Jazz Music Discussion

All Things Music
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Music can be a deeply personal thing and I for one have fairly strong attachments to the music I’ve shared on this thread, particularly so for Jazz which I’ve listened to and played since an early age. A comment like yours comes across as disparaging my taste as boring and unsophisticated.

I have a brother in law who loves death metal. He is incredibly knowledgable on the genre and attends live performances almost religiously. I personally don’t care much for death metal (can’t get past the vocals), but I can still respect his taste and love talking to him about it because of his infectious enthusiasm.

Sometimes I write stuff that doesn’t come across as I intended, and I hope that you didn’t mean to be disparaging here, but I felt I had to take the opportunity to encourage us to keep the tone positive. I’ve seen a fair number of suggestions on these music threads that didn’t resonate with me personally, but as a community we’re richer for having many people sharing their love of music and we should encourage more of it.

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Well I’m a fan… I added GoGO Penguin to my main playlist =) I also agree, music is experienced uniquely. I.E. two people in the same room, with music playing/being performed, will walk away with similar, if not completely different thoughts on it. It all goes back to, we are all the protagonists to our own stories, and need to remember that all the other people around us, aren’t NPCs but other Hero/heroines =)

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@pwjazz.
I’m sorry you took it personally-I never mentioned you, or any of the music you like. I actually like all kinds of music, not just jazz, and tend to like music that doesn’t fit into a box so neatly (though I’m pretty well versed in Monk, Mingus, Parker, Ellington, Armstrong, Coltrane, etc). I tend to like things a bit left of center, but that’s me. These threads always have a problem, in that jazz really isn’t 1 thing. But I didn’t mean to offend, was just disappointed I didn’t see anything that seemed worth checking out.
I’m actually a bit curious about metal-former NY Times Jazz Critic Ben Ratliff tended to like jazz that was unusual, and was also a devotee of Metal, which he said had some incredible instrumentalists. I also go for most of what’s called “roots”, Pop-punk, even classical.
Again, wasn’t meant to offend or call anyone out (and I don’t think I did), maybe just in the wrong place.

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I didn’t mean to offend

I figured as much :slight_smile:

I’m actually a bit curious about metal

I enjoy Progressive Metal a lot, and there’s definitely some incredible musicianship in the Metal community. I actually enjoy the instrumental work on a lot of Death Metal too, but the vocals spoil it for me. Apropos Jazz+Metal, the band Shining is an interesting band that started out as a somewhat avant-garde Jazz outfit and evolved into Metal.

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Jazz fusion? One of my favorite bands as a kid to go surfing/skating/snowboarding

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Jazz at the pawnshop is a favorite of mine for it’s recorded glory. Very good separation and placement in the sound stage. Bitches brew and kind of blue are just all time classics for any one new to the Jazz scene

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47

Not sure if this counts as jazz but Al Jarreu - Look to the rainbow: Live in Europe is a great recording.

Dave Brubeck - Time out: Great reproduction of the quartet and just great music
Harry Belfonte: Belafonte: At Carnegie Hall: Very good live album where Harry is front and center. Good show of male vocals. Some of these tracks are jazz, and some more classical based.
Oscar Peterson: A jazz portrait of Frank Sinatra: Awesome piano

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@Doctorjazz
How about this

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49

I wonder, if you would like Technical Metal like this

Or

Animals as Leaders are great as well.

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Cool, have to check some of these out!

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Oh what a lovely thread we have here. :sparkling_heart::sparkling_heart::sparkling_heart::sparkling_heart::sparkling_heart::sparkling_heart:

Jazz is such a big topic, you will always find something new or old and beloved to listen to. My parents liked jazz, so I had pretty good exposure to it from the late 50s to the late 60s. They also liked “Latin” music, which in many ways was both a sub-genre and a precursor to a lot of what we think of as Jazz.

There were some 78s in the house, and my folks talked about some of the 40s artists they saw live, or heard on the radio. Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Kay Kyser and his College of Musical Knowledge, Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, even Benny Goodman.

I’ve linked a few classic moments above to YouTube videos.

But I’d like to point to a few of the basics - Jazz that was accessible, but not simple. Jazz that I grew up with.
First, Dave Brubeck. The albums you should listen to are Time Out and Time Further Out. Brubeck experiments with different rhythms. His famous “Take 5” is from this set. I love “It’s a Raggy Waltz”

The counterpoint to Brubeck must be the Modern Jazz Quartet, there is so much here that I just linked to the Wikipedia - you really need to google and sample for yourself.

And something that I really discovered more recently - from the Latin side, Tito Puente. For you Santana fans, you’ve heard Carlos playing guitar in his cover of Tito Puente’s “Oye Come Va”, where the original line was a flute. You must listen to Tito. I heartily recommend his “Mambo Birdland” album.

That’s all for now. Let me know what you think of my selections, and I’ll move forward to when I was in college, at Penn State, got to do some stage crew for the Jazz Club and meet and hear early Jazz/Fusion artists. :wink:

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Thanks for the recommendations @z0rk! My brother-in-law the metal fan got me an Animals as Leaders album a long time ago and I enjoy it quite a bit. I wasn’t aware of a category of metal called “Technical”, but so far I like it. It is pretty cerebral though, definitely not light listening!

My knowledge of metal genres mostly derives from the below flowchart, which is sadly missing Technical Metal. Basically the litmus test for me is the question “Can you understand the lyrics?”. I definitely slant towards the yes branch from that question.

2d9dafd3618b41c12b2b98b5b791ab90.gif1000×1778 81 KB

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I remember my dad had a Brubeck L.P. “Adventures in Time”. It is of course lost now, and perhaps it’s just nostalgia, but I remember enjoying that record more than “Time Out”.

Thank you for mentioning Latin Jazz! I have fond (if fuzzy) memories of being drafted to play the vibraphone on some Latin numbers back in my high school days, and of our guest instructor from Colombia Jaime, despite whose best efforts my sense of rhythm never developed into what good Latin music demands.

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Metal has endless subcategories. Some of them are also rather silly or not particularly helpful, like Technical Metal. Most metal is rather technical. So yeah. Spiral Architect is definable not light listening, but rewarding over time. Zero Hour I think is generally labeled as Progressive Metal and a bit more accessible. Stellar musicianship all around though. Glad you enjoy it.

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Headphones for jazz, open back. Trying to settle on my next big purchase. Beyerdynamic DT 880 or Sennhieser HD650\6xx? I want to hear the pluck of the bass and the I want the trumpet to not be exhausting. Suggestions anyone? I have a limited budget so no over $500 please.

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Listening to this on FLAC…it came with a humble game bundle…pretty cool actually

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Blues but still really good!

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I wonder if you mean Time Further Out, the 2nd Brubeck album. Very cool. Unsquare Dance in 5/4 time. I searched online and in a Brubeck Discography, and can’t find “Adventures in Time”. The only other time reference is in a retrospective 1992 album. I saw Brubeck live a couple of times; very enjoyable. His live sound is not very different from his albums. Brubeck isn’t extreme sonically, but seems to have paid careful attention to getting his album sound right.

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How cool that you got to see him perform live!

This was my dad’s LP:

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How cool that his recordings are well done, and that you can pick out each instrument in detail with good headphones or great speakers. The piano was always cleanly mic’d.

And thank’s for finding your Dad’s album. It has most of Time Further Out - Maori Blues, Bluette, and Far More Drums, and adds a few standards. I may have to get it to hear Brubeck’s Iberia version.