Very occasional quote(s) of the day: consecrated and desynchronized

A couple of quotes from the pianist Ethan Iverson.


From blog post Rhythmic Folklore:

“Consecrated jazz drummers have less accurate time than rock and fusion drummers for a reason. The beat is connected to the cycle of life and playing with an ensemble. It has warp and woof and slip and slide.”


Article from The Threepenny Review, Hands & Feet:

“Magic happens at the drum kit when the four limbs are slightly desynchronized. Any truly swinging or funky drummer does not always place the articulations of the two hands and two feet at exactly the same time (even though it may look simultaneous to a lay person). These complex techniques are not covered by the European tradition of music notation; the groovy result is often simply called 'feel.' The tradition of 'feel' is at its most exalted in various hand-drumming languages of Mother Africa, the continent where most of the rhythmic motifs in American music come from. A drummer with 'good hands' may not have exceptional 'feel.' Naturally, the very greatest drummers have both.”

Follow Iverson on Twitter.
Photo credit. 

Daily best music in the world: Louis Hayes

While I finish a long Jack Dejohnette transcription, and work on my new cymbal-related web site, here is a Louis Hayes album from 1960, shared on Twitter this morning by Ethan Iverson:

Very occasional quote of the day: time in perspective

A good few lines about time from Robert Glasper, in an interview with Ethan Iverson:

People worry about the metronome, “I’m not gonna move, I’m not gonna move!” because that means you are good. If you move, that means your time is bad. But Miles and them moved all over the place, and it was fucking awesome.

No one ever listens to a tune and says afterwards, “Man, they were at exactly the same tempo the whole time, how hip was that?” Who cares?

It was not just tempo, back in the day they didn’t care about tuning, either! Sharp and flat as hell, but the feeling was right.

Nowadays people care. It probably has something to do with double-edged sword of schooling and the wrong kind of teachers.

Obviously, tuning is good, keeping time is good! If you are ignorant to it, that’s a different thing.

Very occasional quote of the day: classical in jazz

“[T]hese days I think there can actually be too much 'classical' sounding stuff in jazz. In a master class I heard Paul Bley warn about this. Bley thought it was better for young jazz musicians to study Louis Armstrong than Alban Berg.

Indeed, it is important to remember that any Dexter Gordon record has so much more meaning and validity than most modern nerdy music-school jazz connected to formal composition.

Taking that a step further, in no way do I feel that the greatest jazz is lesser than the greatest 20th-century composition. Indeed, I’d argue the reverse. The best of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Ornette Coleman with their most sympathetic collaborators is clearly the greatest 20th-century music.”

— The Bad Plus's Ethan Iverson

Very occasional quote of the day: “You shouldn't be able to do that.”

A pull from Ethan Iverson's Whiplash/Buddy article, which deserves its own space:

A story about Mel Lewis: Mel hated giving lessons, but finally a kid talked him into letting him come by a record session and watch Mel at work. During a break Mel gestured for the kid to sit behind the kit, and said, “Play me a snare roll.” 

The kid played a good, professional roll. Maybe not as good as the one that starts the movie Whiplash, but still, a good roll. Not easy to do. 

Mel took his sticks back and said, “See, right there is your problem. You shouldn't be able to do that. I can't do that. You gotta quit that shit and start becoming a drummer.”

Now, Lewis was to all accounts a super-opinionated, cranky guy, who apparently was not above saying things for effect, which might not be the 100% literal truth. He could play a roll, and he certainly would've thrown the student out of the lesson if he couldn't play one. But it's such an article of faith today that more chops is always better, the idea that being a good drummer is independent of, or even possibly at odds with your chops, is something worth thinking about.

(h/t to Ethan Iverson)

Listening: Miles Davis — In A Silent Way

This guy's copy is in a little too
good condition for my taste.

Following another Twitter conversation begun by Ethan Iverson, I listened to Miles Davis's album In A Silent Way, always one of my favorites, three times in a row while having my coffee. My comment there was that it really is a perfect album, as much so as anything else in jazz— Kind of Blue, A Love Supreme, anything else you'd care to name. The improvising is sort of backgrounded, and the writing is extremely minimal, so, famous as it is, it's not necessarily put in that kind of company. Some historically-minded people just regard it as transitional, others want more blowing and are bored by it.

