Jump to content

Can Musicians Play Quietly Anymore?


Teasing the Korean

Recommended Posts

I have been listening to some 1930s and 40s jazz recordings. The bass is unamplified. The rhythm guitar is acoustic from all that I can tell. It seems like musicians from this era were great at listening and adjusting their individual performance volumes for the benefit of the group dynamic, so that everyone could be heard.

It seems that instruments - especially drum and percussion instruments - keep getting manufactured to be inherently louder and louder.

Several generations of musicians and sound men have been affected by rock music. If it hasn't destroyed their sensibilities, it has destroyed their hearing.

If we were to get rid of PA systems, bass amps, and guitar amps, I wonder if today's musicians could play with the sensitivity of their counterparts from earlier generations.

Thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Part of the monotony of jazz which 'fans' rarely notice is the relentless loudness and lack of acoustic subtlety. Van Gelder, as an admired engineer specialised in mixing LPs up to (and beyond) distortion point, was only a symptom of turning jazz into racket. But really it was the big, shouty dance bands that created this. Count Basie!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

depends on what kind of 21st-century jazz you listen to

I'm talking about what kind of 21st-century musicians - jazz or otherwise - I can hire. And I'm also talking about when the instruments played by 21st-cnetury musicians were manufactured. That makes a difference.

Edited by Teasing the Korean
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, to clarify, I'm not really looking for a list of musicians.

I am asking the musicians on this forum if you notice a difference between playing with, say octogenarians and younger guys, and if you also notice a difference between gear from different eras. For example, contemporary timbales are nearly twice as loud as 1950s models. I am also curious if you have encountered situations that seem to demand a quiet, understated approach, and someone insists on blowing to the rafters.

Edited by Teasing the Korean
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You have changed your question since the first post, where it was just 'thoughts?' on volume and 30s/40s jazz. If you are talking about hiring musicians regardless of genre why not hire a string quartet? If you are asking about any musician in the jazz improv tradition, the quietist I have heard in recent months is Eddie Prevost and John Tilbury playing as AMM. If you are looking to hire, that will depend on location/budget, I imagine. What is the occasion?

OK, I admit, I don't get this thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it is that quieter instruments are amplifying (double bass) in order to balance dynamically with louder instruments (drum kit), rather than musicians playing quieter on louder instruments (electric guitar) in order to balance dynamically with quieter instruments (tenor saxophone).

obviously, there will be examples where this is not the case, but it is the norm.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I admit, I don't get this thread.

Thank you, let me explain.

I posted this in the musician's forum.

I am asking working musicians, either professional or semi-professional, if they notice a difference between how their older peers and younger peers approach group dynamics. There will of course be outliers in either category. I am curious if -in general - huge PA systems, amplifiers, rock-era aesthetics, louder instruments, and any combination of these may (or may not) affect how musicians of different age groups approach group dynamics.

If I did not articulate this well enough in my original post, kindly attribute this to my limitations as a writer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It not just the players, it's the equipment (or as they like to call it today, "gear"). The shit's not designed to be played naked, it's made to sound good when miked or otherwise amped. I mean everything, horns even, especially saxophones and mouthpieces.

I have played clubs where they insist that the band be miked. Not that there's a need, but the people deciding that think that a band doesn't sound "real" unless it's coming out of speakers.

True story - one gig, I warned the guy not to mike me, because I could tell he was going to have an acoustic band miked out the ass (and really, this was just a small-ish bar, held like, 50-60 people max)and I would blow his speakers out and not give a damn, so I told him, look, just put a mike a way back and just pick up enough to reinforce.. He went ahead anyway and after one note on the sound check he came up screaming GODDAMIT WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, BLOW MY SHIT OUT? The only thing i can figure is that he was already half-deaf from listening to his own mixes and didn't hear me when I told him that he didn't want/need to do what he seemed to be hell-bent on doing. So, you know, fuck you dumbass, set the mike level wherever the fuck you want it, you can't make me stand there during the gig, I got legs, right? Sure enough, he kept moving the mike during the set, and I kept moving away until finally he gave up. I never bothered asking if we could get another night, because, you know, at some point, have some dignity about it, ok?

People too often can no longer tell the difference between volume and presence, loudness vs projection. It is what it is. World gone wrong, perhaps, but hey, there it be anyway.

Everybody I choose to play with these days can balance their own damn self and fill the sound in a normal room likewise, including me. And I'm no badass or anything, just somebody who learned how that shit works. You get a TRUE badass, they can play ppp and you'll hear them at the back of the room like they were standing right next to you, whispering in your ear, hell, you might even feel a little tongue, if you know what I mean. That's how that shit works. This other thing, the "make your sound with the mike in mind at all times" thing, that's some other thing that I never really learned. Too late now!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been playing Fridays at a restaurant in the Detroit area lately. Not every Friday, but several. And we have to play so quiet that we are often drowned out by the regular conversations of the tables near us. So yes... we can play quietly if that's what is required.

Hardly any organissimo gigs are miked with a PA and all that. We play acoustically in the room, albeit with two electric instruments (guitar and organ).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I admit, I don't get this thread.

Thank you, let me explain.

I posted this in the musician's forum.

I am asking working musicians, either professional or semi-professional, if they notice a difference between how their older peers and younger peers approach group dynamics. There will of course be outliers in either category. I am curious if -in general - huge PA systems, amplifiers, rock-era aesthetics, louder instruments, and any combination of these may (or may not) affect how musicians of different age groups approach group dynamics.

