Joep L. Blom wrote:
david wrote:
Joep L. Blom wrote:
david wrote:
drew Roberts wrote:
On Thursday 01 July 2010 17:51:18 Joep L. Blom wrote:
drew Roberts wrote:
Someone else having some thoughts on jazz and copyright:
Are Bad Copyright Laws Killing Jazz And Harming Jazz Musicians?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100615/0255059823.shtml
Joep
all the best,
And here I thought jazz was dying because most of it is boring and
ingrown, and the vast majority of players have become
indistinguishable from each other? ;-)
Note the winking smiley. I like traditional New Orleans jazz. I like
some jazz performers, but think that most could be replaced with no
one noticing.
David!
Don't tempt me. Either you have never heard a good jazz performance
or you simply don't like it (that's possible).
I've heard good jazz performances. And as I mentioned above, I like
some jazz performers.
But boring!! You know what is boring or, better monotonous and
repetitive, the endless lookalike pulp which is called pop-music
that's presented as the main music and nothing else exist thanks to
the big companies and their slaves (i.e. the radio and television
companies).
Or (to me) the endless soundalike lookalike stuff that passes for way
too much jazz these days? Sorry, to my ears, the days of jazz
performers that actually sound like themselves seems to have passed.
Too many players now seem to be trying only to sound like someone else.
David,
I like your opinions (especially the last sentence of your mail!).
What you write is essentially that any musician must be sincere in his
approach to the music he performs and must not try to mimic others.
Wouldnt' say "must", would prefer "should". There is a point to
mimicking others: to learn techniques or different ways of thinking
about your instrument. There's a long tradition in the art world of
students learning painting techniques by copying the old masters.
(BTW, I find that very disappointing in any musician or artist,
regardless of style of music or art. Be yourself, not someone else!)
Moreover, boring is a quality in the mind of the person and has
nothing to do with the music (or literature, or dance to give other
fields).
I would say that "boring" is something that is perceived by the mind
of a person. It is, after all, just an opinion. I doubt that there's
any "objective" measure that defines "boring".
Agreed. I wrote that also in another mail.
I might not have seen it. This thread has spawned some of the longest
emails I've seen on the list! (And not all of it due to me!)
I have heard a lot of nonsense about jazz but not that performers
could be exchanges without notice.
I didn't mean your remark as nonsense, I meant that I heard in general a
lot of nonsense about jazz.
We've probably heard analogous nonsense about any genre of music, for
generations. "It's all just noise!" "It's old-fashioned!" I understand
that after J. S. Bach's death, his own sons turned their backs on his
music, inventing their own (lesser) replacements for it, and that only a
chance rediscovery made J.S. Bach the musical giant he is today.
I'm working on an improvised piece right now, for violin and a phase
shifting synthesizer sound swirling around in the background. Nothing I
would consider "classical" music - for example, no real structure to it
beyond a repeated violin theme or two. I had it playing at my office one
day, and my boss asked me to "turn down my classical music." ;-)
Not nonsense, just my opinion.
Yes, pop-singers OK, but that is a completely different league.
Yes, singers are a special case compared to instrumentalists. No two
human voices are alike to the degree that instruments are.
Well, you had me fooled. Pop-singers - in my opinion - are pressed into
"voice-casts" to sound as much alike as possible, I agree when you talk
about others (classical, Jazz even folk).
I think big-name pop-singers are often "voice-cast" like that. I don't
think that's so true of all pop singers. For every big $$$ Britney or
Madonna or Lady Gaga, there are hundreds or thousands of pop singers
world wide who are often much better singers than the big names, and
still have their own voices. That's part of the fun of the Internet!
And, sometimes, when a big-name pop singer matures and feels secure in
themselves and their career achievements, they start breaking out of the
voice-cast mold. Can't think of any particular one at the moment,
although my wife tells me that Celine Dion in concert is not nearly as
stuck in a "big-name pop singer" mode as she is in her popular
recordings. And Linda Ronstadt recorded and released a number of CDs of
Spanish-language music. (Interesting thing about Linda Ronstadt: she
vocally "tried on" a number of voice styles and even recorded albums in
them before finding her own voice.)
