The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Yesterday there was a live jazz concert on the radio that sounded as if it could have a life broadcast. Sounded good enough that I kept listening so as not to miss the "denouncement"... turned out it was the "Ben & Buck" CD. Ben Webster and Buck Clayton in concert in Baden ... 1967.

    This record confirms an impression I've had numerous times before: that classical music recordings from that time sound a lot more dated and might even still be mono (If I don't misjudge the date of the old 33 and 45 rpms in my parents' collection).

    Could it be that there's less hesitation to remaster older jazz recordings (possibly related/due to the fact there's no taboo on using amplification during performances), or was the sound quality actually better to begin with (and why would that be)?


    (There's supposed to be a guitar on that record too, btw, played by Alain Dubois, but I have yet to hear him...)

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  3. #2

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    That is a lovely sounding recording. As you note, Alain Du Bois's guitar isn't very audible, and that might not be the case for a stage recording made in 1987 (I can hear Alain on "That's All", and to be fair, he's doing very minimal and quiet rhythm guitar). The bass is a bit distant too, but on this gig, the rhythm section seemed to be there mainly to provide a gentle atmospheric cushion for the gorgeous horn solos.

    If you are comparing this to a live recording of a full orchestra playing classical music in the late 1960s, I'd guess that the difference might be due to the difficulty of getting mics on all those sections of the orchestra and mixing them...putting 5-6 mics on stage for live jazz and have a small mixing console was probably a lot easier to do at the time than putting 15-20 mics on an orchestra's stage and getting a mixing console and engineer that could handle this, and they might have just hung 1 or 2 mics over the orchestra for live recordings and said "good enough" because they really couldn't do close mic-ing they way you can for jazz.

    The Miles Davis boxed set of 1967 live recordings of his quintet in Europe isn't all uniformly fabulous in terms of sound quality. Some locations had much better equipment and/or more talented engineers than others.

    As for remastering, in the last 20 years, this has mostly meant reducing the dynamic range of previously released recordings (on CD anyway), and sometimes pushing up the bass frequencies. Very often I prefer the CD issues of the 1980s through the mid-1990s to later CD reissues of the same albums (looking at you, "RVG Edition" CDs).

  4. #3

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    In the 50s and 60s they already had the gear to do quality recordings. Just think about all the great sounding recordings Rudy van Gelder made for Blue Note and other companies. And by nature these tape recordings have a warm sound.
    The rest is up to the engineer.

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by 44lombard
    they might have just hung 1 or 2 mics over the orchestra for live recordings and said "good enough" because they really couldn't do close mic-ing they way you can for jazz.
    In my experience you can do a lot worse to make an "as the audience would hear it" recording of a full-blown orchestra, esp. in a concert hall with good acoustics (15-20 sections would be a truly huge philharmonic btw!). If your mics have the dynamic range to capture everything, of course. Maybe that's the difference - you may get as loud as that orchestra, but how often do you play really ppp in jazz (or most other forms of non-classical music)?

  6. #5

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    Depends what you want.

    So for instance the balance on old blue note records is very specific; super loud horns, cymbally drums, quiet piano and a bass sound that lacks detail but fills out the group sound. Probably pretty close to what you’d hear in a club. Which makes sense as they were recording around just on condenser mic iirc, later a stereo pair. Of course anyone would tell you that space - Van Gelder Studio - was as important to the sound of those records as the players. That space suited the music too - punchy and swinging but also warm and fat.

    You could even make the argument that they are not recorded very well because of this, but it’s a natural mix that works and sounds distinctive .

    Later on ECM would do the same thing for their room, that huge dark sounding room suited atmospheric and contemplative music. So the well loved jazz labels have always had ‘their sound.’

    So the jury’s in - live recording in great sounding acoustic spaces is for me the only way to go for live acoustic jazz (as it is for classical)

    Problem is - it’s hard to find great sounding rooms. I’ve not found a room that I’m super happy with yet. So you end up papering over the cracks with electronic reverb. It’s never the same.

    In terms of the micing, musicians want more detail from recordings. Playing styles have evolved; post-Jarrett pianists often play more sustaining, big chords rather than just bop style, bass players play more virtuosically etc. Much harder to capture that on one mic.

    so the recording technology even for acoustic jazz has advanced in step with the music itself, even before you bring in electric fusion, hip-hop inspired production techniques and so on that show up in contemporary jazz.

    That said there are a lot bland, digital sounding modern jazz records. Sometimes there are just bad sounding recordings. I would say the sound on Aaron Parks Invisible Cinema is pretty bad for instance; I can see what they were going for (that very dry Nigel Godrich/Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’ style production) but it doesn’t work. Mike Moreno is particularly poorly served on that recording; the guitars sound great on the Radiohead but on the Parks they just sound thin. You need ambience I think even where there’s no discernible reverb. The whole album sounds like it was recorded in a broom cupboard (I suppose that would be a closet in NYC) which is probably the case. I assume Radiohead get a bigger choice of spaces to record in so the dry thing actually sounds good.

