The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Another great video from Adam and Peter

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Well, over the years, we always thought it was great fun to correct the chord changes in the various editions of the Real Book. even the so-called "corrections" were not always correct nor complete.

    I still prefer the 5th edition to the "legal" one in terms of tune selections.

  4. #3

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    Okay I'm gonna stand up for the Real Book, cause I love it.

    Couldn't make it past 2 minutes of that video, because it was just 2 guys babbling about how great they are, with zero content.

    Probably after I left, they begged people to Like and Subscribe.

  5. #4

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    I didn't even click the video. Telling people to ignore the real book and learn solely by ear is like telling someone to invent their own alphabet and language before they can speak.

  6. #5

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    People could have at least read the bloody errata haha.

    They never read the errata haha

    The RB remains like it or not a fascinating historical document. Unfortunately often encountered before the development of a ... critical... attitude towards musical texts within jazz.

    Anyway the main thing I think when I look at my old fifth edition RB is - the old fake books must have been really bad haha. I don’t really pull it out these days at all. Quite often 5e charts pop up in Google searches and I feel
    a sort of warm glow, so I still consult and argue with them I guess. it’s fun, like shouting at the TV. Or at 19 year old jazz students of yesteryear (who went on to be better musos than I can hope to be lol.)

    But some of the mistakes in the book are the stuff of legend, and adds to the texture of jazz life... All fixed with the newer versions though!

    But anyway. I think anyone can gain a lot from not taking things too seriously just because they are in print. You have to use your ears, that’s what being a musican is.

  7. #6

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    What often gets forgotten is that things like the Real Book predated the Real Book - the Fake Books; if those Berklee students hadn’t written it, someone else would have or people would have carried on using the awful old Fake Books.

    But yeah; pro jazz musicians go to the recordings. It’s the only way to be sure.

  8. #7

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    'The' Real Book? Like there's only one??

    Open Studio on the Real Book-untitled-jpg

  9. #8

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    Why do I need the errata? The video title is "How bad is the real book" the thumbnail image says "IT'S PRETTY BAD..."

    From there I can just assume he's going to say 1) learn by ear, 2) or subscribe to my program, maybe even 3) learn by ear by subscribing to my program.

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by m_d
    Another great video from Adam and Peter
    Listened to 16 minutes...
    I thought it got interesting when they listened to early versions and talked about "All the things you are"

    Not a very good title for (the first 16 minutes of) the video IMO

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    'The' Real Book? Like there's only one??

    Open Studio on the Real Book-untitled-jpg
    Got us one here, too!
    Open Studio on the Real Book-jsb-jpg

  12. #11

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    Hasn't got the word 'Real' in it.

    Open Studio on the Real Book-images-jpg

    I say nothing :-)

  13. #12

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    The Tune Dex was started in 1942. 3x5 cards with essential elements (plus publishing info) for popular songs. The market for them was mainly pro musicians, disc jockeys and music programmers.

    "Pro musicians go to the recordings" is easy to say but less informative than it may at first sound.

    For starters, many working musicians in 1942 didn't even own a record player, let alone have recordings of all the tunes they may be asked to perform live. (If one had a record player and lots of records, one might have a dozen recordings of "Avalon" or "I Can't Get Started With You.")

    Learning it from the record is more typical of the rock era than of the jazz born in New Orleans.

    In rock there are definitive versions of songs---the Beatles versions of Beatles songs, for example---but there is nothing like that for "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" or "Saint James Infirmary".

    They are like songs one grows up hearing in church. It's as if they were always there and you didn't learn them from recordings at all. You heard them in a room with others and picked up bits and pieces to join in. Indeed, you might not even care to hear a recording of them. It's a participatory thing---if you ain't there, you missed it.

  14. #13

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    I think the Real Book is fantastic, despite the fact that it contains errors.

    For jazz tunes, it isn't only the changes that vary from one recording to another. It can also be the roadmap. For some tunes, there may be a definitive, or at least original, recording. But, standards have been recorded many times and not always with the same roadmap. The Real Book, warts and all, standardizes the roadmap.

    Sure, best to go to recordings. But what if the other players in your group used different recordings? Different changes, different road maps? What if you (or one of them) made an error in your transcription? What if the other players went to recordings, but on different tunes? So, each of you knows the perfect changes for your own repertoire, but you don't know the same tunes as the other guys?

    Same thing for melody. Jazz players interpret melody, they don't usually play strictly what's written -- unless they're phrasing with another player or a section. Memory for melody tends to be iffy -- with some liberties taken. No book, no perfect unison, if everybody remembers it differently.

