PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Styles and RealTracks Wishlist Jazz as it's played today

I'm looking for jazz styles that have a more variety of time feel to them. Where the beat is broken up more and he bass player doesn't just walk all the time. The drums should also accent in a less predictable manner and be busier with interesting fills and rolls at certain points.

In ballads there should be a more impressionistic feel not so concerned with just keeping time (like "After the Rain" at the very least if not wholly rubato sections a la ECM ballads)

There should be more variety of intensity levels in all of the styles, and for latin jazz there needs to be more styles that are actually played on a jazz kit.

In the more creative modern area, Drums wise there's nothing for example that comes close even to Ed Blackwell's New Orleans influenced style as of yet. and that's 60 years back ! So it's now officially old-time stuff. (compared to a lot of jazz today that works off a sort of unpredictable martial parade ground influenced funk/latin mix a la Henry Threadgill which would be great to have)

It's a long time since I asked for and got the modern styles that came way back in 2005 and I've been grateful for them but after a long break from the program it's a bit disappointing to see Real Tracks for jazz so tame and undifferentiated in basic feel. Certainly there are a none that would replace any of the midi modern jazz styles other than the most mainstream.

I'm not asking for Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton or Time Berne for goodness sake. I can do that for myself. But BIAB could do more for the modern definition of creative post bop I think in a more passionate authentic manner.


Hope there are some like minded folks here.

With respect to a great program that is capable of more.


Alan

Yes, absolutely. +1

Have you seen some of the threads over the last few months by user Djzang? Hope I got that name right...

His posts praising the playing of Renee Rosnes and Miles Black are very relevant to what you request, at least for the piano. I would especially like to see their playing as MIDI Supertracks.

And he has run tests of what the bass plays (yes, while walking, but it’s about the scales).

Could you elaborate for my understanding about the Latin styles using a jazz kit?

Alan, thanks for posting this request. It’s thoughtful, researched, and timely. About timely, 2005 is three years before any RealTracks.

+1
In modern jazz everybody is listening and interacting to all that happens in the band.
I don´t know how that could be transformed to real tracks , but its the path to go..

+1

Nobody plays jazz like that anymore,
For me, to sum it up, jazz in the last 50 years is both more groove oriented and more “free”, more influenced by folk and RnB and at the same time more polythythmic.

I have times when, in a band, I hate it when the bass player just “walks” the whole time. There’s so much more to be done. Listen to McBride, Peacock, Blanton, LaFaro, Mingus, Patitucci. Haden, Holland. Drums too. When they can’t stop playing the charleston rhythm on the ride cymbal I turn off. Play some triplets or play straight, play those 16th note triplets, flams... Elvin Jones, Dejohnette, Baron.

Same with latin music. Some auto accompaniment sounds like those home organs, Casio-style. There’s the clave and it’s pretty. But, when these modern musicians play the “clave”, there’s stuff happening.

Thx Matt for mentioning, but yeah, the Modern Jazz Pianist “disk” on PGMUSIC. That opens up a whole jazz world.

Another +1

Thanks for your +1's and comments all. Very insightful as always.

I agree the Jazz Pianist program is a good source of inspiration and Ive managed to make a couple of ok styles out of the tracks.

The threads about the bass not tracking chords are in line with what I've experienced especially in the older styles. I find I have to do a separate bass track with sub chords like an A9susb5 for CmMaj7 which doesn't so much eliminate the b7th but relegate it to an acceptable passing tone.

Chord masks are a continuing problem in BIAB. You cant lump CMaj7#5 with CMaj or Csus anymore than you can equate mMa7 with m7 but that's what BIAB does. As a result it continually plays riffs out of context forcing a regeneration in the hope of hitting a generic pattern.

My workaround was intially to check the option in stylemaker that forces the riff to transpose to the chord but the results were often unacceptable without further edits. Another better way is to reimport the patterns from an output midi file after mapping them to the C7 template.

