(Rant) One reason I prefer even bad old movies to most good new movies...

[jancivil]

soz to counter,

imo duke in the 30's is about as advanced as humanity gets. "sugar" is very pop, but compared to other renditions it is miles ahead.

- evaluating music...
The record ... my experience specifically.. .

The second spin I gave it, I appreciated her vocal a lot.
I remember well being 16 and high on reefer getting gassed by 20s and 30s Ellington and Cab Calloway.
The more I focused on the language technically the less I wanted to hear of instrumentalists soloing on them simple chords.

Ultimately it became a dichotomy of art vs popular entertainment, intellect vs sex emphasis.
It is unfair, and I wouldn't write it up on such a basis today* because it's not necessarily a necessary dichotomy (redundancy deliberate) and I would have to eliminate all of jazz up to a certain point. Seems half or more of jazz happened before people could even sell a record that didn't engage the public via a dance hall ticket first/foremost.
(*: I mean that's just to trace my aesthetic to its basis.)

I've been through a lot of those solos anyway, so 'intrigue' is not real likely. I have been a little surprised by some Charlie Parker in the past week, which I would not be able to pin down easily as to why. I grew up with things like that B side to The Peanut Vendor and the vast majority of what my father bought was post-WWII and little of it escaped bebop and its deliberate advance of Tin Pan Alley/Broadway changes.
He was born same yr as Miles Davis and the same anti-cornball attitude pretty much prevailed, permeated the era.

[xoxos]

OT but nice to read, i picked a collection of duke/ivie years ago, recently read on a YT comment that he considered her genius. alls i can say is i enjoy the recordings and seeing her mentioned today.

people had to work hard to hold an audience once upon a time and back then, it meant really singing. (resists urge to post link to her singing 'all god's children got rhythm' in a marx bros movie with an extremely rotund individual doing the splits.. wow)

[herodotus]

For a short period of time a few years ago I was sending music to agencies like taxi.com, who shop your music to various clients who might want to license its use. Major ad agencies, some film makers, and even major label pop producers use taxi.com and other intermediaries to screen music for them.

In any case, the listings that I saw were without exception very specific about EXACTLY WHICH ARTISTS THAT THEY WANTED YOU TO IMITATE SLAVISHLY. And if you didn't imitate someone slavishly they would ignore your submissions.

This listing is typical:

EPIC, HYBRID TRAILER INSTRUMENTALS are needed by a Production Music Library with a long list of Film Trailer placements. They’re eagerly searching for action packed, Mid-to-Up-Tempo, Trailer-Style Instrumentals that could work for Big Blockbuster Hollywood Movies. Please listen to the following references to get in the broad and general stylistic wheelhouse of what they’re looking for:

Pacific Rim:

Kill Command:

Precious Cargo:

Attraction:

Submit heart-pounding Instrumentals with huge drum hits, an epic orchestra, coupled with hybridized elements (Hard Rock, EDM, Dubstep, Hip-Hop, etc.) Be sure your submissions use current sounding leads, risers, stings, and pads. The structure should follow what you’d typically hear in film trailers with three distinct acts that build to a climatic crescendo. Be sure your orchestral instrumentation sounds are very convincing, and please avoid anything stiff or obviously MIDI-driven for this pitch.

It sounds a bit more grandiose than "WANTED: really well produced trendy sounding formulaic action movie music", but it adds up to the same thing.

[herodotus]

Oh, and while we are discussing Ellington, I have always loved 'Koko':
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H87MJw50CKw

And it would be wrong not to mention that he actually wrote a film score:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRYyaO_gyNc

[SODDI]

Needle-drops - using pre-recorded material as soundtrack.

You should probably blame Stanley Kubrick - but since he was one of the greatest artists of the 20th Century, your blame means nothing.

Kubrick needle-dropped in the biggest and most influental needle-drop ever - "Also Sprach Zarathustra" for "2001". He also needle-dropped in Pendrecki, who most people had never heard of. That kicked it off.

Wndy Carlos wrote an entire electronic score for "A Clockwork Orange", but much of it was shelved in favor of - needle-drops. (Of course, Kubrick was right. Kubrick was always right.)

If you can drop in prerecorded material, you don't have to pay symphonic orchestras - or synth composers.

