on a recording such as Some Kind of Blue...where the musicians following a sheet of written music, or is that all improvised?

i do not know sorry

purplerein said:

From the top of my head:
Particularly the Kind of Blue recordings were very muchimprovisation-based...that was the whole idea behind the recordings. Miles had some chord progressions and ideas but the band didn't go in the studio with a full rounded idea. That's what's great about great jazz recordings; you can almost feel (and actually hear) the interactiveness..the action/reaction thing between the players.

The liner notes of this album talk about a Japanese painting style that's performed on very fragile paper. Therefor the painter has only ONE change to paint a certain line/stroke. If he hesitates or tries to change his stroke, the paper will tear and break. This is a fitting analogy for the Kind Of Blue recordings.

Hope this is of any help, there is a book about the K.o.B recording session, that should clear up anything...

http://www.amazon.com/Kin...0306810670

I'm sure tA has a definitive answer, however my guess is that it was a combination of both.....and in my limited experience that also holds to be true.

The "heads" (main melodies) on Kind Of Blue were written, main grooves and basic chord changes were established in advance.
They had to be because the tunes included "ensemble sections" (horns playing specific lines together).
The individual solos, and how the changes were played behind them, were improvised.

This is in direct opposition to an album like In A Silent Way where the musicians were given the bare minimum amount of information about the compositions. Also, since that was a "cut and paste deal", Ted Macero's skills with a razor blade and splicing block made him in essence an additional musician.


Btw, Blue In Green is my favorite composition from Kind Of Blue.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431
[Edited 12/22/06 12:14pm]

theAudience said:

I always wondered about that myself, especially Macero's splicing on In A Silent Way...Thanks, Y'all!

also btw, I keep wondering about Mr. Macero's name...at first I thought it was Teo, but I've seen many people referring to him as Ted...Did he ever use both?






...
[Edited 12/22/06 12:44pm]

paligap said:

I'm sure it's Teo but just fell into what is probably the Americanized version. I've seen it both ways also.

More on the splicing technique from part of an interview with Teo Macero ...

Q. Talk about cutting and splicing in In A Silent Way.

A. That was one of the rare times that Miles came to the studio. I called Miles up and I said, "Look, I mixed two stacks of tapes, about 15 or 20 reels each, I can make the cuts, I can do the edit..." [As Miles] "I'll come down. I'll be there." So he came down and we cut each side down to 8 1/2 minutes and I think the other side was 9 1/2 and he said he was leaving in four-letter words, he's going to get out of there, and that would be his album. I said, "Look you really can't do that. I mean CBS will fire you, suspend you, fire me. But give me a couple of days, I'll think about it." And then a couple of days later I sent him up a tape and that was it. What I did, I copied a lot of it. You wouldn't know where the splices are. And Joe Zawinul should give us half of his money for fixing it all up. Because, at the end, I didn't know, I thought it was all Miles' music. But apparently Joe Zawinul claimed it was his. So we paid him all the royalties.

But there again, when you cut and you edit you can do it in such a way that no one will ever know. And those days we still were doing it with a razor blade. I mean it's not like digital recording now where you got the 24 tracks and all kinds of equipment. You can put it on the computer. You can do all the things you want to do. If you want to move that thing over, I mean not one beat but maybe a beat and a half or beat and a 1/6. So you create a wash. There's a lot of things that you can do today that we didn't have the techniques to do in the late '50's and early '60's. But I think In A Silent Way is really a remarkable record for what it is. I mean for a little bit of music it's turned into a classic. And we did that with a lot of other records of his where we would use bits and pieces of cassettes that he would send me and say, "Put this in that new album we're working on." I would really shudder. I'd say, "Look, where the hell is it going to go? I don't know". He says, "Oh, you know".

So he sends me the tape, I listen to it, and I say, "Oh yeah, maybe we can stick that in here." And there were a lot of times in my career with Miles that I would do that. Put the cassette right from the stage into the Master tape. And we did a lot of electronic effects when we did Sketches of Spain. I mean if you listen to it very carefully you'll hear that in one spot on the record the band comes up center and splits, goes around and comes up again. We had all kinds of boxes and one engineer would be monitoring one box and I'll be monitoring the other to make this effect. I mean not many people really have heard that record the way it should be. But they've put it back out again. CBS and the Miles Davis collection. And it's not the same. I mean there was a wealth of love to make this music boil. I mean Miles' music, that's the way it is anyway. But to highlight it, to give it a 21st Century feel to it, is what I always wanted to do in my own music, and I still do. And I wanted to do it with my artists because it made for a better record, for an unusual one. That's why we got a gold and platinum record. There are so many records Miles has that have gone gold and platinum.


Q. When you were splicing, did you realize you were doing something revolutionary, not just getting the work done?

A. Well, what I would do is take it for what it's worth and I didn't think anything about it myself. I just tried to use my imagination. "How can I make this better? It's good, but electronically can we do something to give it more impact?". And we did. We had another machine invented when we were doing a record called Get Up With It by Miles. We were dedicating a number to Duke Ellington ("He Loved Him Madly"). And I put this track through this piece of equipment. I called Miles up and I says, "Look, something unusual happened here. I can't figure it out. I don't know what it is, but I hear the Duke Ellington band. Not your band, the Duke Ellington band, coming through the speakers." Holy Christ, mean it was traumatic and exciting at the same time. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

The instruments, whatever they were, it sounded like the rhythm section. I mean the soloists and the brass and saxophones came right straight through. The next day we tried to duplicate it, but couldn't do it. We didn't touch the machines. It's like somebody had pushed a button, and out came Duke. Because, it was a tribute to Duke Ellington. I mean that sounds kind of scary to me but that's what happened. I've used it since and it hasn't created the same kind of illusion. But I think Duke was there in that room that day.

...(The rest of the interview is really good.) http://www.furious.com/PE...acero.html

There's also an interesting article on Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

^^Thanks for posting that tA!

To my knowledge, and I've read a few books about the album, it was the same story with Kind of Blue as it was with In A Silent Way. Miles didn't show the band the charts until they got to the studio, so the musicians had little to no idea what they were in for. They used first takes on every song except "Flamenco Sketches" (which is why there aren't any alternate takes of any of the other songs except that one) and the takes that appear on the album are the ONLY complete takes of the songs.

That's part of what makes KoB such an incredible album...it was largely improvised and yet, it sounds as if every single note was written specifically as it was played.