    The RB standardized all of this and allowed weaker musicians to play a wider variety of tunes. I don't see anything wrong with that.

    They even included errata as errors were exposed.

    Another thing, at the time it came out, you had to have the recording and records weren't so cheap. Now you can hit youtube and hear multiple versions of a tune for free. Couldn't do that then.

    You can play hundreds of different tunes, on the fly, at jams. How can you do that by going to recordings?
    Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 04-03-2021 at 08:50 PM.

  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by hohoho
    Listened to 16 minutes...
    I thought it got interesting when they listened to early versions and talked about "All the things you are"
    Yes, I remember being surprised some years ago to find that all the early vocal versions of All The Things You Are (Jack Leonard with Tommy Dorsey, Helen Forrest with Artie Shaw, Connee Boswell, Frank Sinatra) go up to the 4th rather the 6th towards the end of the tune even though the original 1939 published sheet music has the 6th. Maybe it's because ATTYA has a particularly wide vocal range for a popular song of the period. Yet even the instrumental versions from the early '40s are far from being definitive. For instance, Art Tatum (1940) and Coleman Hawkins (1944) add instrumental fills at that point in the melody. Incidentally, Hawkins also inserts the now common place ii-V tritone sub in bar 3, possibly the first time it appeared in a recording.
    Last edited by PMB; 04-03-2021 at 07:11 PM.

  16. #15

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    All that talk about ATTYA and no mention of how 9/10 jazz players play bar 6 like the harmonic rhythm of bar 14 and that drives me batshit crazy.

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    All that talk about ATTYA and no mention of how 9/10 jazz players play bar 6 like the harmonic rhythm of bar 14 and that drives me batshit crazy.
    I know the melody is different in those 2 bars but I don't know what you mean regarding the harmonic rhythm. Can you elaborate? (Legit question. I want to know.)

  18. #17

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    I thought this was sorta interesting. It's a discussion about how the current approach to jazz harmony has strayed so far from the original intent of the composers of the songs that became jazz standards. When the first RB came out, there were 3 noteworthy things about it:
    1. Unlike its 3-to-a-page predecessors, it was legible
    2. It had tunes by Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Mike Gibbs and others in the Berklee-verse
    3. Standards were reharmonized to use II-Vs and altered chords to replace the original changes, to be consistent with the Berklee way
    50 years later, the RB changes are now the ones that a few generations of musicians know to be the "real" changes. In this video, these guys seem to have just discovered that they're not the original changes, and that there was some logic and beauty to the ones the composers wrote.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    The Tune Dex was started in 1942. 3x5 cards with essential elements (plus publishing info) for popular songs. The market for them was mainly pro musicians, disc jockeys and music programmers.

    "Pro musicians go to the recordings" is easy to say but less informative than it may at first sound.

    For starters, many working musicians in 1942 didn't even own a record player, let alone have recordings of all the tunes they may be asked to perform live. (If one had a record player and lots of records, one might have a dozen recordings of "Avalon" or "I Can't Get Started With You.")

    Learning it from the record is more typical of the rock era than of the jazz born in New Orleans.

    In rock there are definitive versions of songs---the Beatles versions of Beatles songs, for example---but there is nothing like that for "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" or "Saint James Infirmary".

    They are like songs one grows up hearing in church. It's as if they were always there and you didn't learn them from recordings at all. You heard them in a room with others and picked up bits and pieces to join in. Indeed, you might not even care to hear a recording of them. It's a participatory thing---if you ain't there, you missed it.
    That’s an interesting historical take - to take it seriously I’m going to need some more info to back it up, evidence and sources etc.

    History is rarely simple... but I’ve never read anything to suggest records and learning from them wasn’t important, especially during the bebop era.

    Musicians learning Parker from the 78s is often cited in the histories. Wes learned all the available Charlie Christian. Parker learned all the available Lester Young.

    So records and record players were expensive, but so were saxophones and guitars.

    learning repertoire may not have been done that way (how many 78s)... but - these tunes were everywhere! They were pop music.

    But musicians were also used to learning by ear and fast. Often on the bandstand. Of course it’s still very much a badge of honour in professional jazz circles.

    Anyway I’ll have to dig into Berliner to flesh this out a bit more. He’s good on all this stuff.

    much more importantly - it’s not really that relevant how people did things in 1942; you are dealing with today’s musicians.

    So, I’m simply relating from my experience as a professional musician (or at worst someone who gigs with professional musicians) that everyone I know who plays or wants to play straightahead jazz to a high level checks out the recordings when learning a tune.