If I did not articulate this well enough in my original post, kindly attribute this to my limitations as a writer.

I was talking with a younger trumpet player about this after a gig recently.

He was putting down an older trumpet player, because he thought the older guy played too loud.

I told him that he played loud because the band wasn't using mics, and that up front where I was set up, he was the only trumpet player in the section I could hear when there was a trumpet solo.

The younger guys are used to playing with mics, so they don't work on projecting their sound like the older musicians did.

I was surprised hear from a trombone player that Bill Watrous couldn't be heard without a mic.

As far as rock cats are concerned, they have such powerful pickups, pre-amps, amps, pedals, and mics that they play through powerful PA systems, that they literally couldn't play quietly if their lives depended on it.

I subbed for a rock/fusion player on a musical with an orchestra, and I sat there in disbelief as this dim-wit drowned out the entire string section.

When I did the gig, I blended nicely with the strings, and the conductor and musicians appreciated it.

OTOH, if I were to sub for him with his rock band, they'd probably laugh me off the stand, because I don't have powerful enough gear to be able to cut through the loudness of the rock band.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I play older Conn altos (30s and 40s) because they are loud, a little shrill, but in a nice way. They have a soul that Yamahas don't - as a matter of fact, what makes the older horns appealing (I also have a Super 20, a Buescher, and a 10m stencil) is that, sonically, they breathe - there's a major and noticeable difference (as a matter of fact I recorded last year with a famous player who now endorses a newer horn and his sound is radically different and, to me, less appealing; please don't ask me who).

not sure if this is relevant, but I do think volume perception is effected by tonal perception.

Edited by AllenLowe
Link to comment
Share on other sites

not sure if this is relevant, but I do think volume perception is effected by tonal perception.

I agree. Iif the tones of different instruments lie in different parts of the frequency spectrum, that can effectively make them "louder" or "softer," depending on what is happening around them.

Edited by Teasing the Korean
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In terms of group dynamics, no performance I have ever heard comes anywhere close to that of George Shearing's quintet (in S.F., 1995). Shearing himself, of course, was the best individual example of this at that particular show, and probably the best I've ever heard anywhere at any time on any instrument. Just unbelievable. Kind of amazing that he achieved this on a piano, which I don't think of as an easy instrument on which to control one's volume (relatively speaking).

Edited by Jim R
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Piano? I'm no musician, but it seems to me that piano has tremendous range/ability to control. Tyner, for all his thunder, can be amazingly quiet. Randy Weston goes from delicate to booming.

If one likes quiet, we just lost two great masters of that art--Jim Hall and Charlie Haden.

But I guess the original post is dealing with larger groups--at least a quartet and usually bigger. Obviously, the bigger the group, the trickier the dynamics.

Edited by Milestones
Link to comment
Share on other sites

pianoforte = soft/loud, i.e. an instrument that can play soft and loud (and in between)

I agree with the basisc premise of this thread, that changing performance circumstances, specifically the ubiquitousnes(?) of PA systems even when they aren't needed. has wrought a change in performance practices and a changing skill set - that's life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

About the unamplified bass from the 40´s . Look, they got another tehnique to play it, and they got their strings about maybe 1,5 - 2 cm up from the fingerboard. Hard work plucking the strings that way, but the only chance to cut through the other instruments.

Those guys where the unsung heros of bop. Listen to Tommy Potter, to Curly Russel, to Al McKibbon and how they manage to cut through a whole Dizzy Gillespie Big Band.

And Mingus. He always complained that the young bass players have no chops to master their instruments.
Now ....bass players got their strings low, just a few millimeters up from the fingerboard. That´s why they play all that fast little shit , but they would die withouth the pick ups, the amps, they were lost.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Talking about the ubiquitousness of amplification and PA systems and all, maybe musicians can provide some insight on this (related) question:

How come nobody feels comfortable playing without monitors on stage anymore even in smaller groups/combos (claiming without monitor they cannot hear what they are playing and/or singing)? Is it that today's PAs overwhelm everything that they would otherwise be hearing of what they are playing? As far as I know, stages for smaller groups had the usual microphones and PA systems for the singer(s), guitar(s) and other amplified instruments way back in the 50s too (though of course smaller amps and speakers etc. than today) but AFAIK monitors were unheard of.

A side aspect of loudness too or just different conditioning of the musicians?

Just curious ...

Edited by Big Beat Steve
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is my impression that many jazz musicians today play with less volume than was typical of the previous generations.

A good example. Was when I heard both Al Grey and Bill Watrous both play at a concert. al had a big sound on his horn and stayed back from the mic when he played. Watrous had the mic right inside the bell of his horn as far as it would go to get the sound of his horn out to the audience. When he was a bit away from the mic it was hard to hear him.

Though Watrous has great techniques and is able to play very fast, I actually preferred to hear the less technical playing by Grey because I liked his big , more natural (less amplified) sound . Watrous seemd so dependent on the mic that it kind of annoyed me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Piano? I'm no musician, but it seems to me that piano has tremendous range/ability to control. Tyner, for all his thunder, can be amazingly quiet. Randy Weston goes from delicate to booming.

Good point. A piano can be played softly or it can boom when played hard with both hands. I was thinking more about the end of the spectrum involving the ability to play a piano very (very) softly, almost inaudibly, yet evenly and consistently. I think Shearing had a special touch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...