Jazz musicians who play out of tune

[7/4]

to the Ron Carter point:

i've never been able to tell how purposefully *off* his bowed cello was on Mal Waldron The Quest.

I never had any trouble telling. :rsmile:

It's them quatertones again.

[Chuck Nessa]

It's them quatertones again.

[7/4]

It's them quatertones again.

[Neal Pomea]

The piano Mal Waldron played on the Five Spot recordings with Eric Dolphy and Booker Little was "tuned differently," I believe. Great performances.

[7/4]

The piano Mal Waldron played on the Five Spot recordings with Eric Dolphy and Booker Little was "tuned differently," I believe. Great performances.

but also a great example of an out of tune piano.

[clifford_thornton]

Waldron used that piano to his advantage - I think that piano is the best thing about the gig!

[.:.impossible]

Perhaps we would all be better off if everyone just stuck to the vibes instead.

Even then, you have a choice between 440 or 442. It seems that the larger manufacturers have been defaulting to 442 in recent years.

[Guest akanalog]

for some reason a lot of prestige sides from the late 60s seem to use some unique piano tunings. perhaps don schlitten was more intrigued by "the new thing" than we think...

[Kari S]

Don't know if these were mentioned already, but Bennie Maupin and Eddie Henderson in the 70's come to mind...

[ghost of miles]

So I played David Murray's "Home" on my afternoon show the other day, and we received a message from a listener (who is a member of the music school faculty here at IU) saying "That was the worst thing I ever heard on this station... it sounded like a bad PDQ Bach joke!"  I wrote back to her saying I respectfully disagreed (I think it's a really lovely piece, which is why I chose it); the listener answered by saying "But it was soooooo out of tune."  To my ears the piano had sounded very slightly out-of-tune (if completely in-tune pianos were a requirement of older jazz recordings, which this was, then a large number of sides would never see the light of a radio broadcast day); anything else in the piece sounded quite intentional to me.  What do others here on the board think of this recording?  Whether the "out-of-tune" elements the listener heard were deliberate or unintentional, the feeling of the performance and the melodic nature of the piece made it more than worthy of airplay by the standards I apply:  

 

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by ghost of miles

[Larry Kart]

The opening close-voiced neo-Ellington wind/brass passage! And then the muted trombone comes in!  Aieee!

As for the neo-Ellington aspect, one can point to a number of Ellington pieces where a certain "friction" crops up from time to time, especially in the reed section (Jack Teagarden, who supposedly had perfect pitch, notoriously stated in a DB Blindfold Test that the Ellington reed section was often out of tune), but that almost without exception was a different matter altogether -- an offshoot of a quite deliberate mode of writing and a choice of executants on Duke's part in which a density of overtones/timbres was an expressive necessity. While I think it's safe to assume that Murray had such effects in mind here, it would seem that on the level of conception and execution, he and his bandmates didn't have much of a clue.

[JSngry]

The lineup on that record:

• David Murray – tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
• Henry Threadgill – alto saxophone, flute, alto flute
• Olu Dara – trumpet
• Lawrence "Butch" Morris – cornet
• George Lewis – trombone
• Anthony Davis – piano
• Wilber Morris – bass
• Steve McCall – drums

Unless you have a need/desire (permanent or temporary) to subscribe to "European" notions of "in tune", then fuck that guy and others like him. They have narrow ears for sound.

This notion of pitch being exactly defined is a very digital paradigm. Pitch is infinite, the division points are entirely imposed. It's like time in that regard. The ultimate analog.

As you suggest, intent is key. If you hear people with well-centered tones, controlled timbres, confident breath support and/of fingers, odds are way batter than just even that they know what they're doing and why they're doing it. Go with that unless and until it runs out (and everything runs out eventually).

Now having said that...everybody can and does play out of tune sometimes. It's a fact of life. But these guys are consistent within themselves, and that's another way to tell - is it consistent within itself? If it is, I think that if they wanted it to sound otherwise, they'd be more than capable of so doing.