    The guys on the podcast are professional musicians. What they are doing on the podcast is commonplace among jazz players when checking out a tune. It’s fun to do in company as well BTW.

    I would say I think people who don’t do this are missing out. What’s more fun than listening to music and learning? You don’t need to be a pro to do that.
    Last edited by christianm77; 04-04-2021 at 12:20 PM.

  20. #19

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    If I had to boil it down I would say it’s less opposition to written charts as a healthy skepticism. What it doesn’t mean is simply learning songs from real book charts.

    Even where the chart is basically correct, chord symbols are often not a complete description of the harmony and so on. Details of the song are omitted from lead sheet charts and so on. So even if you start with a chart you need to listen to flesh out your knowledge of the song.

    That may include written material as well as recorded, but it’s all done from the ear.

    Anyway, here’s what Brad Mehldau said about Peter Bernstein:

    Those musical sentiments would include the importance of melody at all times in whatever you’re expressing, which means playing phrases that have a shape to them and not just running licks. That in turn implies a healthy distrust of arbitrariness in general. If you’re going play a tune, you don’t fudge on learning the melody. Pete was the first musician I met who would make periodic pilgrimages to the New York Public Library to get the original sheet music for, say, an Irving Berlin tune.

    That was one of many valuable lessons that I got from Pete early on. If you go to the original source to learn a tune, your arrangement of it will speak authentically as your own take on that song, instead of being your version of Miles Davis’ version, for example. I think that’s why whenever I hear Pete play a standard, it never sounds arbitrary. He always seems to create a definitive version of a tune, one that intersects gracefully between an unapologetic affection for the original song, and his own personal musical choices for his arrangement. They include the way he phrases the melody, his improvisation, and a host of other factors that make you smile as a listener and say, “That’s Pete.” ‘Dedicated to You’ on this record is a perfect example. Listen to how he lovingly treats the melody – it sounds like this is his own song.

    So that’s kind of a level beyond checking out the jazz recordings etc even... but it’s certainly not an either/or

    It’s a care and respect for the song, I guess.
    Last edited by christianm77; 04-04-2021 at 12:27 PM.

  21. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I think the Real Book is fantastic, despite the fact that it contains errors.

    For jazz tunes, it isn't only the changes that vary from one recording to another. It can also be the roadmap. For some tunes, there may be a definitive, or at least original, recording. But, standards have been recorded many times and not always with the same roadmap. The Real Book, warts and all, standardizes the roadmap.

    Sure, best to go to recordings. But what if the other players in your group used different recordings? Different changes, different road maps? What if you (or one of them) made an error in your transcription? What if the other players went to recordings, but on different tunes? So, each of you knows the perfect changes for your own repertoire, but you don't know the same tunes as the other guys?
    So, not sure if you want an actual practical solution but what I do is this. The tunes in the RB ended up in it because there was a definitive jazz recording, if a vocal standard often by Miles, Trane and so on. So you find out what the best known versions are if you don’t know them.

    Jazzstandards.com is a really convenient way of tracking the history of a tune. Then you can spend a little time listening to different versions of a tune very easily.

    (Varying changes is actually I think part of the texture of jazz. I actually like it when people play slightly varying versions of the changes as they often do on classic recordings.)

    Same thing for melody. Jazz players interpret melody, they don't usually play strictly what's written -- unless they're phrasing with another player or a section. Memory for melody tends to be iffy -- with some liberties taken. No book, no perfect unison, if everybody remembers it differently.
    And this is why it is good practice not to play standards melodies in unison. As you say people play them with their own phrasing. If you have a number of frontline instruments have them play pads/riffs or break up the melody from A to B.

    Except for bop heads. Which are a can of worms.

    I also find aural memory personally much robust than any other. I’ll forget how to play something, but if I’ve learned it I will always be able to sing it.

    The other thing is the melodies in the RB are quite often not quite right, or at least not the originals. I understand that sometimes they were transcribed from specific recordings.

    But then if someone calls Scrapple on a jam and you don’t know the musicians it’s actually pot luck as to whether anything resembling a unison will result haha. The RB version is very different from Parker’s original... and then there’s the ornaments and so on which are really best learned by ear.

    The RB standardized all of this and allowed weaker musicians to play a wider variety of tunes. I don't see anything wrong with that.
    Arguably it created a necessity for many aspiring players to learn their repertoire twice. Once for playing with RB players and again for playing with more advanced musicians who base their heads for bop tunes on what Parker played. There are similar problems with the Omnibook BTW.

    It’s annoying. Happens to me still.