[ccDuckett]

But what about soundtracks like this?

[rp314]

Some of my favorite Ellington stuff was composed by Billy Strayhorn. And it also doesn't hurt if Johnny Hodges gets to show off his chops...

[xoxos]

contemporary culture has such "specialised" narrow applications for music that we have so much to learn about what music is to the human experience even digging back in our own cultures a mere handful of decades..

..if you're trying to learn music production just from works in the field..

[jancivil]

Oh, and while we are discussing Ellington, I have always loved 'Koko':
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H87MJw50CKw

And it would be wrong not to mention that he actually wrote a film score:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRYyaO_gyNc

Koko, goddamnit. Quintessential. I was thinking, what's that one with the wahwah trombone that sounds like a voice. yoy-yo; yoy-yo. Fantastic. That nearly does for me what Mooche done for Rurik.

thx for these

[Jace-BeOS]

I wouldn't say all movie scores are terrible. Mostly action movies. The Social Network soundtrack had some good moments, since it worked as actual ambient music a la Eno. Music that can fade in to the background, but is still interesting and detailed if you decide to pay attention to it.

Weirdly, its creators were actually recognized and awarded for it, too.

[xoxos]

jan you'll probably hate this because it's solid bebop i guess. solid. it does some surprising things, and a few more imo.


i figure the gal from joes was tall and lean and green and took some time, maybe a giant mantis chewing your head off


invention and invention and invention


one of the main things is that industrialisation has trended towards music that is easy to produce. verse chorus rinse repeat. people snatch a fragment and go into production. these tunes (say 'gal from joe's') are really well balanced imo having some continuity but constantly moving forward with profuse articulacy.

you know, like some beautiful flower of being rather than a deadening morass of mushy hooks where the ghost of style, existence is enough. these melodies move like one is aloft on a cloud, reforming by some mysterious, delightfully unpredictable fractal logic. i've felt like these recordings are a gift, a glimpse of something more than what we find elsewhere. there's an ease that i hear in a lot of players, a sophistication that is like a knock down monster. it's like being in a kung fu fight with an angel who meets every assault by presenting exquisite fluffy dessert dishes or something.

[jancivil]

Well the Buffet Flat, 1938 cain't be bebop which weren't invented yet. I figured before clicking on it, if anybody could have pre-invented it, it'd be Ellington.
But no, that's still the swing type of riff and licks, which I have to get some distance like smoke weed to go for. It's cartoon kind of music reminiscent of Fleischer Bros with Cab Calloway to me. I have a hard time accessing that world today.

The thing I appreciate with KoKo is that there is no cornball riff and even nobody soloing.
Bebop soloing is more tol'able to me because they have to navigate all this chromatic disturbance of the tune and its pop/Show Tunes changes.

Out of those three, i vastly prefer Girl from Joe's, due to it being more blue. Ultimately that Blue results in some vertical things he did in KoKo which are surpassing. Also get some wah-wah on yer horns as much as possible.

I don't have an easy time writing about music, I care too much to screw with it with verbiage, which is never very good IME.

[nineofkings]

I don't have an easy time writing about music, I care too much to screw with it with verbiage, which is never very good IME.

Perhaps only slightly related, and nothing to do with Duke, but the phrase "rattling trap hi hats" has become a bit of a joke among some music reviewers for this reason. It's hard to adequately describe music in words.

[jancivil]

OTOH

... having some continuity but constantly moving forward with profuse articulacy.

you know, like some beautiful flower of being rather than a deadening morass of mushy hooks where the ghost of style, existence is enough. these melodies move like one is aloft on a cloud, reforming by some mysterious, delightfully unpredictable fractal logic. i've felt like these recordings are a gift, a glimpse of something more than what we find elsewhere. there's an ease that i hear in a lot of players, a sophistication that is like a knock down monster. it's like being in a kung fu fight with an angel who meets every assault by presenting exquisite fluffy dessert dishes or something.

[xoxos]

quite understandable about writing. i write imo buffet flat is as good as it gets. generational thing.. looking for more star wars cantina music. that's the best i ever heard. in a way you're fortunate to see it as corny, because i find it monumentously earnest, each phrase complete and genuine, more thought out than automatic. i heard a lot of stuff that wants to be this track.