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JAZZ IMPROV magazine - your impressions.


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I have been a subscriber from the start and will continue. To call this a magazine is really not doing it justice. I mean, Down Beat is a magazine. Each issue of Jazz Improv is 250+ pages and has things that the fan magazines don't, like lead sheets, transcriptions, analyses, etc. Also the interviews are conducted by musicians so they address points that the typical journalist misses. If you are a musician, you will really appreciate what Jazz Improv is doing.

There are some parts which are not so great - record reviews are by readers and are very hit or miss. I have no interest in those, so I mostly skip those.

Mike

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Guest Chaney

Mike:

And what if you're not a musician? Money better spent elsewhere?

(I too received a mailing from these folks. Hmmm...)

Edited by Chaney
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And what if you're not a musician? Money better spent elsewhere?

Or what if you're a wannabe musician who really sucks?

Seriously, I received a mailing as ell and put it aside to see if there were any comments. Sounds interesting.

Anyone else get this magazine?

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I buy select issues off the newsstand at 10$ a pop. It's okay. Some nice transcriptions, lead sheets, and interviews with musicians. Spectacular no, however, it does provide a fair amount of interesting information for musicians. I probably won't subscribe, but I will continue to buy select issues that are of special interest to me.

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  • 1 year later...

I buy the occassional issue off the news stand. I think there is a wealth of information in there and I enjoy getting the compilation CD (but does the publisher have to include a track from his CD on every compilation), but overall I don't think its the best thing for me the none musician. I have been reading the most recent issue with Dizzy Gillespie on the cover. I purchased it because it included a bunch of interviews with a lot of trumpeters that interested me. After a while, however, it got a little dry to me. I think it was because it seemed that at least in the interviews I read, all the musicians seemed to be asked the same questions and I think the insight gained from many of these questions is better appreciated by people with a musical background. With that said I have not yet read the lengthy feature on Gillespie. The last issue I purchased had a similar feature on Joe Henderson, which although very informative, was not much more than a analytical review of his discography which got a little dry after a while.

Overall, I think the publication is very informative if not entirely entertaining and I will continue to purchase the occassional issue when it contains features and/or interviews with musicians that inetrest me.

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The "biography" articles are pretty bad. Just a silly album by album "and then he made this record, and then he made that record" deal. The Art Blakey one particularly rubbed me the wrong way (though I was credited) - don't ask me why it stopped all of a sudden at 1985.

I find quite a bit of interesting stuff in the interviews but I definitely do not like the "cookie-cutter" approach of asking everyone the same questions. That's nice if you're doing a dissertation or something and you're going to present it as such, but particularly in the same magazine issue, it's stupid - and lazy, if you ask me.

Still, I'm a charter subscriber and am not about to drop it. Supposedly it's going to be more regular (4x/year). Whatever.

Mike

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