    OTOH there are a generation of pretty good non specialist players who grew up on the Real Book, so sometimes you have to play the RB versions to be able to play with them. Argh. Less so these days I would say .

    Another thing, at the time it came out, you had to have the recording and records weren't so cheap. Now you can hit youtube and hear multiple versions of a tune for free. Couldn't do that then.
    True! How helpful is that? Supercharges ones learning.

    You can play hundreds of different tunes, on the fly, at jams. How can you do that by going to recordings?
    Well, you can you know, learn lots of tunes. Better jams often have a no Real Book policy so you have the same issue anyway. I think it’s fair. If you call something at a jam, know the tune. If not, know when to sit out. Or learn a lot of tunes. (And then get told off for playing the wrong changes haha, happens to me) But that’s more a pro thing, again.

    Anyway, one thing that I think is great about the RB and things like it is that you can audition songs on low stakes gigs. Then you can learn them properly and add them to your repertoire.
    Last edited by christianm77; 04-04-2021 at 01:18 PM.

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Anyway, one thing that I think is great about the RB and things like it is that you can audition songs on low stakes gigs. Then you can learn them properly and add them to your repertoire.
    A few times a year, I go to a public jam (one of two). No books. So, most of the tunes that get called are the ones that everybody knows. At one, there's an organist kicking bass -- and he has his phone out with Irealpro. Nobody else reads. No music stands in the venue. Sometimes, the host will select a few specific players and they may do something more familiar -- last time a core group played Evidence. But, usually it's ATTYA, Another You, Stella, How High etc. You'd better know the RB arrangement, because that's what the organ/bassist is going to play.

    Every week, pre-Covid, I jammed with a group of friends. We didn't always play out of the RB, but everybody had the original or a later version of it. We played hundreds of different tunes over time. I went deeper into some than others. In that group, if we played a tune without books, it was likely to be the RB version.

    You don't want to be the only player in the band who is right.

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    A few times a year, I go to a public jam (one of two). No books. So, most of the tunes that get called are the ones that everybody knows. At one, there's an organist kicking bass -- and he has his phone out with Irealpro. Nobody else reads. No music stands in the venue. Sometimes, the host will select a few specific players and they may do something more familiar -- last time a core group played Evidence. But, usually it's ATTYA, Another You, Stella, How High etc. You'd better know the RB arrangement, because that's what the organ/bassist is going to play.

    Every week, pre-Covid, I jammed with a group of friends. We didn't always play out of the RB, but everybody had the original or a later version of it. We played hundreds of different tunes over time. I went deeper into some than others. In that group, if we played a tune without books, it was likely to be the RB version.

    You don't want to be the only player in the band who is right.
    Well jam session Realpolitik aside, I don’t think I can remember the RB version of Scrapple say, but that’s OK. I’m generally not doing that sort of thing anymore, and when I play with people it’s generally people who fit more into the ‘this is what the chords are on the Chet Baker recording let’s try these’ mould.

    Generally we’ll discuss and work on this stuff though rather than spring them on each other in gigs. It’s fun. Practicing standards? Why not?

    I once played with a person who made a running commentary on my choice of chords and why they were wrong as I played them.

    this was a little more of a educational vibe then I was expecting from a £50 bar gig, I have to admit.

    TBF I learned a lot, and he was right, but as you can imagine no one likes this person; he does it to everyone. He is a very good musician though. And called me for another gig lol. I passed, life is too short. But I learned an important lesson.

    Not all good musicians will say what they are thinking... if you want to play with good players, do your homework. At least as much as you can. You know I still haven’t gone back and checked out changes for half of the swing tunes I learned basically on the bandstand. So shoot me.

    But I try to do it with every tune I learn now. And I try to choose tunes I want to learn (unless I need to learn them of course.)

    In all situations there’s a way to swing things so to speak. Some people get a kick out of being the only right person in a band but honestly I’d rather make music with the people I’m playing with. And sometimes a suggestion that ‘can we give these changes a go? they come from x recording, here’s a chart’ can do a lot to make everyone enjoy things more.

  24. #23

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    When I first encountered the Real Book, quite a ways back, my assumption was that it reflected hipper/improved harmonies as played by jazz musicians. My first breakdown of trust came when I played Desafinado and discovered 4 bars missing. Here and there scattered throughout appeared errors of
    varying levels . Melodies slightly off from the reference version sited. Chords that sounded wrong, early on I assumed the problem was from my limited voicing vocabulary.

    The Real Book was created from the compiled transcriptions of volunteers.
    All in all, it has been a wonderful tool to help facilitate the playing of a great collection of songs among strangers.

