Bilbo

I am assuming when you say a 'jazz' set, you don't mean jazz-funk or jazz-rock. Santana/George Benson tunes aren't considered to be jazz. I suspect you are talking standards type jazz. Starters for 10 - All of Me All the Things You Are Autumn Leaves The Best Is Yet to Come Body and Soul Desafinado (Latin) Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye The Girl from Ipanema (Latin) How High the Moon It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) Just Squeeze Me (But Please Don't Tease Me) Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?) Lush Life (beautiful but hard!!) Mack the Knife (although it sucks) Misty My Foolish Heart My Funny Valentine Nature Boy Satin Doll Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most (another beautiful but complex tune) Tenderly These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You) What Is This Thing Called Love? You Don't Know What Love Is THe big problem you will have is a, accessing charts (if you have some fake books great, if not, you may have a problem). After that you will find that many songs are not in your singers key so they will need transposing - not a massive problem but it will need a run through if only piano/guitar and vocals. How much experience have you/the band/your singer got in playing jazz? It sounds like this is a new area for you and I am anxious that you have been set up to fail. If you haven't played jazz before, debuting as a jazz band at the Jazz Cafe sounds like a high risky undertaking!

Can't you order direct from the US?

I guess it depends on what you are practising but I would always say amp for the reasons mentioned. If you practice and rehearse in equal measures, it may matter less. I rarely practice because I play so much and rarely get the time but I would always recommend using an amp because I think that this is your natural state and practicing how to use an amp is as important as many other techniques.

That'll be it

I don't....

The secret is to stay funky. The acrobatics that abound are only of value if they are musical. Mostly they are not. They are macho and brutal and serve no purpose other than to draw attention to the personality. The best slapped lines are not the typewriter techniques the people like Claypool and Wooten espose but the simple, low-down funk. I play fretless only and rarely slap (if ever). I can do it but don't really like it. The day I hear a slapped ballad that is emotionally satisfying, I may change my mind. Until then... MWAH.....!

Its all down to the venues - they book what pulls the punters in. This applies to jazz as much as it does anything else. I was talking to some poeple last night who are booking a jazz band next year to coincide with a local jazz festival. They have no idea what or who they will book and couldn't recognise a lemon if it was geoid and yellow. They just want to pull in some passing trade. They are trying to earn a living too. I'm semi-pro and would go out for £50 but only if its good music. If its tosh it's £80 minimum

Leonard Rosenman had a reputation as a bit of a hack (!?). He would take bits of his other works and cut and paste them - If you listen to his soundtrack for one of the Star Trek films, he has used bit os his work on Ralph Bakshi's 'The Lord of the Rings'. Even my brother heard that and is has the ears of a snake. A bit of a cliche regurgitator - I still like some of his stuff tho' (not heard Clash Of The Titans).

Do you know how to write a big band chart? Then f*** o**

Afternoon gig, open air, at Addenbrookes Hospital - I played like a t****r Trio gig in a pub in Bury St Edmunds (the Ben Pringle Trio) - fanbloodytastic. Couldn't hit a note wrong. I've never been able to work out why that happens!

'On Golden Pond' - I'd forgotten about that one. Good call! Dave Grusin, wasn't it? 'Falcon and The Snowman' is ok because the hit single was written for the film.

Another silly question arising from the same source - what happend if you put a low output head (say 150 watts) through a bigger cab (say 400 watts). Will it still work? I have only ever bought 'packages' and never mixed and matched.

[quote name='benwhiteuk' post='237258' date='Jul 11 2008, 12:55 PM']Doesn't fit into Bilbo's rule ...but f*** it, it's a great soundtrack [/quote] Libertine!!

Like all good ideas - simple and effective. I can see me getting one of these. $49 - that's about £26?

I've got Fifth Element somewhere, I'll have another listen...

I find that the perfect sound is just over the horizon.....

[quote name='chris_b' post='237188' date='Jul 11 2008, 11:36 AM']Jazz was created in New Orleans, supposedly between 1890 and 1910,[/quote] Read Alyn Shipton's 'A New History of Jazz': the robustness of the 'jazz started in New Orleans' argument has been questioned by academics for some while now. There is compelling evidence that New Orleans was not the only place where the music that is classed as jazz was appearing at this point in its history. Like all creative developments, the ideas of individuals get attached to places that have no irrefutable claim to them (like when a newspaper reports the success of a kid who is 'a pupil at XXXX school' when the school played no part whatsoever in the thing that kid is getting credit for). Jazz was created by individuals knew individuals who knew individuals who undoubtedly spent time in New Orleans but the music appears to have sprung up all over the US at the same time.

Soundtrack albums. An acquired taste but what are your favourites? The rule is it must be a work put together for a film soundtrack and not a compilation of hits to act as a backdrop to a 'set piece'. Personally I regularly revisit: Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Trilogy Navarettes score for 'Pan's Labyrinth' (a recent acquisition) Pat Metheny's 'A Map of the World' John Williams' 'Schindler's List' 'Finding Forester' - some great work by Bill Frissel and the late Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of 'Over The Rainbow' is deeply moving - actually, this technically breaks the rule but no-one would have ever heard the 'hits' compiled for this soundtrack so I let it in! Any great soundtracks out there that stand up for themselves as pieces of music?