    Which is a shame because the music is really nice.

  7. #6

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    Some of the 1950s Prestige records still sound great (I guess they were usually done by Van Gelder). E.g. some of the early Coltrane stuff with Red Garland etc. All the instruments sound warm and clear yet completely natural. Even their mono recordings sound as good (to my ear) as any of the stereo stuff you get now.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Some of the 1950s Prestige records still sound great (I guess they were usually done by Van Gelder). E.g. some of the early Coltrane stuff with Red Garland etc. All the instruments sound warm and clear yet completely natural. Even their mono recordings sound as good (to my ear) as any of the stereo stuff you get now.
    I’ve heard it said the Prestige records are better sounding than Blue Note. Tbh I’m quite bad at noticing this stuff when the music is killing… which it always is.

    Im listening to the Miles stuff now and not sure if I think that… I’m noticing quite a lot of what sounds to me like spring reverb lol*, but the sound is quite detailed considering. Bass and piano is much better served.

    * didn’t they have fancy reverb tanks?

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    So the jury’s in - live recording in great sounding acoustic spaces is for me the only way to go for live acoustic jazz (as it is for classical)
    Kind of an open door, right - if you presume that "live" means "recorded during a concert before an audience".

    But as you said, it depends on what you want. In a venue where the acoustics benefit the audience they may actually make recording a challenge if you want anything other than a faithful reproduction of what the ideal listener hears.

    BTW, the Netherlands (and I presume Germany too) are full of nice little chapels and churches where the acoustics should be perfect for acoustic jazz, but for some reason that never seems to happen

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    I’ve heard it said the Prestige records are better sounding than Blue Note. Tbh I’m quite bad at noticing this stuff when the music is killing… which it always is.

    Im listening to the Miles stuff now and not sure if I think that… I’m noticing quite a lot of what sounds to me like spring reverb lol*, but the sound is quite detailed considering. Bass and piano is much better served.

    * didn’t they have fancy reverb tanks?
    yes sometimes they had some pretty nasty spring reverb or something like that. But some of the Coltrane/Red Garland stuff sounds great e.g. this one:


  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by RJVB
    Kind of an open door, right - if you presume that "live" means "recorded during a concert before an audience".
    that’s not what I meant, sorry, I wasn’t being clear. It’s not like recording a classical group exactly. Obviously drums make things a bit more challenging for instance.

    I meant live as in not tracked, and everyone recording takes in a room.

    in fact few jazz recordings are tracked although the practice is much more common in the fusion world (see Scott Henderson or Holdsworth.)

    What I actually meant as well to say really was, not with absolute separation. A lot of contemporary jazz bands like to record with separation if the music is very hard (which it usually is) because it allows them to punch in overdubs to fix mistakes and keep otherwise good takes. (And to relax a bit more in the studio too maybe.) Best of both worlds in terms of the performance. Problem is, you don’t then have the natural room sound you have in a nice church or hall. Bleed is great for making things sound more 3d imo too. But it makes it much harder to fix things, and drums can be a problem too (everything can end up sounding like a drum mic lol.)

    So you also end up doing a lot more post production to make it sound ‘finished’…..

    But I would rather do it the natural ECM always did - one day to record, one day to mix, all live in a big lovely room. It’s why is many of their albums are so special (at least to me.) That means thorough rehearsal and maybe a run of gigs too, before recording. Much better, but not always possible, and you have the problem of finding (and affording) that great sounding room.

    Otoh Metheny refused to work under those conditions and left ECM because he wanted to punch in on his solos for all eternity lol.
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 03-31-2022 at 12:53 PM.

  12. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by 44lombard

    The Miles Davis boxed set of 1967 live recordings of his quintet in Europe isn't all uniformly fabulous in terms of sound quality. Some locations had much better equipment and/or more talented engineers than others.
    Do you mean:
    Miles Davis Quintet: Live In Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1

    ?

    Thanks.

    Doug

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    * didn’t they have fancy reverb tanks?
    Reverb was experimental in bop and early post bop recordings. I assume most know how the terrible reverb on Miles and Paul Chambers was added to KoB - a monitor speaker and a mic were placed at opposite ends of the huge block walled basement in the church / studio in which it was recorded. It’s not at all clear why the only feeds to it were trumpet and bass, and to me (and many others) it sounds terrible. I have an original pressing and the sound quality is not great overall.

