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Archive for January, 2010

Day 4. Beethoven, Lee Morgan, Billy Bragg & Wilco and Monteverdi

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Tonight’s selections were:

Billy Bragg & Wilco: Mermaid Ave. 2

Lee Morgan: Leeway (the RVG edition)

Monteverdi: L’Orfeo (John Eliot Gardiner conducting on Archiv)

Beethoven: complete piano trios from the DG Complete Beethoven Edition

I can’t possibly talk about all of these at the moment, and I have only listened so far to some of the Beethoven and the Lee Morgan. So I’ll stick to those.

‘Leeway’, and the series from Blue Note that it is released under the ‘Rudy Van Gelder edition’ sounds like what Blue Note jazz in the late 50s and 60s sounded like, mostly because so much was recorded in Rudy Van Gelder’s living room (and later his custom studio). The number of GREAT jazz albums recorded by RVG is astounding, and when Blue Note started re-releasing these recordings in the 2000s (remastered by RVG himself) I grabbed as many as I could every time Blue Note discs were on sale. They sound great. And even better is the exposure you get to some great artists that may seem peripheral to the jazz greats. But you really do get a sense of how all of these guys worked and played together on each other’s albums. Hearing a ‘Lee Morgan’ album isn’t just a Lee Morgan album. Art Blakey, Paul Chambers, Jackie McLean and Bobby Timmons are in on the session as well. All of these guys had albums under their own names, most notably Art Blakey. And I love Lee Morgan – but how were the decisions made about who would get the album credit? Why isn’t this an Art Blakey album? When it comes down to it, this one really does feature Lee Morgan… hands down. But then you listen to “Lazy Bird” on John Coltrane’s album “Blue Train”, and how is THAT not something that belongs on a Lee Morgan album???

Nice stretched out performances (the shortest track is still over 8 minutes) that are just cool. And what the RVG recordings show you is how important a recording engineer can be. The sound on RVG recordings really have a signature. There is a story I remember hearing about the first time Herbie Hancock recorded at the studio. Apparently he came in and started to move the piano a bit away from a wall, then started to move a microphone boom stand, and Rudy freaks out. The piano and microphones HAD to be in those spots for it to sound right. The way the sound bounced off the wall and the distance of the mic from the piano had been tuned over years of trial and error…

The recording engineer (and producers) are often the most overlooked musicians. Without them, sound wouldn’t be captured and made available for us to listen to. And they need to learn how to play their instruments in the same way a saxophonist does. It takes years of practice to get your sound, and after a little practice on a listeners part you can recognize RVG recordings (on many labels) just like you would recognize Lee Morgan’s trumpet sound.

The Beethoven discs are the piano trio recordings by Wilhelm Kempff, Pierre Fournier and Henryk Szeryng made in the late 60s. Kempff and Fournier are two of my favorite classical musicians of all time. I also have live recordings that the two of them did of the Beethoven Cello Sonatas. What is so fun about both the piano trio recordings and the sonatas is the sense of enjoyment these performers bring to pieces that they had probably known for 3 to 4 decades at this point in their lives. This is music that is in their muscles. A part of their physicality. But with the wisdom comes age. The performances are not ‘perfect’… there are missed notes here and there, and sometimes you can feel the group pull back a little to regroup. But everything is so musical. There actually isn’t a single note in these recordings. There is such a continuity that it is hard to believe that what we hear these three men playing is somehow represented by something as finite as dots and lines on a page. Beethoven is so lucky to have had people in this world that know and play his music with such connection. Well – Beethoven is lucky, but we are just as lucky! I could go on further, but I need to save something for the many returns to these artists I will be making in the future.

Tags: Beethoven, Billy Bragg and Wilco, Lee Morgan, Monteverdi
Posted in Classical, Jazz, Rock / Pop | No Comments »

Day 3. Ella Fitzgerald and Luciano Berio.

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Today’s picks come from Mira, and I am starting to notice that she is drawn to wider, more colorful packaging. I guess this means box sets will be ripped first.