I think it's much harder to make one human voice sound like another
voice than it is to make one standard violin sound like another standard
violin. (Excepting maybe gaps like a bluegrass fiddle and a
Stradivarius!) But that could be because I'm not much of a singer.
Again (particularly about pop singers), while I may think well of a
singer who can successfully sound like someone else, I'm still
disappointed that they don't put the same effort into sounding like
themselves.
There's a Christian band I know of called Apologetx. They are skilled
enough to sound note-for-note like practically any other band in
existence, and specialize in redoing other band's secular songs with
Christian lyrics. They play skillfully, but someday I'd actually like
them to write and play their own music instead! I'd like to know what
their own sound is!
That depends. Some bands like to sound exactly as others. You have in
America a competition for Glenn Miller Bands who try to sound like the
old Glenn Miller orchestra from the forties, using the original
arrangements. We sometimes also play these arrangements ('In the Mood'
is on of the most famous pieces) but your remark is right. They should
let you hear " the way they really play".
I didn't know about the Glenn Miller band competition, but there are
plenty of "tribute" bands making a living sounding as much like someone
else as they can get. Some of them (in honesty) may even be doing it
better than the original!
The beauty of jazz is that you can play the same tunes every night
but each time it is completely different
Really? Hmm, haven't noticed that. (Well, I've heard a number of jazz
performances where NO ONE was playing the "tune", if there actually
was one.)
(And it has nothing to do with presence or absence of improvisation.
During my own piano studies, I studied improvisation, enjoy it and
value it highly. So you'd think I'd like the improvisational aspect of
jazz, yes?
I'm curious to know where you studied the piano as in classical
education improvising is currently strictly forbidden (in contrast to
the practice 150 years ago). Did you followed lessons in jazz piano?
No. Private classical lessons beginning at age three. My instructor was
very big on the fact that musicians during the Baroque era were REQUIRED
to be able to improvise on the spot. Someone (perhaps the wealthy patron
at whose gathering you were playing) in the audience would stand up and
sing (or whistle) a melody that you might not have ever heard before,
and you were expected to improvise 2, 3 or 4 part contrapuntal music
from it, or dance music, etc. Or someone might come up to play on
recorder or some other instrument, and you were expected to improvise
accompaniment. (Remember, the baroque "Continuo" really means, "Here's a
bass line, a suggestion of chords, maybe a cadenza or two. Make the rest
up as you go along!")
I got to the point where I could improvise a decent 2- or 3-part
invention, or a basic 3-voice fugue.
From there I added ragtime, rock, blues, synthesizer stuff, etc. And
additional instruments. All very much improvisational. (Sometimes I'm
too improvisational for my own good. Up until a few months ago I was
working with a rock guitarist. I was fine just making things up as we
went along. It drove him CRAZY! He wanted every note planned out, and
only played something if he'd practiced it repeatedly for days. That
drove ME crazy!)
I still find improvisation my favorite way of "writing" music. (Although
taking a sheet of staff paper and writing music by how it looks on the
page is fun, too. I'm also a visual artist, although no formal training
beyond high school.)
I think the present classical world's mindset has its good points, too.
Learning to perform classical "standards" like a Bach fugue, a Beethoven
sonata, or whatever particular pieces are considered "standards" for
your instrument enhances your technique, gets you thinking about how
others have performed the same piece, and (I think) makes you listen
more intently when you hear that same piece performed by others. A great
standard piece will also push you beyond the limits of your own music
making. Many composers were also incredibly-gifted performers and wrote
music that demanded every bit of skill they had.
Don't forget the influence of academia on how classical music is handled
today. Academics teach students, so there's a propensity to teach the
"right" way to play a piece, students are supposed to learn the "right"
way to do things. There's also a propensity to highly value whatever
you're an expert at - it helps make you feel good about yourself.