I had a disagreement with this one guyy a few years ago about Fela's horn section, this guy claimed they were totally unlistenable becuase they were out of tune. yeah, that shit is "out of tune" the was THIS is:

Don't listen to people who can only hear differences as being only/either good or bad.

 

 

[Shrdlu]

It is interesting to see this old thread.

I was amazed to hear complaints about Ron Carter and Wayne Shorter. I never heard them out-of-tune. Ron has one of the richest bass sounds in jazz. I'm speaking double bass here: I hate jazz cello, because it always has painful intonation; it would peel the wallpaper.

Jackie Mac played in tune in ensembles. He blended in superbly. In solos, any variation of pitch was essential. This has partly to do with the fact that (he said) he was trying to sound like Dex.

There have been some terribly out-of-tune alto saxophonists on Blue Note sessions. The worst was Leo Wright, though his sound was a good fit on the Johnny Coles album. But Jackie Mac is always welcome, and, of course, Lou Donaldson is always spot on.

I used to play with a bass player who (believe it or not) didn't like Paul Chambers. He said Paul was flat. But Paul gave a group such a lift. Apart from one or two tracks with Red Garland, I have never heard him to be off-pitch. Actually, it amazes me that bass fiddle players know where to place their left-hand fingers and that they can do that at breakneck tempos.

Edited November 2, 2019 by Shrdlu

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

The lineup on that record:

• David Murray – tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
• Henry Threadgill – alto saxophone, flute, alto flute
• Olu Dara – trumpet
• Lawrence "Butch" Morris – cornet
• George Lewis – trombone
• Anthony Davis – piano
• Wilber Morris – bass
• Steve McCall – drums

Unless you have a need/desire (permanent or temporary) to subscribe to "European" notions of "in tune", then fuck that guy and others like him. They have narrow ears for sound.

This notion of pitch being exactly defined is a very digital paradigm. Pitch is infinite, the division points are entirely imposed. It's like time in that regard. The ultimate analog.

As you suggest, intent is key. If you hear people with well-centered tones, controlled timbres, confident breath support and/of fingers, odds are way batter than just even that they know what they're doing and why they're doing it. Go with that unless and until it runs out (and everything runs out eventually).

Now having said that...everybody can and does play out of tune sometimes. It's a fact of life. But these guys are consistent within themselves, and that's another way to tell - is it consistent within itself? If it is, I think that if they wanted it to sound otherwise, they'd be more than capable of so doing.

I had a disagreement with this one guyy a few years ago about Fela's horn section, this guy claimed they were totally unlistenable becuase they were out of tune. yeah, that shit is "out of tune" the was THIS is:

Don't listen to people who can only hear differences as being only/either good or bad.

 

 

All well and good on your general points, Jim, but aren't the opening ensemble passages on Murray's "Home" pretty sour? And, if so, to what expressive end? Again, I think that Murray's intent was to pay homage to and extend a certain Ellington vibe, but given that Murray wrote the piece and directed his accomplished musicians to play it thusly, I don't think that intent and results matched up well here.

As for Murray as a writer-bandleader, FWIW some years ago James Spaulding (then a member of Murray's ensemble) gave me an earful on that subject after he got off the stand.

[JSngry]

All that aside, those were all guys he was in immediate contact with, at that time, probably more than not. I have a hard time believing that he wanted anything other than what he got.

Now, if you want to wonder about why he would want that, be my guest. But I can tell you that the one time I saw the Octet live, some of the names had changed, but the ensemble sound had not.

David Murray just be David Murray.

[Guy Berger]

5 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

What do others here on the board think of this recording?  Whether the "out-of-tune" elements the listener heard were deliberate or unintentional, the feeling of the performance and the melodic nature of the piece made it more than worthy of airplay by the standards I apply:  

 

 

A classic.  Among the best jazz of the last 40 years! 🎉🎉🎉

[Dave James]

Were there any liner notes?  It would be interesting to hear what either Murray or whoever wrote them had to say about the album.  For me, "Home" would not fall into the "rewards repeated listenings" category.  

[Big Beat Steve]

10 hours ago, JSngry said:

Unless you have a need/desire (permanent or temporary) to subscribe to "European" notions of "in tune", then fuck that guy and others like him. They have narrow ears for sound.