If you spend a little time with the record, the reasons it is great are self-evident in the sound coming off the vinyl, and I'm not going to try to state them in English. It is a totally unique album; for all the “jazz/rock” and fusion that followed it, nobody (except for Miles, occasionally) does quite the thing that is on this record. Maybe Gil Evans comes the closest, here and there.

The background lore isn't really necessary, but you might want to read guitarist John McLoughlin's comments about playing his famous rendition of the track In A Silent Way; also, via Iverson, there's an article from Downbeat discussing the album, and some bad feelings between Tony Williams and Miles surrounding the recording session. One writer on Iverson's feed suggested that Miles whole purpose with his music in this period was to impress Betty Davis (née Mabry). While I don't believe that, it would be great if it were true, because it would prove that it doesn't friggin' matter why people do things.

Embedding for the YouTube video of the album has been disabled, so you'll have to follow this link to listen— or go to your record collection. Everyone is supposed to own this one.

3½ minutes

Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson had a fun riff going over on the Twitter, which was to find iconic jazz tracks that were basically exactly 3½ minutes long; he was limiting it to music released during the LP era— roughly 1950 and after. I ran with that a little bit and put together a YouTube playlist/survey of things of that length.

Going through my own library, it's an interesting exercise to listen to a whole lot of things with that exact format; it's basically the shortest you can perform a “real”, fully developed jazz tune. A lot of jazz 78s are three minutes long, which always feels too short. A lot of jazz vocal numbers are also three minutes. 3½ minutes is a standard length for pop singles, slightly on the longer side, just enough time to lose yourself in the track a little bit before it wraps up. The Milton Nascimento song I included, and Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix are like that— they feel long.

Listening: Coltrane — Crescent

This conversation between Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and composer/bandleader Darcy James Argue, about the John Coltrane albums Crescent, and A Love Supreme, happened on Twitter:

Crescent was the first Coltrane album I ever bought, and actually listened to (the first actual one was Om— a very challenging record, if you've never heard it), but it has always been a little bit of a dark horse for me— compared to other Coltrane recordings, the visceral emotionality I was seeking is very restrained here. It's very deep music, and it was probably too grown-up for me, honestly. Redman summarizes it perfectly in the comment above, and those are all qualities it has taken me a long time to learn to appreciate.

It is one of the very greatest things in 20th century music, and if you haven't listened to Crescent all the way through in a while, or ever, here it is:

Mickey Roker on the bass drum

Mickey Roker is kind of an under-appreciated player— by me, too. We often focus on the ultra-modern star-type players, but he was a very hardworking musician in his day, and there's a lot to learn from him about what works in a jazz setting. You can hear on yesterday's recording (you bought the record, right?) that he plays the bass drum rather strongly through the swing sections of the tune. He talks about that a little bit with Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, in an interview Iverson has posted online. I like that Roker doesn't say feathering the best drum— a term which just annoys me, and I use only begrudgingly:

EI: When you are playing this fast, are you feathering the bass drum? 

MR: I almost always pat the bass drum because that’s the bottom of the drums. I’m from the old school. We used to play with no bass player and you had to pat the bass drum. I am so used to that. Sometimes I get too rambunctious with it but I don’t want to sound like Papa Joe Jones. That’s why I like cats like Vernel Fournier. Nobody played that bass drum like that guy, you can hear it all the time. Some drummers tune their bass drum at too high a pitch and you can hear it but it gets on your nerves. But if it is down and damp, it don’t get in the way of the bass player. 

EI: Do you think you are feathering here? 

MR: (listens to track) No, I am not playing it here. Well, it’s hard to do that on something fast. You can’t do that on something that is extremely fast, unless you are playing without a bass player.

The track they're talking about is Three Little Words, from the album Sonny Rollins on Impulse; the tempo is around 300 bpm.

Ethan Iverson interview with Billy Hart

Here's part of another great interview by the Bad Plus' Ethan Iverson, this time with Billy Hart:


Miles and Tony
Tony, for his age, seemed to me more thorough in the study of the jazz tradition of drumming than anybody I’ve ever come across. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other guys. But the more I learned, the more I realized that he had somehow gotten that history together. And it is not just patterns, it’s the reason why… I guess it would be in any kind of musical tradition, certain chords or accents or whatever present an emotion that been tried and true over a length of time, which I guess “speaks” or is traditionally accurate or correct. Tony had that. It wasn’t just that he played this rhythm or pattern, it was that the pattern belonged there traditionally. A lot of people today might play a Tony Williams pattern, but they play it just because they heard it…they don’t know why or how it works.