    Some people feel it essential to track down the composers intent as a starting reference. What this video points out is that not every harmonic or melodic substitution is inherently an improvement.

    The responsibilities of a sideperson are many and varied.
    There are musicians who radically re-conceptualize songs.
    There are also musicians who spontaneously re-harmonize in real time.
    It is all good.

    There is life beyond even the correct printed page and outside the realm
    of generic reductionism.

  25. #24

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    First off, Adam and Peter and goofy and the have the humor to poke fun at themselves. Whether you see it on this episode or not, I dunno. But the thumbnail is part of that humor.

    Second, the podcasts they've been doing these days are usually off the cuff and done in front of a livestream. Although I miss the days of the podcave where the episodes were more organized, Peter and Adam are tying to make everything work despite COVID. All of this has helped keep that community going strong.

    Third, you can agree with elements of what Peter and Adam say. I hate to use the expression because I don't want to offend those of the actual faith, but nothing in jazz is gospel. Nothing in music is gospel. Pick what works and move along. Look up Peter's resume. Look up his playing. Look up Adam's playing in the 442's, for something different. They are both professional musicians. They both work with the likes of top level musicians such as Christian McBride and Dianne Reeves. I would listen up to what they have to say with more credence then I would from the words of someone from the likes of me here on a music forum.

    Fourth, I think they've done more novel and engaging episodes in the past--it's worth checking out the "You'll Hear It" catalogue. They go beyond the tired scale and chord conversations that often frequent music based talks.

    I'd say more, but let's keep it at that. Avoid my essays falling on deaf ears. And for those that want to listen... You'll Hear It

  26. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    So, I’m simply relating from my experience as a professional musician (or at worst someone who gigs with professional musicians) that everyone I know who plays or wants to play straightahead jazz to a high level checks out the recordings when learning a tune.
    Let us say this is so. (I don't believe this is so but I don't want to argue the point beyond saying: If this were true, one would not expect to see so many professional jazz musicians staring at charts on their tablets or phones while performing jazz standards.)

    But let us say this is so. But even there, which recording of "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" do you learn the tune from? (Many players of melodic instruments listen to Ella Fitzgerald and / or Frank Sinatra to get a clear sense of how the tune goes, but Ella and Frank recorded some songs many different times with various arrangements.) I've read that Peter Bernstein seeks out original sheet music of tunes to see how the composer wrote it, the so-called original changes, though such "original sheet music" is rarely from the hand of the composer but rather from the hand of someone who was hired to write playable parts for amateur musicians, who were the main market for sheet music for generations.

    I don't object to people learning from records. I don't have a quibble with how the pros are doing things nowadays. Though all the people you speak of came along after the rock era when many artists were also the writers of their own songs and thus there were definitive versions of them. Say, "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix. You learn "Purple Haze" from that record. (Or from someone who learned it from that record.) There is no record that holds that status for "Honeysuckle Rose", even early recordings of Fats Waller doing it.

    Who now plays / sings "Honeysuckle Rose" the way Fats did? (The rhythm guitar is fine in the video below.)
    Or "I Got Rhythm" the way Gershwin did?
    When was the last time you played with a piano player who played "Billie's Bounce" the way Dizzy did on the record? (For those who don't know, Dizzy Gillespie played trumpet and piano on that recording.)
    Now if we're talking about something from Miles' "Kind Of Blue," it's a bit different. Those are the definitive versions of those songs. And the band sounds so good.
    Coleman Hawkins' "Body and Soul" (1939) is a classic recording but who can hear that today and want to play it like that orchestra did? (And is there a more lionized version of "Body and Soul"?)



    As for record players, they became very popular in the '60s and '70s.(The first stereophonic records were made in 1958.)

    In the '30s and '40s, the radio was much more popular than records. Musicians were much more likely to hear a recording on the radio than on a record player in their own home. (For that matter, they heard a lot of live music on the radio----many a bandleader had a regular radio gig featuring live performances at some ballroom or other.)

    (Some people with reel-to-reel recorders captured live broadcasts from the radio and could go over them later if trying to learn various parts.)

    And the fidelity of early jazz records tended to be poor: the bass can be an indistinct muddle and the drum cymbals can be indistinguishable from hiss and static. Even today with better stereos it can be hard to suss out what's happening on some early recordings. Imagine only hearing them via a radio and trying to do that.

    "Kind of Blue" was recorded on three-track tape and released in both a stereo and mono version. (Miles preferred the mono version. It's the one he provided input for.)