@ Dzjang. Your styles seem like they're a good answer to some of the issues. The other thing I'd say is that modern jazz is also about breaking away from standard forms and importing a lot of classical music influences. Its also about a more collective band music with more interaction, dynamic variation, motivic ideas over a longer duration and modulations within the overall metre. etc That's hard to do convincing ly in midi without:

a) lot of different sub styles and changes but I think its worth the effort nonetheless.

b) patterns sounding like they're less. short, busy, choppy and block chordy. To that end patterns with more 8 bar sequences in the bar masks would be the way to go or supertracks/teal tracks with the same aim.

Alan

Lots of truth here. Thank you.

Thx, my aim was less ambitious, focusing on modern straight eights or sixteenth triplets, incorporating the influence of rnb and folk music, like McBride, Kenny Garrett, Redman, Scofield, Jarrett... refer to.

Nevertheless, most styles, real or midi have a limited set of patterns, which causes them to quickly go boring. If you take the trouble of making tens of variations, midi styles can be really inspiring. If you would want the same complexity and choice in realstyles, you’d need more than ten hrs of material for each instrument. It would make rendering a song take longer than the song is.

Midi styles are (potentially) rhythmically complex with more than 120 ticks per beat. Combining straight parts with triplets, four over 3/4, 10 over 4/4 and so on, are quite possible.

Software like melodyne will eventually make transposing realstyles to all kinds of different harmonies possible. But for now, if they only made the right algorithms for the midi-styles, we wouldn’t have the bass play natural 9 ths on altered chords any longer, and it wouldn’t put a huge load on your cpu either.

Let’s keep asking PGMUSIC to make Biab harmoniclly better.

+1 here also!

+1!

Definitely would be appreciated.

+1, no question.

+1 !!!!

Hi Alan,

Thank you very much for this post. Can you post some youtube links that that would exemplify the kinds of styles you'd like to see?

@Tobin
Almost everything by Bill Evans (sixties and early 70’s), Jarrett, Charles Lloyd (ECM albums), Gerald Clayton’s trio, Julian Lage. Drummers like Jack DeJohnette, Jon Christensen, bass players like John Patitucci (acoustic bass), Reuben Rogers, Christian McBride. But it “happened” much earlier with Jimmy Garrison in Trane’s quartet, Elvin Jones, Scott Lafaro, Charlie Haden.

Drums are adventurous, bass players tend to not walk continuously.

I have the idea sometimes that styles tend to focus on jazz in the fifties, as if there never was Coltrane, Miles’ quintet with Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett or, today, Gilad Hekselman’s trio, Charles Lloyd (still going strong), ECM, Renee Rosnes, Kenny Kirkland.

A long time ago Pgmusic put out some more adventurous styles (Jarrett, Metheny inspired, Oregon style, Danny Gottlieb on realdrums), but then the well suddenly dried up and we were back to the old swing and bebop.

Thanks for that list Dzjang,

Can you post some youtube links of specific examples that you think would make good RealStyles in Band-in-a-Box?

Some links that seem kosher (UMG have supplied to Youtube)

Keith Jarrett 70's American Quartet.

This is one of their Gospel Rock into Freebop pieces. Notice how the drums are very active up there with the front line. Lots of accenting and pay attention to how Motian mixes up the time behind Jarret's solo. Haden plays a mixture of pedal tones in a slower 3 feel behind the 4/4 beat at times and lots of broken up figures as well as walking passages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwaEe51FsZI


Another by the above group. A masterpiece free or rubato ballad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZR8KMf5s8



Peter Erskine - John Abercrombie - Marc Johnson: Furs On Ice

Again the rhythm section are as active as the front man. Erskine is all over this 9/4
Its an object lesson on how to PLAY in odd time signatures rather than just state them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtRWebBlYKU

A mid tempo piece by the same band, but showing how bass is playing broken time and drums are playing against and around the basic beat especially behind the guitar solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTNsm_VI_o



John Abercrombie 70's Trio with George Mraz and Peter Donald

"Straight flight" This album is out of print

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=john+abercrombie+striaght+flight&docid=607986838977013612&mid=875D9E8D620B964781F0875D9E8D620B964781F0&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

Track 1
is a perfect example of high intensity 'roughing up" of a standard with drums again up front.