But you probably know all that, anyway.
and playing the same tune with different personnel makes a great
difference. Last Friday and Saturday I played with my Big band but we
had some difference in personnel. Although we played the same tunes
the sound was completely different.
If you say so.
The only problem with jazz is that it is no easy music (just as
classical music, especially from the 20th century).
Some of which I do enjoy.
Yes, I do too.
You have to be prepared to follow the sometimes very convoluted
harmonic and melodic ways that are played (listen e.g. to John
Coltrane and the great difference with Coleman Hawkins, or Errol
Garner and Art Tatum).
Those are past-days jazz greats, not their modern descendants. I like
Coltrane and Tatum, don't know the other two.
I'm amazed you haven't heard from Coleman Hawkins. He was on of the
giant saxophone-players and played with many bands from the 50ies and
later. The same goes for Erroll Garner, a pianist from the 50ies with
his own very distinctive style (you can look him up on Youtube).
I'll have to go do that. I really like listening to great individual
musicians doing great performances. (Probably why I like classical organ
music - one performer making such awesome, complex, enormous and
beautiful sound!)
I could go on but I stop.
I think that any kind of music that has wrapped itself up so much in
its own internals and demands that others change to accommodate it is
just a self-absorbed niche. That's OK if that's what one is interested
in. But if one is trying to make money from music, I think one is
intentionally limiting one's financial success, and really has no
right to complain that people aren't buying enough music to support
one in the way one would like to be accustomed to.
IOW, if you want money for your music, offer music that people with
money are willing to give you money for. Don't complain that they're
"ignorant" or "don't know better" or that the music they like and PAY
FOR is "boring" (it isn't to them) or they're being held prisoner by
big-media music distributors.
About this, although I'm retired I still get paid for performing,
moreover, I will not play if no financial reward (the amount is
irrelevant) is given as, simply stated, if people don't want to pay they
don't appreciate your music (exceptions are of course beneficial and
promotional performances).
I haven't played for pay for decades. I spent two years supporting
myself as a musician in the northern California rock scene before
deciding that I just didn't want to sacrifice everything else in my life
to really make it. We made enough to get by, got lots of free beer,
performed a couple of times at the California State Fair, had some good
experiences. The lead guitarist had classical music training, too, so we
had fun playing our "classical improvisation" where we'd just improvise
classical music for 20 minutes or so. He was a decent guitarist once you
got him away from the high-pitched screaming notes he loved on the rock
side. We also did a couple of country songs, several Alice Cooper covers
(one of our drummers sang exactly like Alice Cooper), the other organist
sang and played like Lee Michaels, parody songs, and a number of our own
songs.
Had some bad experiences, too. Our pay for our last gig disappeared
sometime between the time we crashed and the next practice (we skipped a
few days, too exhausted to resume!). The first practice after that, our
lead guitarist showed up with a shiny new gold Les Paul Custom Deluxe
guitar that suspiciously cost just about as much as we'd been paid for
our last gig. Yet he insisted he had no idea what happened to the gig
money. It went downhill from there!
I'm also not a fan of visual arts (painting, sculpture, etc) that
require you to read a multipage statement about the item to get any
communication from it. What my artist daughter calls "spot on the
wall" art, some of which is by famous artists, hangs on walls in
world-famous museums, and (in America, typically) is USUALLY supported
by Arts Grants or one sort or another. (Music of any sort doesn't
suffer from that problem, perhaps because sound has inherently more
power and effect than a brush stroke on canvas. Assuming one isn't
deaf, of course.)
I like visual art, too, but find Andy Warhol's art boring. At Pompidou
Center in Paris one year, I saw a Japanese painter who "painted" by
slashing his bare feet with razor blades, then hanging in a bosen's
chair over the canvas spread on the floor and painting on the canvas
with with his own blood. Found that more a sign of mental illness than
art. (Must be something wrong with me, I'm sure, couldn't possibly be
anything wrong with the artists.)