Ignoring that last remark for now (I do bear grudges), I would say it all goes back to the Blues. A lot of this history of music is tied in with the economy and technologies of the day. Pre-US Europe had lots of sophisticated ways of making music but, when the 'Pilgrims' went to America, they didn't pack a lot of pianos, celestes, harpsicords etc! So early music making in Amercia was done on fairly rudimentary instruments. The absence of a music teaching fraternity also meant that a lot of early US music was religious and fairly basic. The African contingent brought some sophisticated rhythms and took up things like guitars and violins etc but you have to remember that there was no Manny's, no Denmark Street, no Thomann - it was all pretty basic stuff and most people wouldn't have been able to afford sophisticated instruments or decades of tuition. Lots of instruments were home made. So they knobbed about a bit and, utilising the field hollars, chain gang tunes and hymns, put together a rudimentary form of the Blues. Early recordings are of solo guitar and voice and things like harmionicas and fiddles - little things that don't make much noise. As instruments became more readily available, people started to play. Jazz, ordinarily cited as being developed in New Orleans, was being created in several areas of the US (Chicago, St Louis for starters) and quickly found its way to New York. It became popular as an instrumental music because, at this stage, there was no real amplification that would allow vocalists to compete with a 13 piece horn section! So the 'big' spectacle music was instrumental not vocal. Bands were working all over the US every night because aLL of this effectively pre-dates recordings. People had pianos, player pianos and pianolas all over and went to see live music all of the time. The radio progammes were made up of live sessions all day; there were no records to play. The big selling medium wasn't recordings like it is today, it was sheet music! The arrival of recordings and amplification allowed the vocalist to move the the fore and, money being money, the bands got smaller and smaller. Rock n Roll was a simplified version of the Blues and appealed to a new market; teenagers. Rock 'n' Roll changed into 100 different genres; rock, pop, metal, funk, hip-hop etc etc and Jazz went its own way, occasionally interacting with rock and funk but with only limited success. All of these musics are now ebbing and flowing in popularity all of the time. The 1950s jazz scene in the UK (that which spawned Chris Barber etc) was a Dixieland revivial not an originating period. The Stones etc were a UK based Blues revival that the US picked up on and bought wholesale. If you understand basic music theory and song forms particularly, the twelve bar blues form has spawned hit after hit, generation after generation, genre after genre. I doubt there are many genres that don't have blues sequences in their arsenal of options. There are other things that happen to form our cultures: a musicians strike/recording ban in the US resulted in a proliferation of doo-wop groups (vocal only), the development of be-bop took place when there was a recording ban and a lot of the developing ideas were lost to posterity. Recordings all took place live in a single take and, because of rudimentary technology, woodblocks were used instead of drums and tubas instead of basses - all now considered to be the 'authentic' instruments in 'trad' jazz. All accidents or borne of necessity! And you thought there was a master plan!

What's your poison, Lizzie? Punk, jazz, folk, classical, rock, zydec, afro-pop, indie, hip-hop, acid-jazz, jazz-funk, EMO, death metal, speed metal...... Go on, tell us, tell us now!!! :wacko:

Just noticed something worth mentioning in this thread. I just went to a Dave Holland Transcription and tried to read it but was struggling to make sense of it in real time. I then picked up an imaginary 'air' bass (it was an imaginary Wal, of course) and tried to read it again, this time 'playing' the bass and moving my fingers according to instructions. Suddenly, the chart made sense. I struggled to read it without a bass in my hands and could read it easily with one (albeit not really). What's [i]that[/i] about?

I had one of these when I was 17 (1980) - cost me £125 if I recall correctly. Seemed a lot to me at the time! It got me gigging. I ripped the frets out of it when I got an Aria SB700. That went well!! :wacko:

[quote name='teen t-shirt' post='235042' date='Jul 8 2008, 03:56 PM']i've just listened to some stuff on you tube... not really my sort of thing nor did it grab me... sorry bilbo [/quote] You'll thank me one day :

Try Barry Green's 'The Inner Game of Music' - its about controlling that panic...

Hey Prosebase - your brother is showing his ignorance, I am afraid. Some bad jazz is bad but thats bad jazz - its like judging classical music on the basis of Bond or Myleene Klass. Classical musicians are trained in exactly the opposite way to jazz musicians and many classical musicians can't play jazz (I had to call the Principal Bassist from the BBC Welsh Symphony orchestra in as a dep once and he was shocking - the bands view not mine). More to the point, they don't [i]understand [/i] it and are critical of it until they do. Then they realise that it is as demanding as anything they achieve as musicians. There is a great book called 'Music of the Common Tounge' by Christopher Small that explains it very well - I really recommend you and your brother read it. Brand X are probably not jazz per se; jazz rock? fusion? Prog. rock even? Not sure but there is a significant body of critics and musicians that would balk at the suggestion that Brand X and Duke Ellington played in the same genre.