John Coltrane has a special meaning in jazz for me.
I don't see any other musician creating harmonies as rich as him. Yes, not even Miles Davis, Bill Evans or Tom Jobim (other jazz musicians that I like a lot).
It is surprising how fresh and accessible his music remains today. He never became a top hit, but also never stopped being relevant.
When you say accessible I guess you're excluding his free jazz period. And "rich" harmonies doesn't really mean anything. If you're saying that he stacks more extensions than Bill Evans, that seems hard to quantify.
And the recordist, Frank Tiberi, is a jazz saxophonist and has played with the Woody Herman big band (with whom I saw in the 70s). Also teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
The tape recorder's manual is available with circuit diagrams [1] and more pictures [2]. I'm not seeing an hf bias oscillator in the circuit unless the manufacturers are being clever. It was half track mono with two speeds, 3.5 ips and 1.875 ips.
Someone did a lot of work to restore these recordings!
Inches per second… the larger number is of course better, as higher frequencies require a higher tape speed to faithfully capture. Higher-end reel to reel recorders could do 7.5 i.p.s. and 15… to give you an idea what high end would look like.
Anyway, rather than call it "low resolution", loss of high-frequencies (low pass) is closer to the mark.
Indeed, no hf oscillator, instead it looks like it uses DC bias via R12. It's also neat to see all the circuitry re-used identically for amplifying the tape in playback, or amplifying the microphone input to record to tape. Was that a standard and obvious plan for the engineers of the time?
I'm also curious if R22, the thermistor, would have been just for thermal protection, or if it was actually used to set the operating point for the output transistors in normal operation? Would it have switched on loud and angry before the transistors warmed up and the bias point cooled down, the opposite of a tube amp?
Career musician here. My dirty secret is that Coltrane doesn’t resonate with me at all. Not one iota; despite me being a huge jazz fan.
For my taste, his harmonic language tips over the threshold where it goes from being viscerally enjoyable to a more heady, academic exercise. It all feels like a blur to me. Maximal in it’s vocabulary, and yet flat in it’s overall effect. It’s often so dense that it ends up feeling “same-y” and grey to me. Like Schoenberg’s serial music.
Maybe my impression here comes from the fact that by the time I began listening to him in the mid 2000’s an entire school of derivative jazz players had long since developed upon and retroactively made his innovations feel far more common (to no fault of his own). It’s that flavor of jazz where you get the impression that the players are enjoying this way more than the audience. It’s not for me.
Which era Trane are you talking about? The man went through at least 4 major shifts. I’m guessing you are talking about Giant Steps and the later avant garde years?
He did a lot of stuff too which is not dense at all and very approachable - Naima, A Love Supreme, My Favorite Things, Kind of Blue with Miles, a lot more, enjoyable, classic albums.
I love Coltrane - I find the complexity lyrical, like Art Tatum or Django Reinhardt in their respective disciplines - or if you throw back, Liszt, Chopin, the other bloody show-offs who could sing with an instrument. I dunno. It talks to me, but I guess at the end of the day it’s all just taste.
Also a jazz musician and I find that it depends on what time frame you're talking about. I like him a lot up to the very early 60s, and then he loses me around this point. I prefer the direction other hard bop players took at this time. Coltrane benefited greatly imo from Tyner's rock solid comping and Jones' aggressive drum work. His sax soloing got a bit too interested in dense excess, often fairly inscrutable even before he drifted into free jazz. Opinions absolutely vary on this point though. I think it still sounds good even if it's not what I reach for.
an entire school of derivative jazz players had long since developed upon and retroactively made his innovations feel far more common
The worst of this to me is at straightahead jazz jams when sax players run out of ideas or lose the form and then just start honking lol
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John Coltrane has a special meaning in jazz for me.
I don't see any other musician creating harmonies as rich as him. Yes, not even Miles Davis, Bill Evans or Tom Jobim (other jazz musicians that I like a lot).
It is surprising how fresh and accessible his music remains today. He never became a top hit, but also never stopped being relevant.
When you say accessible I guess you're excluding his free jazz period. And "rich" harmonies doesn't really mean anything. If you're saying that he stacks more extensions than Bill Evans, that seems hard to quantify.
I can't even begin to comprehend how you can't understand that someone can write harmonically rich music.