    Look up Sunset Sound, the studio in which the soundtracks for several Disney films were recorded. They also used big empty rooms with a speaker (VoTT, I think) and a mic. I think it was The Beach Boys who used a tank car or similar container for a while. Brian Wilson also liked Gold Star studios. Here’s the evolution of their echo attempts per David Gold, one of the founders in 1950:

    After a series of experiments including hallway reverb, spring reverb, and a bowl of Jello driven by a transducer, Gold decided the only way to get the perfect sound was to build a proper echo chamber.

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by RJVB
    15-20 sections would be a truly huge philharmonic btw!
    Sorry, my language was sloppy there. I just meant if you look at photos of symphony orchestra studio recording sessions in the 1980s, for example, it's not unusual to see 15-20 mic stands.

    Quote Originally Posted by Doug B
    Do you mean:
    Miles Davis Quintet: Live In Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1
    That's the one. Though taking a quick listen again, the Antwerp recording wasn't as thin sounding as I remember. I'm sure I could dig up a live jazz recording from the late 60s that sounded mediocre, but it gets complicated when you start comparing things that were originally radio or television broadcast feeds to something like Columbia taking equipment into a U.S. club to record Miles, and then comparing either of those to studio recordings.

    Anyway, I agree that 1950s and 1960s jazz studio and live records often sound superb, and some big-label classical stuff from that era can sound less impressive, particularly the orchestra stuff with a huge dynamic range.

    Also complicating things for RVG in particular is you have decisions he made in the studio in the 1950s or 1960s, and then decisions he made as a remastering engineer for CD reissues decades later. And his sound and equipment certainly evolved over the years, so to my ears there is no single RVG sound, even just talking about original releases (his 1980s sessions don't sound much like his early 1960s sessions). But for the series of RVG Blue Notes CD remasters of the 2000s, I find only about 1 in 5 to be even as good as the older CD issues (often mastered by the wonderfully named Ron McMaster).

    One quirk about a brief period of Columbia's jazz CD reissues (1987-1988) is they really poured on the reverb (or left it intact--I never had the LPs), and then the 1990s CD reissues were much drier. Very noticeable on Miles' 'Round About Midnight, and 'Monk's Dream' and 'Mingus Ah Um'. The first U.S. CD issue of Round About Midnight ("Original Jazz Classics" series) sounds like its the soundtrack to a noir film, the reverb giving the whole thing this dreamy quality that isn't terribly realistic, but it's fun to listen to sometimes. The 2000/2001 era reissues (boxed set and single disc) dial the reverb way back, maybe to zero, and on the title track, Miles sounds like he's playing softly right into your ear, not half way down an empty alley. I think for Monk's Dream, I prefer the reverb-y one. Call me déclassé.

  15. #14

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    I sometimes have the impression that the earliest (classical, AAD) reissues might have worked of the tapes that already had the RIAA (or whatever it's called) filtering applied. In any case when I hear later reeditions on the radio (or Spotify) they seem to be less warm and fuzzy than how I remember those original CD editions.

  16. #15

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    The mics are way farther away in classical, that's why it sounds worse. Even in the 60s, their recording techniques were pretty good for jazz.

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Depends what you want.

    So for instance the balance on old blue note records is very specific; super loud horns, cymbally drums, quiet piano and a bass sound that lacks detail but fills out the group sound. Probably pretty close to what you’d hear in a club. Which makes sense as they were recording around just on condenser mic iirc, later a stereo pair. Of course anyone would tell you that space - Van Gelder Studio - was as important to the sound of those records as the players. That space suited the music too - punchy and swinging but also warm and fat.

    You could even make the argument that they are not recorded very well because of this, but it’s a natural mix that works and sounds distinctive .

    Later on ECM would do the same thing for their room, that huge dark sounding room suited atmospheric and contemplative music. So the well loved jazz labels have always had ‘their sound.’

    So the jury’s in - live recording in great sounding acoustic spaces is for me the only way to go for live acoustic jazz (as it is for classical)

    Problem is - it’s hard to find great sounding rooms. I’ve not found a room that I’m super happy with yet. So you end up papering over the cracks with electronic reverb. It’s never the same.
    I've gotten good results with one mic in the right spot in a good room - a high-ceilinged church with lots of curved pews reflecting sound in concentric rings and carpets a-plenty to tone down the room ring. I didn't have the spare mics to go stereo, but I suspect it would have been an enhancement.

    I've long thought that a clothing store Styrofoam head with a couple of nice condenser mics where the ears are would be the way to go, for giggles. Add a Fedora for a little more top end, maybe.

  18. #17

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    I wonder, do they sound fresh--- or timeless?

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by RJVB
    I sometimes have the impression that the earliest (classical, AAD) reissues might have worked of the tapes that already had the RIAA (or whatever it's called) filtering applied. In any case when I hear later reeditions on the radio (or Spotify) they seem to be less warm and fuzzy than how I remember those original CD editions.
    The older NAB EQ curves for open reel tape resulted in a smoother, more subdued high end on playback. The IEC curves give more linear frequency distribution across the spectrum with more of a rise in level than NAB as frequencies go up. NAB is considered more warm and typifies what most think of as analog sound.