I agree completely with that. What is called "The main stream" is a
cunning system of greedy people selling air to people with way to much
money and no erudition or taste whatsoever.
Or are driven by the need to be "just like everyone else", to be "cool".
To conform. Or to have their insecurity about taste in music or
anything else helped by the reassurance that "It must be good, everyone
else likes it."
I think this really hits in the teen years, when you're no longer a
little kid, but you're not an adult, and you're definitely not your
parents. Your body is going crazy and the person you thought you were
before the hormone changes started is getting upended, rocked and
changing into someone you've never met before, something unknown because
the change is ongoing. For many people, I think that's terrifying! So
teens take refuge in the herd - "cool" people dress this way, like this
kind of music/movie/food, do this or that cool thing, hang out with
this, that or the other "cool" person. "Popular" music (defined as the
music teens in "my" herd listen to) then becomes a defense, a
reassurance and comfort.
Maybe some people just never get past that stage?
The tragic reality with that is that many really talented painters are
in the same position as many musicians.
We buy more or less regularly paintings from talented artists in Europe
(mainly the Netherlands) not needing the "explanation" thought of by a
skilled "art-specialist" who tries to speak and write with sentences
using many neologisms with the intention to let you feel a stupid
ignoramus when you don't understand the art he wants to sell.
Snobbery in action. I think Europe has an advantage over America when it
comes to art. There's a lot more interest in and support for art all
over Europe than there is here. I think part of it is that in America a
number of art forms now appear to be supported solely via government or
other grants doled out by small groups of people who quite gave up
caring what anyone else thinks. They've become their own little "cool
in-groups." (See comments above about teen herds?)
I used to write and sell poetry. Didn't make a living at it, it was just
part of the creative writing business back then. At the time, poets in
America made a living in only a few ways: wrote greeting card verse!, or
were university professors. (I think one woman poet made a good living
writing small books of maudlin verse that were sold on rotating racks
near the greeting cards.) One of my poetry instructors (and my
undergraduate advisor) has had several poetry collections published. I
have one of them. None of the poems strike a chord with ordinary people.
He's probably not sold enough copies to recoup the publishing cost!
I hope I made your error in judgement clear.
I've been through it with jazz folk before - been insulted, called
names, etc. Been told by some jazz players that the ONLY REAL MUSIC IS
JAZZ (usually their particular idea of what JAZZ is, played the way
they do it), that if you're not playing jazz, YOU'RE NOT A MUSICIAN!
Agreed. Jazz musicians are only people and narrow-mindedness is as
common as in other groups. The "you're not a musician" is one of the
most stupid remarks I know to say to a listener of course!
I don't recall ever using "you're not a musician" that way. I know I've
used it during my rock band days in answer to people who couldn't
understand why we'd would practice all day, go play a gig, grab some
breakfast afterwards at 4:00 AM, then crash for a couple of hours before
beginning it all over again. "You're not a musician" wasn't implying
they were stupid or anything!
Perhaps it implied that being a musician was stupid? Often these were
people who had nice 9-to-5 M-F jobs and steady paychecks. If they didn't
think we were stupid, they probably thought we were crazy!
Oh, I also use the "not a musician" a different way. I'm currently
playing in a church band. Two other musicians in the band have serious
or professional experience. The other musicians are decent amateurs, but
they can get upset when they make a mistake. I just remind them that the
people in the congregation aren't musicians. They probably have no idea
that a mistake happened! For a lot of people, the fact that the band all
started together and ended together is the only thing they're aware of. ;-)
Heard that most recently three years ago, from a man, BTW, who is a very
skilled, well-trained, experienced and deeply-disturbed (in the
clinical psychological sense) musician. Perhaps jazz is his way to
deal with the severe childhood abuse he suffered that left him so
disturbed?
Although he has so much rage inside that I could picture him as a
first-generation punk rocker, before punk went commercial. ;-)
No "error" - just different opinion. I have all sorts of music in my
personal collection, including jazz, lest you think I'm an "it's gotta
be popular music" person. My parents have jazz records in their
collection dating back a good long ways, like early Louie Armstrong
recordings. Someday they'll probably end up in my collection.
