found a commercial niche and he’s laughing all the way to the bank. His choice, and I don’t see the point in condemning him for it.
Point is, some feel that musicians have a “responsibility” to some predetermined artistic standard and that record companies have a “responsibility” to elevate listeners’ appreciation. I disagree. It is up to the listener to learn to be better listeners, become more discerning and learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is a cop out the other way. I wonder just how many people out there never even knew what a soprano saxophone was before hearing Kenny G. Of those, I have to believe at least a handful now have Trane’s “My Favorite Things” in their collections. Always important to consider the alternative.
That “encyclopedic knowledge” of rock, pop and country that you refer to: I take it you say you have that because you can actually name the vast majority of the songs. That’s because all those songs have lyrics that give away the name of the song. The fact that you “can listen to jazz recordings for hours on end...” - well if that’s true you must like it and it must be pleasing, for whatever reason(s). I have a large collection and I know that, blindfolded, I couldn’t name most of the songs. And my knowledge of jazz isn’t encyclopedic despite being an avid listener and collector for a very long time now. Keep listening and exploring.
Music is less a taste than a set of learning experiments revealing all along our life a part of whom we are....
I enjoy all music created by a musician first for himself and his immediate family and more than for a market...Classical, jazz, Persian/iranian, Indian, and many others at a lesser degree...
Jazz is less a style of music for me than a "rolling" into one of the composer and the interpreter , like in singing the oldest fruit coming from the tree of music....Like in Persian/Iranian or Indian music... This intimate relation in improvisation makes them all alike in spite of the differences between idioms...
Written music is the "strangest seeds" from the tree of music....
Reproduced music are the "strangest fruit" coming from it....
Music like language was never about sound but about meaning....
But the acoustical experience of sound in speech and music begins with the first cave where the walking ape meditating to become human create music on a more conscious level....
Music begins to be for him in this cave the art of being together with himself which is also the art of conscious dying or ecstasy.......
Music there wedded with silence....
I apologize for this "dreamed" history of music....
**** Music like language was never about sound but about meaning.... ****
I think sound is much more important to music than it is to language. (Unless, of course, one views sound as part of meaning.) Humans have created some wonderful musical instruments that produce beautiful, intoxicating sounds.
When I listen to someone speak, I rarely focus on the sound of their voice. I focus on meaning. Unless their voice is:
strange enough to be distracting, or;
wonderful enough (as with a friend who is a professional voice man for audio books) to be mesmerizing.
**** Music like language was never about sound but about meaning.... ****
I think sound is much more important to music than it is to language. (Unless, of course, one views sound as part of meaning.) Humans have created some wonderful musical instruments that produce beautiful, intoxicating sounds.
When I listen to someone speak, I rarely focus on the sound of their voice. I focus on meaning. Unless their voice is:
strange enough to be distracting, or;
wonderful enough (as with a friend who is a professional voice man for audio books) to be mesmerizing.
Thanks for your observation that make me able to precise my thinking...
In music sound is " part of the meaning" like you wisely remark....Like in poetry where sound become integral part of the meaning....
Like in speech experience the sound of a voice is not a passive vehicule of the meaning but integral part of the meaning itself for our subconscious deeper perception...There is 2 operatorial regimes in language evolutively and historically and day to day interwinned completely: prosaic and poetical mode....We can and we must separe them for specialized purpose and specialized function, like science discourse or poetical discourse, but erasing one will kill the other, and separating them completely in everyday language is impossible anyway and not desirable at all...
Sound is no more only sound in a purely physically acoustical sense in music nor in language...
The tonal playing timbre of an instrument means and will never be just a physical sound....
It is like if all sound for a musician are the ghost or the possible reincarnation of a meaning which is also a creative gesture....
A violin is more a "personality" than a tool.....If not, it is a complete extension of the self of the musician and anyway cannot be considered to be a mere replaceable tool....It is revealing that a musical instrument for a musician cannot be reduced to be like a brush for a painter or a chisel for a sculptor...This illustrate the intimate link between sound and soul....And the deep meaning of hearing...
It is the reason why Ravi Shankar was shoked to the core when Jimie Hendrix broke his guitar in front of the crowd on the scene of the same festival ....His sitar was for him his second mother not less, killing her was unthinkable....
«History of music is history of consciousness»-Ernest ansermet
«For the tabla player his gesture reflect the entire rythmical cosmos »- An Indian master
« It is not a harp Groucho 🤓 it is Violeta»- Harpo Marx
At its core, language is an objective discipline. It enables concrete things to happen. Do this! Do that! Do it this way! Sure, language can also can be subjective. After all, what else are poetry and turns-of phrases? But that's not its basic function. Music, by contrast, is a subjective discipline. Its function is to awaken emotions, not to tell us how to mow a lawn. And ain't that nice!
Its the "Vibe", Jazz is unique, its rigid yet very free at the same time and the players are usually master of their instrument. In Bebop they are basically Improving over old show tunes but man do they turn those songs around. I can name a several songs but its more following the artist and the record, i cant name all the songs on Art Blakey's "Moanin" but its not a record you will ever forget.
I find listening to acoustic instruments most exciting on a hifi rig, its also more difficult to reproduce these instruments convincingly. I think acoustic Bass is one of the hardest for a system to get right, When a trumpet sounds life like it i will make your hair stand. On the other hand, even an apple homepod can make an overdriven electric guitar and smashed rock drums sound good but its the nuance that hifi brings to our listening and Jazz recordings are generally all about this.
Most of those old bebop records were recorded with a stereo pair of mics in a beautiful sounding large room not multi tracked in isolation like modern music and this is where that Vibe comes from IMO.
CTI Records: Jim Hall with an all star cast, Concierto. George Benson on records Body Talk and Take 5. Ron Carter, the great bassist may as well have been considered as the house bassist because he’s featured on countless CTI recordings. Freddie Hubbard was simply sublime on First Light. I was finishing high school in 72 and being the first time I’d smoked pot, that album took on a new dimension. I loved the rock and soul music of the 60’s and 70’s too. But the jazz was other worldly. And I wasn’t yet 18! After finishing a 4 year stint in the Navy, in 77 I’d discover the feel good music of Chuck Mangione. If you like flugelhorn, he, Freddie Hubbard, and the great Bobby Shew, are your guys. Those were the days.
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