The Berio recording I ripped tonight is the ‘complete’ Berio Sequenzas released on DG in 1998 (and I put the quote around complete because Berio composed a couple more after this). I had very little contact with Berio before coming to the University of Washington for grad school, and I was sent to Berio’s scores and recordings of performances of his music early on in my masters degree. I was beginning work on a piece for solo viola, and Richard Karpen scolded me for even thinking about composing works for a solo instrument without knowing these pieces. I wouldn’t be surprised even if he told me that I shouldn’t think about being a composer without knowing these pieces. But it is sufficient to say that I learned quickly that there were some serious holes in my knowledge of repertoire. Berio has become one of my favorite composers. I remember finding the Sequenzas quite uneven on my first listening to these performances (and still find some of these recordings flat). Studying the scores however was like looking at an encyclopedia of extended techniques for each instrument that he composed for. One of my most important lessons about music in general came from further listenings of these pieces. I was amazed how different performances could be, and I came to see the performance of new music not necessarily as a striving for a note perfect representation of dots on a page (where it was the responsibility of the composer to hyper-notate every nuance that is wanted) but as a relationship between composer, performer, performance history and performance practice. These pieces greatly changed how I viewed my role in the world as a composer, and this outlook still changes with every performance I have and piece I write. These pieces also taught me about how important the theatrical performance of a work is. While I have found recordings of these pieces that I enjoy listening to (there will be more writings about the Sequenzas here while the project goes on), seeing them performed (even rehearsed) adds so much to the listening of them. Seeing how a performer grapples with the technical and musical demands of this music is exhilarating.

Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘songbook’ collections came out on Verve first in the 50s and 60s on LP and were reissued on CD in the late 90s. A quick search on Wikipedia (to grab the above dates) also revealed that in 2000 this ALBUM was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2003 the Library of Congress chose it as one of 50 recordings added to the National Recording Registry. To call this album a treasure is an understatement. It is one of the most beautifully compiled set of performances I think I own. I have played this music while closing the record store for the night, I have played tracks from it for my music theory students, and I have played it just about anytime I need something to lighten me up a bit. Personally, I believe these recordings were captured near the peak of Ella Fitzgerald’s career (along with the ‘Cote d’Azur’ recordings that were done with Duke Ellington). Her musicality is startling, and she may be one of the most perfect interpreters of Cole Porter’s music that I can think of. Her voice on ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ embodies the complexity of the story told in the lyrics, full of sorrow and relief at the same time. ‘You Do Something To Me’ and ‘Too Darn Hot’ embody what I imagine Manhattan sexy in the 50s must have been. But it is her version of ‘I Love Paris’ that is probably one of the top 10 songs that I get stuck in my head. Buddy Bergman’s orchestral arrangement does more the compliment Ella’s voice. This song achieves a stunning relationship between the singer and her accompaniment, rising well above a sum of the two parts. Having such a clear image of this song in my head is one of my most treasured musical memories.

Tags: Ella Fitzgerald, Luciano Berio
Posted in Classical, Jazz, Mira | No Comments »

Day 2. The Beatles and Miles Davis.

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

For tonight’s decisions, I decided that I needed to pick Mira up so she could choose something from a higher shelf. At the girl’s current height, the bookshelves would have quickly become top heavy. Celia chose The Beatles, and Mira went for the shiny ‘Seven Steps’ Miles Davis box set (the period on Columbia Records between his group with Coltrane that produced ‘Kind Of Blue’ and the famous Quintet.

I could talk about how great this music is… I could talk about how influential The Beatles’ seven years of recorded output was to the history of pop music. I could talk about how these transitional years of Miles Davis’ career produced some great performances while a new group slowly came together. But I could fill books with that kind of talk, and my guess is that if you are reading this you don’t need to be convinced about The Beatles or Miles Davis. So, I’ll talk about packaging.

I don’t think I have any memories of music in my life pre-Beatles. Ever since I have known music, I have known The Beatles and there are two visuals that come to mind – the cover for Sgt. Pepper and the Apple / half-Apple record labels on the later LPs. I can’t tell you how sad I was to see the CD cover for Sgt. Pepper when it first came out. The original LP that folded out, had lyrics printed on the back (first pop record to do this!!!) and the Sgt. Pepper cutouts were as much a part of the record as the music was. The White Album and its four full color photos that my dad hung in the garage. And the 12 x 12 cover of Abbey Road. The size mattered, and so did the way the album covers wore with time. They were old when I got to know them, taken in and out of shelves over and over again to be played. The jackets aged the more you played the LPs they conyained.

So much was lost with the compact disc. 98% plastic standardized jewel cases. The yellow spine for R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic For The People’ seemed special when it came out, that’s how boring and homogenized the packaging was. Especially after the death of the long box, which was meant to just be thrown away anyways (though I would save them and plaster them to my teenage walls). So when a company DID do something different with packaging, it caught attention. After some time, there were even awards for it. Packaging! Did it matter what was on the discs? Nope – just awards for packaging… and I think that shows just how bad it got.