That's still not a definition, that's just you saying how you feel about it.
https://youtu.be/YjRbmtrDJI4
For those of you who don’t know…John Coltrane is a legend in jazz music. Posted a YouTube link to an excellent work of his above.
And the recordist, Frank Tiberi, is a jazz saxophonist and has played with the Woody Herman big band (with whom I saw in the 70s). Also teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
I picked a hell of a day to stop impulse shopping.
The tape recorder's manual is available with circuit diagrams [1] and more pictures [2]. I'm not seeing an hf bias oscillator in the circuit unless the manufacturers are being clever. It was half track mono with two speeds, 3.5 ips and 1.875 ips.
Someone did a lot of work to restore these recordings!
[1] https://manualmachine.com/concertone/tr100/8544644-schematic...
[2] https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/transicord_tr_100.html
Could you explain more? I could ask an LLM but I find it friendlier to ask you, ha! If you don't mind of course.
What does a bias oscillator do that would help, and is the ips speed slow ie it's a low "resolution" (so to speak) analog recording?
Inches per second… the larger number is of course better, as higher frequencies require a higher tape speed to faithfully capture. Higher-end reel to reel recorders could do 7.5 i.p.s. and 15… to give you an idea what high end would look like.
Anyway, rather than call it "low resolution", loss of high-frequencies (low pass) is closer to the mark.
Indeed, no hf oscillator, instead it looks like it uses DC bias via R12. It's also neat to see all the circuitry re-used identically for amplifying the tape in playback, or amplifying the microphone input to record to tape. Was that a standard and obvious plan for the engineers of the time?
I'm also curious if R22, the thermistor, would have been just for thermal protection, or if it was actually used to set the operating point for the output transistors in normal operation? Would it have switched on loud and angry before the transistors warmed up and the bias point cooled down, the opposite of a tube amp?
Career musician here. My dirty secret is that Coltrane doesn’t resonate with me at all. Not one iota; despite me being a huge jazz fan.
For my taste, his harmonic language tips over the threshold where it goes from being viscerally enjoyable to a more heady, academic exercise. It all feels like a blur to me. Maximal in it’s vocabulary, and yet flat in it’s overall effect. It’s often so dense that it ends up feeling “same-y” and grey to me. Like Schoenberg’s serial music.
Maybe my impression here comes from the fact that by the time I began listening to him in the mid 2000’s an entire school of derivative jazz players had long since developed upon and retroactively made his innovations feel far more common (to no fault of his own). It’s that flavor of jazz where you get the impression that the players are enjoying this way more than the audience. It’s not for me.
Seinfeld effect but for jazz! Seems very possible to me.
https://youtu.be/Zu2fm8vmHIk
Which era Trane are you talking about? The man went through at least 4 major shifts. I’m guessing you are talking about Giant Steps and the later avant garde years?
He did a lot of stuff too which is not dense at all and very approachable - Naima, A Love Supreme, My Favorite Things, Kind of Blue with Miles, a lot more, enjoyable, classic albums.
Dig deeper
Not a career musician - just a musician, pianist.
I love Coltrane - I find the complexity lyrical, like Art Tatum or Django Reinhardt in their respective disciplines - or if you throw back, Liszt, Chopin, the other bloody show-offs who could sing with an instrument. I dunno. It talks to me, but I guess at the end of the day it’s all just taste.
Also a jazz musician and I find that it depends on what time frame you're talking about. I like him a lot up to the very early 60s, and then he loses me around this point. I prefer the direction other hard bop players took at this time. Coltrane benefited greatly imo from Tyner's rock solid comping and Jones' aggressive drum work. His sax soloing got a bit too interested in dense excess, often fairly inscrutable even before he drifted into free jazz. Opinions absolutely vary on this point though. I think it still sounds good even if it's not what I reach for.
The worst of this to me is at straightahead jazz jams when sax players run out of ideas or lose the form and then just start honking lol
I'm also a jazz musician.
There's no accounting for taste. There's lots of stuff that I would say the same thing about that everybody loves that I don't like.
With that said, I don't see how you can listen to My Favorite Things or Love Supreme and not just find yourself in utter awe.
Sometimes these "security" solutions make you wonder whether someone took the joke about a machine without a network connection being the most secure seriously. First visit ever to this domain and:
Some blacklists last forever even though most ip leases only last a day or two.
Same here!
Yeah man