And his book is indeed a deep dive into Jazz history; I’m learning so much. You can spend an awful lot of time with all the players he covers there, and you’ll discover a world full of surprises if you take that time and listen to some of them – which I recommend as much as reading the book itself.
Yesterday for instance I mentioned Scott La Faro to a colleague (and I think also to my brother in an email to him) – and Scott’s outstanding work is possibly best represented on this recording (1:22h but well worth your time, as this was just ten days before the young genius died in a car accident):
Bill Evans – Sunday at the Village Vanguard (Not Now Music) [Full Album]
And of course this album is on my big dealer’s wishlist since I heard it – a must have for bass players as well as for lovers of fine music.
Like I said: worlds are opening, this book is like a ride through jazz history in a jet plane. Just like a first semester course on your typical music university. Cannot say more than Ron Carter in his foreword:
I’ve enjoyed this book and will delay further research on the history of jazz bass until John Goldsby writes another.
“Hagelslag” is a Dutch word for “sprinkles“, as the German Wikipedia explained it to me. And it’s also the name of a band, which is new and fresh, and I simply love what they’re doing – do we have something like a European Snarky Puppy here? (Edit, from one day later: no; after listening a bit more to them, they’re no Snarky – far from it. But they’re Hagelslag, and I still like what they do)Their arrangements are surely clever, and they’re cool and groovy – listen:
Hagelslag – Don’t Think Just Groove | Live IdeenExpo 2017
I’m currently listening to a lot of music again. Saturday I got John Goldsby’s “The Jazz Bass Book”, and wow I’m so amazed at what I hear even in songs which I thought I knew already (and in some cases played when I was younger).
Here is for instance Reginald Workman, about whom John writes (on page 114, in the chapter “Coltrane and Beyond”:
In 1961, Coltrane let Davis go and hired one of the technically most gifted bassists on the scene at that time, Reggie Workman…
As an example, here’s Wayne Shorter with “Footprints”:
I recently stumbled over a video in notreble, where one of the commenters said that she’s a rock star. Always eager to hear fellow bass players, I had to have a listen of course. And later I played it to Zuleikha & Mitchie on the TV set as well:
Sarasate – Zigeunerweisen for Double Bass and String Orchestra (arr. Lauren Pierce)
Impressive, hm? Here’s the original, played on the violin by the composer himself:
Someone has uploaded Joan Chamorro’s and Roman Tort’s award-winning documentary on Youtube, including English subtitles (which you’ll have to allow in the Youtube player to see them):
I have reported about it before because it’s awesome, and I’ve bought it. And I’d recommend to do the same in case you like it, and can afford it – a project like this is just worth being “sponsored” a bit even if only with the price of a DVD. Find their stuff at the projects’s page or at the big shops like Amazon if you like.
Just a short blog note before I have to start work – and just because I was talking about John to my brother yesterday, and to a colleague today. So here’s a short portrait, an interview, and a free lesson as well as a link to a book John wrote:
JOHN GOLDSBY: Portrait – PERSONAL SOUNDS | WDR BIG BAND
John Goldsby Interview with Discover Double Bass
Killer Joe – Walking Bass Etude. Lesson by John Goldsby
Bill Laurance feat. by WDR BIG BAND – RED SAND | Rehearsal
I like that piece from Bill anyway, also in his very good recording with Snarky Puppy and some guests (like strings). But the WDR Big Band is in my opinion one of the best in the world, and always worth a listen. Thanks for publishing this, guys!
Edit: … and here’s another one from that fabulous Big Band, with Lucy Woodward. Enjoy…
Lucy Woodward feat. by WDR BIG BAND: Money | PURE SOUNDS
That old line from Roger Waters (“the root of all evil”) just made my day… and so did the performers who are all awesome.
Yesterday I had some “fun” (read: work) again with Mitchie’s new computer. It started with lots of slow updates of Windows 10, about which I wrote already in my last post, and it went on after I finally got a nice new external casing for her SSD which came with the machine.
As it turned out, I had forgotten or at least not considered the fact that before installing both Windows and then Linux on her new SSD I had switched off SecureBoot in the machine’s UEFI (formerly called ‘BIOS’). Tho Ubuntu could have dealt with it as well as Windows, it just didn’t seem worth the hassle. But what I hadn’t known and considered was the fact that Lenovo was so friendly as to turn on Bitlocker encryption on the drive as well, so even with jumping through several hoops to even get that key from Microsoft, I still couldn’t get Windows to de-encrypt the whole shebang again. In the end I gave up on this – there are things to do during your lifetime which are more worth of your time than dealing with stupid stuff like this. And the fact that a commercial vendor like Microsoft has keys to your machine which they don’t even tell you about seems more than questionable to me… So I formatted that old SSD and put a FAT32 partition onto it, so that it can be used as a bigger (and much faster and more reliable) USB “stick” with 128GB.
One more positive side note about Lenovo: their support pages are first class. If you allow them, they scan your machine and install all the drivers (for Windows of course) you might need. That’s almost as good as Linux which simply installs them without even bothering you with it.
Another topic:
Mike Johnston wrote a nice short article titled “Mike’s Seven Laws of Lenses” on his site The Online Photographer. And – not for the first time – he included a photo of a lens which he seems to love, and which I even have:
Panasonic Leica Summilux 25mm/1.4 on Mike’s page
This is a nice one indeed, and well worth having should you consider a Micro Four Thirds camera (or even have one already). With my copy of that lens I took the following snapshot of Mitchie’s new machine, with the additional SSD leaning against it:
Mitchie’s new machine, with an additional SSD leaning against it, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
This is btw such a dark scene that I had to underexpose it in camera with -2.3EV to keep the blacks real black (pictures such as this one confuse the metering of even the best cameras, they would turn the photo into an average grey instead of mostly black). Anyway, you see her new “USB stick” (her old SSD) and its size as well. The machine with its 13.3″ screen is tiny, the drive even more so.
So that was my Saturday. My Sunday started with getting another new piano which was described in an article (in German) on Delamar – an online magazine from musicians for musicians from Darmstadt (ca. 18km from here). That virtual piano was interesting me because it’s some kind of hybrid between a sampled (=recorded), and a modeled (=computer generated) one, and because the sound sample on Delamar’s page sounded really nice (and some of its users even claimed that it’s better than the commercial modeled Pianoteq which I’ve tried (and liked) on Manjaro lately).
Of course like so many other “freebies” this piano comes as a Windows or Mac plugin only – but thanks to falkTX’s Carla the loading of an unencrypted Windows VST is no problem on Linux anymore (except of course that you’re running an additional Wine layer to emulate some Windows resources on Linux, but that’s not falkTX’s fault). So after downloading that freebie I could look at and listen to it on my Debian machine – looks like on my screenshot of it:
the freebie “NeoPiano” from Soundmagic, a Windows VST running on Linux (thanks to falkTX and his Carla plugin rack)
And yes it sounds nice tho I haven’t tried much until now. But now that Zuleikha has Mitchie’s old Core i5 notebook from Dell, she will be able to test it as well – she’s the pianist in the family, not me. 🙂
So next time Zuleikha comes up with a new composition of hers, we can compare it against the commercial xln Audio ‘Addictive Keys’ Studio Grand (a Steinway D sampled in a studio somewhere in Sweden), and the other free ones we have already like the Salamander (Yamaha C5) or the ‘Piano in 162’ (another Steinway). The files she uploaded to Wikiloops so far were all done with the commercial xln one.
And now let’s have some more coffee, and a piece of cake 🙂 As always, thanks for reading.