The packaging for the Miles Davis Columbia Records compilations won several of these awards. ‘Seven Steps’ has a metallic silver spine, surrounded by a grey canvas-like sturdy box. You can’t open the booklet to save your life, and the cardboard sleeves inside certainly can’t be good for the discs. But they look sharp, especially when they are all lined up in a row on a shelf. Well… now there is one less on mine.

Included in ‘Seven Steps’ is ‘Live In Berlin’ (pictured above). I originally bought this one disc for about half the price of this box set as a Japanese import. It is still one of my favorite live discs. The group as it stands on this recording probably existed for 6 months or so, and they are mostly playing music that was written and performed when John Coltrane and Bill Evans was playing with Miles in the late 50s. There is tension there, and often the tempos are faster. They are exciting performances, but you can hear that the players realize there are ghosts on the stage. They were following greatness, and at the time were probably wondering if THEY were the next great group, trying to prove to the audience and Miles that they could make the cut. Well – this isn’t the Quintet to come, but this isn’t to slight them at all. These are some fine performances… and I’m glad I got the import version when I did. The extra cost was well worth the extra time I had with this music.

Tags: Miles Davis, The Beatles
Posted in Jazz, Rock / Pop | 2 Comments »

Simplify Media

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I thought accessing the new library while away from home was going to be one of the trickier parts in this whole process. Some quick poking around last night and I found Simplify Media. Took only a couple minutes to set up, and I have R.E.M. playing from the library at home (while I am on the train with iffy Wi-Fi to Seattle). It compresses the sound on the fly down to a 160 kb MP3 stream … not great, but not bad either. I’m curious if the quality will be better when I have a stronger internet connection.
Playlists are one thing I notice as a bit of a problem at the moment. I’m organizing the discs into playlists that are stored inside playlist folders on iTunes. For example, ‘Automatic For The People’ is stored in Playlists->Rock / Pop->R.E.M.->Automatic For The People. But Simplify Media just shows a flattened list (no nesting). As the library grows, this will be more and more of a problem, but this isn’t bad at all for the first app I tried for doing this.

Posted in DAC Project | No Comments »

Day 1. ABBA, Air, Elliott Smith, The Smiths, Mozart and R.E.M.

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I want to avoid going through my whole collection and ripping the CDs in the order they are stored on my bookshelves. This does make packing the discs away a little tricky after I rip them, but it also gives me a wonderful randomness to this whole process. To make things a little more random, I went into the extra bedroom this morning at asked Celia and Mira to pull a few discs off the shelves. Celia went for some red spines (ABBA and Air), and Mira just went to the shelves and started to pull discs down. Whether or not Mira did this in response to my request isn’t known – this is what Mira does when she is around the CD shelves. Today, Mira grabbed off the The Smiths and Elliott Smith. R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic For The People’ was just above those and fell down with the ‘Smiths’, and I also grabbed ‘Marriage Of Figaro’.

I got ABBA for Tamiko some time ago (a download that I burned to disc), and I admit they are quite a guilty pleasure. It’s hard not to have fun when ABBA is playing. I remember listening to ABBA in spanish class in high school (ABBA Oro), and I love to hear Tamiko sing along with them. Celia loves to dance to them (and she loves to dance to Kylie Minogue, who I am sure would not be who she is without ABBA). And as Mira gets her feet under her, I imagine she’ll enjoy them too. What a stark contrast their music is to Elliott Smith’s. The two discs I ripped today were his first album (fairly dark, just Elliott and his guitar) and ‘From A Basement On A Hill’ (released after his suicide). His first album is a wonderful, moody record, and in hindsight probably hints at what will happen in his future. ‘From A Basement On A Hill’ is simply to sad for me to listen to. I have never even listened to the whole thing. When I first bought it, I got about halfway through it before I turned it off. It was just too sad for me at the time, and I have never brought myself to listen to the whole thing. The unfinished quality of what I remember hearing was quite fitting.

The Smith’s ‘The Queen Is Dead’ and R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic for the People’ both bring along lots of high school memories. Heavier on the R.E.M. side though. Not that I don’t appreciate The Smiths, but I was always more of an R.E.M. fan. And while I really got into R.E.M. with ‘Document’ and ‘Green’, ‘Automatic For The People’ was one of my favorite albums of theirs at the time it came out. I understand why it didn’t catch the ears of a lot of other R.E.M. fans, but the more acoustic, orchestrated feel of this album spoke to me at the time. A couple of weeks ago ‘Monty Got A Raw Deal’ was featured in an NPR interview about songs and game shows. And hearing only 30 seconds of the song left me wanting to hear the whole album again. ‘Man On The Moon’ doesn’t stand up as well for me now (a casualty of radio overplay) but ‘Try Not To Breathe’ and ‘Everybody Hurts’ strike me as even more amazing the I remember. And the strings in ‘Drive’ still sound unexpected to me… fresh and dark at the same time.

