That’s a very good point Dave which I had never thought of and certainly is worthy of some experimentation, thanks for that. To me different styles and musicians of course have different degrees of ‘looseness’ . It seems that the size of the group also enters into this; the smaller the group the easier it is to have some players ‘floating’ and fewer players ‘anchoring’.
In my experience, and you, @ptalbot and @Tmasterp may want to correct me on this, a typical mainstream jazz combo has either the bass and/or the hi hat or ride cymbal 'anchoring; while everyone else (including other parts of the drum kit) ‘floats’ to some degree. And that’s the source of a lot of comment and controversy in my experience. More discussion encouraged here!
Good stuff, thanks for quoting! I feel like I understand jazz pretty well. Until I try to play it.
I’m sure you’re right about that. I had originally planned to do it that way, but I took one shot at a solo and decided to keep it. The market for 4 minute guitar solos is not exactly red hot at the moment so I may have to rethink that decision, but I do like this solo.
Yeah, that’s a good point. That first attempt often has a certain appeal to it that is difficult to recapture but I have to remember to get in tune and have a direct in that I can reamp or whatever set up before starting off. The other thing of course is to try and leave some access points where you can edit easily, don’t cram the killer idea up next to a bunch of garbage where you can’t get to it, I’ve done that for sure.
I once played drums in a newbie jazz group. I was all right with the funky stuff and basic jazz shuffles, but then the band wanted to play an African 3/4 rhythm (I think it was an Ornette Coleman piece). I loved it but for the life of me couldn’t play it. It was somehow very alien to my nervous system. I was trying so hard to keep time that it was anything but loose. That’s when I knew I’d never be a good drummer…
This is why I don’t call myself a jazz musician, they are big on skill sets and I just wanna have fun! That said, it is possible to get a lot of mileage out of a few well practiced pieces. Here is studio legend Tommy Tedesco illustrating the point:
Thanks Taylor! This is a great suggestion and I intend to post version 2 of this tune using this and the other helpful hints I have gotten in this thread. When you say quantization I’m assuming you mean volume of the hats and not the rhythm?
No actually i meant time! The kick is holding it down on the exact down beat… creating tension between down beat and “human down beat” is what the feel is all about. To me, pocket is the space between the absolute metronome time and where the drummer puts the accents. Talking fractions of a second
I looked at the midi tracks on this tune and the all of the drum parts are dead on the beat whereas the keys and bass are often behind the beat. The guitar of course . . . well anyway so your suggestion is to bring the hi-hats back a bit closer to the bass and keys? I’ll try that, I’m working on including the other suggestions I’ve gotten here, thanks!
What kind of guitar are you using? If it’s DI with just a little tweaking, it is very, very good. It sounds a lot like a Polytone amp, but with more clarity and attack than you would typically hear. Impressive!
Thank you @StylesBitchley for the encouragement. I was playing either a Les Paul Junior with humbuckers or a Les Paul standard, I don’t remember. I usually have both pick ups on and I usually don’t roll anything off.
I plug straight in to my interface and on this track I had a PSP vintage warmer plug in with default settings and the Izotope Ozone 5 suite with a guitar preset shown here that I tweaked slightly.
I had intended to develop this track into an arrangement but I liked the long solo so I kept it.
ingolee,
Thank you for the review. Now your song: hey this is really nice! Kind of reminds me of Steely Dan, which is my favorite group that is a bit jazzy. Nice audio quality and lead guitar playing! Nice job!
I needed a bit of my IRD fill. Came across your track and it was just what I needed! memories!