    If a tape made with the low fluxivity of older tape oxide formulations using NAB equalization is played back on equipment designed and calibrated for modern high fluxivity and IEC curves, it will sound brittle. A-to-D conversion starts with analog playback, so this could happen in conversion to CD. But it’s hard to imagine that major audio labs wouldn’t know how and on what formulation the master tape was recorded and use the correct EQ curves or adjust the original for a different one.

    I suspect that engineers thought they were “improving” the sound by applying the full cycle of IEC or other modern recording EQ to the originals to make them sound more “digital”.

  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by citizenk74
    I've long thought that a clothing store Styrofoam head with a couple of nice condenser mics where the ears are would be the way to go, for giggles. Add a Fedora for a little more top end, maybe.
    Isn't that basically how Chesky Records records some of their stuff? I like it in theory.

    Maybe if I had a $20,000 stereo system with super-duper speakers that reproduced all frequencies to near perfection, I'd understand the Chesky aesthetic when it came to jazz bands. But when I listen to their "4 Generations of Miles" recording with Mike Stern, George Coleman, Jimmy Cobb, and Ron Carter, it just sounds like a good audience-recorded bootleg to me. I'm actually a little miffed that they got these four legends together and this was the best they could document it! (Their Luiz Bonfa "Non-Stop to Brazil" record is a lot better to be fair--no electric guitar or drum kit to deal with).

    The Ben Webster / Buck Clayton recording in the OP certainly sounds better to me than this Chesky album made 45 years later.


  21. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by citizenk74
    I've long thought that a clothing store Styrofoam head with a couple of nice condenser mics where the ears are would be the way to go
    Quote Originally Posted by 44lombard
    Isn't that basically how Chesky Records records some of their stuff? I like it in theory.
    It's a well accepted method of recording called binaural. The best playback quality is achieved thru headphones, for obvious reasons. Until I got my TASCAM DR40x, I did this with a pair of lavalier mics on a hat or headband, recording into my Raspberry Pi. When a hat was out of place, I clipped the mics as close to my collar as possible, to get the "head shadow" effect. There are many binaural heads available commercially, some with built in mics and some with holders. This one from Neumann costs $9k:

    Why do "old" jazz recordings sound so fresh?-neumann_dummy_head_microphone-jpg

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
    There are many binaural heads available commercially, some with built in mics and some with holders. This one from Neumann costs $9k:

    Why do "old" jazz recordings sound so fresh?-neumann_dummy_head_microphone-jpg
    It would freak me out playing to that guy, he does not look like a jazz fan to me.

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    It would freak me out playing to that guy, he does not look like a jazz fan to me.
    He wisely quit while he was a head.

  24. #23

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    https://3diosound.com/products/free-...ral-microphone

    Back in the earlyish 90s a guy sold binaural "stealth" microphones for more money than I was ready to invest at the time, consisting of 2 tiny mic capsules and a little box with a 9v battery. The idea was to hook them behind your ears so you'd get the closest possible recording of the sound *you* experienced (and with luck no one saw you). I showed this to a colleague in my lab, who immediately said we'd make one of these, though evidently not using precisely matched mics (which may be a bit overrated anyway ... our ears aren't either). The capsules I found were hardly thicker than a good quality coax cable, they were fixed in extension of said cables with some shrink-wrap, and the box just contains a battery, a switch and a DC rejection circuit. I used a pair of cloth-wrapped rubber bands to fix them to my glasses, guiding the cables behind my ears, and recorded a few concerts on my minidisc recorder. Tricky, because you hear every hair brushing against the mics. Instead I mostly used them fixed in one of those "3rd hand" soldering aides, using a rigid, thick foam mouse pad as the stereo separator. I tested this recording comings and goings from atop the stereo in my parents' living room, and when I played it back the stereo placement was stunning, even over the loudspeakers.
    I still have the things but haven't used it for years except to try out how an X/Y recording sounds with them

  25. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
    He wisely quit while he was a head.
    For $9k I think I’d expect some hair, eyes and mouth.

  26. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Problem is - it’s hard to find great sounding rooms. I’ve not found a room that I’m super happy with yet. So you end up papering over the cracks with electronic reverb. It’s never the same.
    Great post, Christian.
    I'm a fan of Rudy van Gelder's recordings – the music and the sound. The first recordings were done in his parents living room, which may contribute to the intimate sound of recordings like Grant Green's Grant's First Stand. Later in the Englewood studio the recordings sound became bigger.
    I think he used a plate reverb early on and later also a digital reverb. It's funny to compare the original issues to the Rudy van Gelder Editions in which he not only mastered with a fuller tone but also added some reverb. I like both.