Track 4
" There is no greater love" some tradtional walking feel with broken time figures from bass and drums. But all through there are is an against and around the beat/offbeat feel.



Henri Texier quintet 1990 with John Abercrombie and Joe Lovano

"P.M"
A continuous free pulse implying but never stating a fast time feel. Dedicated to Lovano's employer at the time Paul Motian and with the drummer absolutely nailing Motian's approach. Bassist's style is clearer behind Lovano's solo. N.B The drummers solo is almost the same as what he plays behind Lovano if that helps.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhiPBTDAdug

"Colonel Skopje2
Same band and album illustrating a similar free pulse in the middle section starting at 5.28 with a more flowing bass feel. The fluid rock section accenting the 3rd beat behind Abercrombie's solo is a good example of how rock is played in with a jazz feel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kka7zJowcI

"Desaparecido"
Yet Another from this band. A very instructive album with fantastic material. An Ornette Coleman
"Lonely Woman" kind of beat and feel. Abercrombie showing why he was the greatest guitarist of his generation according to his peers. R.I.P. John.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpjUzQWdgqc



ECM album stuff is hard to find but heres something ECM gave to YouTube


Ralph Towner - SAND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3TfjPMwBj4

Another classic piece of Jon Christensen. Very active sort of fluid rock funk backbeat showing his characteristic approach where the band seem to be accompanying him.



Jan Garbarek 70's Quartet (official freebie suplied by UMG to YouTube)

"Bris"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVmqRhswWeg

Rubato opening with the typical piano and drums figurations demonstrated clearly. Followed by 6/4 feel with very up front bass and drums.


Joe Lovano Quintet

'Dig this' from his classic 'Landmarks' album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v48HjX7xmUU

Showing a variety of free form approaches. Staccato free form opening to fast 4/4 time (guitar solo) and then free time (piano solo)




This by no means exhausts the modern post 50's or 60's era. All of this is really just for starters.!!

@Alan S, these are some fine examples.
+1

Weird thing. When I listen to Coltrane’s late quartet with Elvin Jones and Miles’ Quintet in the sixties and Charles Lloyd, a lot of it is already there.

And when you hear Julian Lage or Joshua Redman…. They bundle it all.

Band in a Box should embrace these styles. In MIDI most of this is certainly possible, so, it should be possible in real styles too.

Free form or rubato remains notoriously difficult to emulate with software.

And yes, Abercrombie must be the most underrated guitarist. His solos on Kenny Wheeler’s Widow in the window album (or Deer Wan) are just so incredibly lyrical. And his albums with Beirach…

Hi Alan,

Thanks very much for those samples, that's very helpful! I listened through all of those, and I agree that several of them would translate very well as Band-in-a-Box styles. Some of them, however, likely wouldn't be suitable or would need to be modified. For stuff that's rubato, that likely wouldn't work in Band-in-a-Box, which by necessity needs to be "to the grid". Recording odd time signatures also doesn't translate well in Band-in-a-Box. That 9:4 style you posted has a great groove, but if we did that, we'd likely modify it to a 4:4 style (and I think the groove would still be very effective as a 4:4 style). That being said, any 4:4 style could then be changed to a time signature like 9:4 by treating it as 4+3+3, or something like that.

One final comment, the title of this thread was "Jazz as it's played today", but most of the samples listed above seem to be 70s or 80s. That's fine of course, but I just wanted to get a sense of whether or not that was indeed what you had in mind when you started the thread. Are there any examples from within the last decade that you also might think would be along the same lines?

thanks again, I really appreciate the suggestions!
Tobin

I also want to clarify my comments about "rubato not suitable for Band-in-a-Box". If it's truly rubato, and the musicians are really stretching the time very fluidly, that's not really suitable for Band-in-a-Box. However, what you said above "a more impressionistic feel not so concerned with just keeping time", if it is in fact still "to the grid", but done in a way that's not really hammering home the downbeat, or the 2 & 4, etc., THAT is something that could still work in Band-in-a-Box. If that makes any sense...

That makes perfect sense to me.