I had the opportunity to see Wynton Marsalis perform with the 15-piece Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra last night in Seattle, and it was an absolutely stellar performance, with great song selection (Marsalis's own "The Holy Ghost" was a standout) and some of the most incredible technical playing I've ever heard--they did Duke Ellington's "Braggin' in Brass," which contains a trombone part in which each player plays a note or two in sequence, together creating this fast complicated line. (Listen here--that part starts around the -2:06 mark.) I've heard from some jazz fans that Wynton's a little too stiff or formal for their tastes, but that wasn't my experience at all--he even walked back on stage for an impromptu second encore vamp with only the piano, bass, and drums backing him up.
I would have been happy to buy a recording of last night's performance by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (shown here).
(Credit: Wynton Marsalis Web site)Jazz performances lend themselves to live recordings--setlists change nightly (Marsalis announces his setlist from the stage as the show goes on) and improvisation is the rule rather than a rarity. I would have been happy to buy a recording of this show or last month's Return to Forever performance. But so far, I don't see jazz musicians embracing the practice of recording their shows and selling them--something that's become pretty common with jam bands like Widespread Panic. A few acts, like Willie Nelson, even sell USB memory sticks containing a recording of the show right at the door as you're leaving.
Rights clearance might be one problem: most of the Marsalis set consisted of songs by other composers, some from the orchestra, others long-passed like Duke Ellington. Figuring out how to split the sale proceeds from a live performance among all these rights holders might be a problem--something that rock bands, who tend to perform mostly their own material, don't face. Then again, every Widespread Panic show contains at least one cover, and they seem to have figured out how to disburse the proceeds. So I hope the jazz world will begin to embrace on-the-spot live recordings soon--I want to give them more of my money, if they'll let me.
It's intellectually lazy to divide the world into two types of people, but when it comes to using computers to create music, it seems to be true.
With this $30 microphone from Logitech and Garage Band, you've got a quick and dirty way to record home demos.
(Credit: Logitech)The first group are what I'd call digital music enthusiasts. They compose almost exclusively at a computer, using a MIDI controller and/or sounds from a wide variety of third-party digital sources--loops from a program like ACID, beats and virtual synthesizers from a program like Reason, short samples that they recorded themselves or spliced from another source.
I'm a member of the second group, the reluctant analog dinosaurs. We came up playing instruments other than the piano or keyboard--guitar, bass, horns, drums--and value the spontaneity and collaboration of a live setting. To us, a night composing in front of a computer seems unbearably tedious. Instead, we use computers mainly in the recording process--either recording to hard disk, or mixing from another medium (ADAT or perhaps analog tape) to a program like ProTools. Of course, many people start in this group and eventually become full-fledged digital enthusiasts, but a lot of us approach computer-generated music with suspicion and even a bit of (often undeserved) scorn.
I was under the mistaken impression that Garage Band, part of the iLife suite that comes with every new Macintosh computer, is a tool for budding digital enthusiasts. A lot of the program's appeal is that you don't need to be a musician to use it--Garage Band includes dozens of built-in instrument sounds, with thousands more available through Apple's Jam Packs, and you don't even need a MIDI keyboard to enter notes, but can type them directly onto the typewriter keypad (the middle row of letters serves as the white keys, and the top row as black keys). It's trivially easy to import audio files or sounds from other programs such as iDrum, then cut and splice and loop and add effects.
But I recently realized how easy it is to use Garage Band for simple home recordings. Don't worry about an audio interface--sure, you'll eventually need one when you want to make higher-quality recordings or do live multitracking--but you can get started with a simple USB microphone. You'll have to be careful with the levels, and you can't record loud amplifiers or drums or it'll distort in ugly ways. (Use Garage Band's built-in drum beats or a program like iDrum.) You won't get a finished release-quality recording, but if you just want to hear how a few parts sound together before bringing them to the rest of the band, or need to make a quick sketch of a musical idea you got in the middle of the night, this is a cheap and very easy way to get started.
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