There is that video you played me of the Miles Davis quintet with Herbie and Ron playing “Autumn Leaves.” There are some tensions in the piano and bass, and Tony responds by playing a simple shuffle on the snare and cymbal, which is kind of an advanced response to the tension.

Except that it so correct! You can see Miles is immediately influenced and affected emotionally. And then you back to Philly Joe or anybody, hear them do it, and go, “oh right.” It’s like a change of color or a heightened intensity. (As opposed to starting a tune that way---if you start a tune there, you have to stay there.)

One of the interesting things about the Miles band is that there were a lot of details about the tunes that incoming members have to learn, like the cymbal beat and piano tremolos on “All Blues.” Tony and Herbie interpreted those parts in their own way, but still they clearly knew the details.

That’s something else that Tony said. Someone asked him about getting the gig with Miles just before he was 17 years old. There must have been other good drummers, right? Tony said, “Hard to know. I’d like to ask Miles myself. I can’t say that I was better than anybody else. But I was definitely prepared for the gig. There was nothing Miles could play that I didn’t already know.”


Keep reading- important stuff about time after the break:

Two more Paul Motian memorials

This time from someone who actually knew him and played with him, Ethan Iverson. Here's the introduction:

"Who was Paul Motian? A bald white guy without proper technique? One look at his trademark grip, choked way up on unusually thick sticks, and many dismissed him as a charlatan. His off-and-on ride cymbal, although accurate as a metronome, had a bizarre spacing in the skip beat. For those who believe jazz drumming is bound by certain parameters, Motian was the ultimate enigma, perhaps even an insult.

Yet Motian had a deep relationship to tradition. Those baseball bats were Oscar Pettiford’s idea. In 1955, at Small’s Paradise in Harlem, the legendary bassist looked over at Motian’s small sticks and said, “What are you playing with? Are you a drummer or aren’t you?” The next day Motian went out and got the biggest drum sticks he could find.

Thelonious Monk was another mentor. Both Monk and Motian have something of earlier jazz in their rhythmic feel (as he got older, Motian’s phrasing on the hi-hat sounded more and more like a drummer from the 1940’s), and when Motian was about thirty, Monk gave him invaluable advice on his ride beat. At that age, most professional drummers would be unwilling to take instruction on their right arm, but Motian was still learning.

Indeed, he was arguably the most profound late bloomer in jazz history. It’s been said that Motian on the first Bill Evans album from 1956 was “Max Roach without any chops,” an unfair characterization that holds a kernel of truth."


Go read the enire piece.

I also came across a brief notice from Chick Corea:

"Paul set a very high standard of integrity as a human being. He kept his own counsel, communicated only when he chose to, played only the way he heard it and felt it, lived the way he chose in a society whose norm was quite different. He managed to accomplish the difficult feat of being completely himself."

Charlie Haden interview by Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus

As I mentioned, I'm doing a lot of thinking about Ornette Coleman, and happened to find this excellent, extended 2007 interview with one of my favorite musicians ever, Charlie Haden, by Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson.

In it Haden talks in depth about working with Ornette, Keith Jarrett, Old & New Dreams, and more. I've excerpted a few bits about the early days with Ornette, and about working with Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell and Paul Motian. Go read the entire thing at Do The Math. After that go to Four On The Floor to watch some great Ed Blackwell clips.

ORNETTE:
EI: Tell me about playing behind Ornette in 1958.

CH: I learned about the importance of listening playing with Ornette. We first played duo at his house, for days. I had never heard such beautiful melodies. He had his compositions written out with changes on them.

EI: There were changes on his charts?

CH: Yes, and he said to play on the changes until he left them, and then just follow him. At first I thought he meant he would play on the written changes for a little while, but then I realized he would be creating a new set of changes almost right away. So I discarded his changes and followed him.

Sometimes the changes he had for the written parts didn't always fit, so I would look for the right note, even if it wasn't the root of the tonal center.

EI: Dewey Redman told me once that he was looking at a piece of Ornette's music and thought he heard some changes in there. He asked Ornette what the structure was, and Ornette responded by putting a chord symbol on every eighth note! He made sure never to ask Ornette that question again.

CH: Yeah, NEVER ask Ornette about the changes!