This notion of pitch being exactly defined is a very digital paradigm. Pitch is infinite, the division points are entirely imposed. It's like time in that regard. The ultimate analog.

 

I don't really have an opinion on the above example (except that - as Ghost says - if "out of tune pianos" had been a criterion in jazz, then ....) but the above is really what it's all about.

Ears weaned on Europan classical music aren't exactly the best starting point for listening to the pitches in jazz IMO.

And - to bring in another aspect about how things evolve - much as I like what George T. Simon had to say about the Swing era and Swing music, the way he rambled on all the time about "playing in tune" and this or that being "tasteful" (as if these were primary criteria of swinging musci) labels his writings as very much of times that have been passed over long ago. The way he used terms like this IMO somehow just stifles the music that is conveyed in his writings

[Shrdlu]

Re intonation, I used to go to many "blows" (as we called them) when I was a teenager. At the time, I was armed with a worn-out Selmer "super action" alto saxophone (the model before the Mark VI) with tarnished lacquer and a clarinet.

That was in Australia in the 60s. None of the houses had central heating back in those days. The piano was often in a freezing room. Pianos go terribly sharp when it's cold (the strings contract and tighten). Clarinets go flat when cold, even with the mouthpiece and barrel pushed in all the way. The result was a pitch gap that couldn't be bridged. The pianist once played an A and an Ab simultaneously for us to tune up. Good experience for a young musician. I had the clarinet's barrel shortened, to try to cope with those pianos, but if you push the barrel in an appreciable amount, the intervals get thrown off and you have to lip every note to play in tune. Saxophones are much more forgiving when one moves the mouthpiece along the neck.

Playing outdoors on a cold day is also fun.

[Brad]

Based on David’s post, I half expected the Murray piece to be avant garde but as Larry said he’s trying to be Ellingtonian. I rather enjoyed the piece and actually found it soothing, if that makes any sense. I really don’t know what she (the IU professor) finds so objectionable.  Perhaps you can invite her to look at the comments and relay her further comments.  I’d be interested to hear them. 

[Larry Kart]

RE: my post above. What Spaulding had to say about Murray's writing and band-leading that night was not at all favorable. IIRC, what he said to me was, in essence, "It's a gig -- let's talk about something else." I should add that I had more or less opened the door by saying something  to Spaulding that implied that my reaction to what I'd just heard also was not favorable, and that his reaction to this was more or less one of relief -- a la, "I'm not the only one who notices." And we did go on to talk about other things.

[ghost of miles]

The “Home” track’s Ellington-meets-Dolphy feeling is definitely a strong part of its appeal for me. I first heard it when I picked up the Murray Black Saint/Soul Note Octet set several years ago, and I threw it into a pretty conservative setlist this past Tuesday (the day that I feature classic jazz) partly because I hadn’t played any Murray on the show in quite awhile, and because I thought it flowed well from the previous track (Dorothy Ashby doing “L’il Darlin’—it was the birth anniversary of both Neal Hefti and Zoot Sims, so they appeared in the playlist several times that day in one way or another). I noticed btw when I went back to the station’s FB Messenger feed that this same professor had messaged us back in 2016 lambasting my spin of Sonny Rollins’ “Disco Monk,” saying “I don’t care if it’s Rollins... no disco. Not a great day for the station’s jazz programming.”  I’m such a DJ renegade, right?! 😄

[JSngry]

Yeah, well, play it again, only use this version:

Deal with that, Poorfessor Wrong.

[ghost of miles]

7 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Yeah, well, play it again, only use this version:

Deal with that, Poorfessor Wrong.

That’s the version I played! 👍

[Shrdlu]

There's an interesting story about intonation.

The M.J.Q. was booked for a concert in London, England. Most of you will know that John Lewis was a perfectionist. The contract required a grand piano, freshly tuned to A440. The English regularly expect to be able to ignore things like that. The Quartet arrived at the venue, and, sure enough, the piano had not been tuned. So, John took them all away and there was no concert. He was right: he didn't want to harm their reputation.