‘Marriage Of Figaro’ is one of my favorite operas. But over the past couple of years, I have started to feel it is just wrong to only listen to opera. It is such a visual and dramatic medium that so much is lost when you only hear it. A couple years ago I thought I would eventually want to replace all my opera recordings with DVDs, but when I finished transferring the disc today I played a few tracks (as part of my streaming test). And it is so amazing to hear this music. Sure, the visuals and staging are missing, but a Mozart aria has no problem standing on its own. The recording is a live one (with John Eliot Gardiner conducting, Bryn Terfel and Alison Hagley). I watched the video a couple of times during shifts in the video store at Tower, and it is an amazing performance. Gardiner shapes an amazing performance, and the sound quality is stunning. I look forward to listening to the whole thing again very soon.

Tags: ABBA, Air, Elliott Smith, Mozart, R.E.M., The Smiths
Posted in Celia, Classical, Mira, Rock / Pop, Tamiko | No Comments »

Digital to Analog Conversion.

Monday, January 4th, 2010

In the strictest sense, anytime we play music in digital form (CD, MP3, etc.) it needs to go through the process of being converted back into an analog signal that our speakers / headphones can handle. What I have been listening to lately has been more and more dictated by what is on my computer, and I realized that the CDs in the extra bedroom have become long-term storage rather then an active collection. For the most part, the purchasing of actual discs is probably more a part of my past then my future… This really is for the best. I am no longer afforded great discounts (or free music for that matter) and I have think I have settled my internal debate about whether or not the extra expense and space needed for CDs is worth it. I am quite happy using eMusic, and it is actually easier to find the music I am looking for there then in the typical record store here in the northwest.

Then, I went to play a disc the other day and I discovered that my CD player was unplugged. It probably came unplugged a couple weeks ago when I was getting rid of my failed attempt to wire the TV for digital (antenna, converter, etc.), but it also showed me that I mostly don’t listen to my CDs much anymore. If I want to hear something, I rip it onto my computer to have it with me, plug the computer into speakers at home or work and listen to it that way. So I have decided it is time… for the price of two IKEA bookshelves I can get a couple of large hard drives. And in a way, I also get my music back. Eventually I will even have access to it when I’m away… so here is what I have set-up so far:

1) old PowerBook G4 (our old server) updated to OS X 10.5.8, iTunes 9. Drop a disc in, and it auto-rips the CD to Apples Lossless.

2) two FireWire drives (to start) that we had laying around… about 350 GB total.

3) the above is wired into our router with Ethernet.

So far the streaming to the other computers seems to work just fine. But I can already imagine the problems coming up with the current combination. Old computer for one, old drives for another. I will (rather soon) need to get a newer larger drive, but also need to plan for back-ups (the last thing I want to do is re-rip all this). Then – the shear amount of time. Probably a couple of years doing a few discs a day?

And while the above sounds like work I’m really looking forward to the whole thing. This is a chance to go through my whole collection again – well over 20 years worth of CD collecting – and to think about how all of this has contributed to my life so far. When I talked to Tamiko about this idea (and when I have brought it up in the past) there have been aspects of all this that has saddened both of us a bit. We have had shelves of CDs as a large part of our space / decor ever since we have moved in together. A house without visible CDs will be a change.

I’m looking forward to hearing (and having easier access to) all of this material again. In some ways it is like downloading all of these as album, and Celia and Mira get to hear music that has sat on shelves (much of it untouched for years). In short, now that I’m starting this, I’m pretty excited. I’ll use this as a space to keep track of what I pull off disc – the good, the bad and the ugly. And will share a bit about what all of this music means to me.

Posted in DAC Project | No Comments »

Archive for January, 2010

Day 4. Beethoven, Lee Morgan, Billy Bragg & Wilco and Monteverdi

Day 3. Ella Fitzgerald and Luciano Berio.

Day 2. The Beatles and Miles Davis.

Simplify Media

Day 1. ABBA, Air, Elliott Smith, The Smiths, Mozart and R.E.M.

Digital to Analog Conversion.

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