(I will admit that I have ONE song each from Britney Spears and
Madonna. My only complaint about Michael Jackson's death is that he
didn't take them with him.)
What I wonder is how you think about classcial music where a performer
plays exactly the music that's written. If I understand you correctly
you think that not interesting (boring?) as the performer plays exactly
what the composer wrote. (I myself like it very much, visiting regularly
concerts, but will never perform in public although I play regularly for
myself, from Bach to Milhaud with much of the french impressionists in
between).
See comments a good ways above. Not boring! And I can tell the
difference between Glenn Gould playing Bach, and myself playing the same
piece!
Instead of "boring", I think people who do any one thing a lot (music,
art, programming, target shooting, whatever) needs to watch out for the
danger of becoming jaded. The "been there, done that, NEXT!" attitude
that gives snap judgements and closes your perceptions. I've heard a lot
of guitarists play classic Chuck Berry riffs, or the opening to Led
Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. I still like hearing both!
(Although I remember one music shop in my home town that had a big sign
stating that anyone who played "Stairway to Heaven" would be ejected
from the store!)
Even somebody just learning one of those riffs. I've been a professor
and a technology trainer. It's gratifying to hear someone trying to
learn, to acquire new skill or develop their talent, and gratifying to
help them along the way.
(Well, I haven't had to listen to anyone learning bagpipes for the first
time! That might be more excruciating than gratifying!)
To come back to the original topic: that music is not copyrighted any more.
No, music is still copyrighted. It's just that the attitude towards
copyright has gone retro.
"Retro?" If you look back through American history, you will find a
widespread and complete disregard for copyright and patents held by
people outside of America. (Much of American industrialization was built
on illegal use of European patents, American publishers routinely issued
their own editions of copyrighted European books without paying anything
to the copyright holder.)
I recall seeing something in an article on copyrights / patents /
intellectual property that developing countries - countries trying to
grow their economies - always take a cavalier attitude toward copyright
and patents. (China, for instance, is still in that stage, although
they've grown way past the "developing economy" stage.) Once the country
becomes "established," they're vehement that everyone respect copyright
and patents. (Particularly if they themselves hold copyrights or patents
that others might want to use.)
It almost makes me think that the real motivation for rigid
copyright/patent laws is fear of competition. Perhaps part of the fear
behind organizations like the MPAA is the knowledge that as computer
technology grows, serious movie making will no longer be the exclusive
domain of the movie industry. (Just like music making technology has
come down from expensive banks of hardware to commodity PCs and free
software. I remember a time when I really really really wanted a
Fairlight sound sampling system. Now we can have "better than that" for
the price of a decent sound card and microphone.)
This will open up the field of telling stories via movie to essentially
anyone. For awhile, the big movie industry's experience at telling
stories via movie will keep them going. But as others do it, the story
telling skills will become commonplace. And someday technology will
attain the goal that George Lucas sought after Star Wars made him a
billionaire: the ability to make a movie *by himself*. And the tide of
truly independent movie makers will rise, keep getting better and
better, and eventually wash away Hollywood & Bollywood & the other
centers of big corporate movie making.
Just think what the world would be like if someone back in the early
days of movie making had patented the whole movie making process
("business process patents," anyone?), then used their resulting wealth
to successfully keep extending patents the way Disney Corporation got
copyright protection extended to prevent Mickie Mouse from entering the
public domain). We'd have only Hollywood movies - and barrages of patent
infringement suits keeping Japanese, Chinese, Indian and European movies
out of the United States! There'd be a flourishing black market in
"foreign" films, with "film runners" smuggling the latest Hong Kong
martial arts movie across the borders into the grubby hands of organized
crime who would shift it down to shady "film dealers" and "speakeasy
movie theaters"!
All because of copyrights and patents. See - back on topic!
;-)
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
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