[HN Gopher] The Real Book
___________________________________________________________________
The Real Book
Author : mpweiher
Score : 455 points
Date : 2021-04-08 10:34 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (99percentinvisible.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (99percentinvisible.org)
| dhosek wrote:
| Back in the 90s, one of my friends excitedly declared that she'd
| managed to get her hands on an illegal real book. At her birthday
| party, I found myself at the piano playing requests from it, but
| I wasn't familiar with the convention used in the book to write,
| e.g., C- for Cmin and I had assumed that the dash meant a
| diminished rather than minor chord. I had some really weird
| harmonizations coming out of that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I've had the exact same experience... There were a few early,
| illegal Real Books that had songs you couldn't get ahold of
| from the licensed versions.
| MrGando wrote:
| The real book is actually full of egregious mistakes and
| philosophically speaking is quite questionable. There's a
| significant body of great Jazz musicians (eg: Yotam Silberstein)
| who avoid the book at all costs. My teacher -who's part of
| Yotam's quintet- is also very careful with the book and tries to
| avoid it.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| On any list of "Jazz for Beginners" you'll see Blue Bossa, and
| right off the bat, in the fourth measure, The Real Book has an
| unlikely Bb7 chord. Most jazz musicians I've spoken with use
| the changes Cm7 / Cm7 / Fm7 / Fm7 for the first four measures,
| instead of The Real Book's Cm / Cm / Fm7 / Bb7. I'm not sure
| how that Bb7 got there, or how it's stayed there after 50
| years, but there it is.
| wazoox wrote:
| Why did you change the title?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| It's possible that the word filter for titles that HN uses
| removed the "real". But yeah, whatever the cause, the result is
| bad.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Especially as 99 Percent Ivisible have a book out, which is
| what I thought this was going to be about.
| dang wrote:
| HN's debaiting software did. We changed it back.
|
| Submitters: if HN's software edits a title badly, you can
| override that by clicking 'edit'. Just please don't restore
| clickbait.
| Rochus wrote:
| There is a great potcast at the bottom of the page worth
| listening to, with even more interesting information than in the
| article. So many people were using the Real Book for years
| without knowing who actually compiled and typeset all these
| wonderful scores.
| krigs wrote:
| what is the real book?
| krallja wrote:
| Try reading the very first paragraph:
|
| << It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo,
| and a black plastic binding. It's delightfully homemade-looking
| --like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And
| inside is the sheet music for hundreds of common jazz tunes--
| also known as jazz "standards"--all meticulously notated by
| hand. >>
| caseyross wrote:
| I can't help thinking that this story is a fantastic example of
| the free market at work. Two college kids use their insight to
| spot a market need that the "big guys" missed, and create a
| wonderful, useful product that becomes a smash hit.
|
| Of course, when I say "the free market", I'm talking about the
| one where good ideas can be shared and copied freely --- not the
| one populated by sheet music landlords, whose laws were flouted
| every step of the way for great public benefit.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| "But how is that a _market_ if things are shared and copied
| _freely_? No, there must be property rights and strict
| enforcements and protection of those rights, and ideally the
| more property one has, the more their rights are protected: so
| that small and ineffective market participants can be forced
| out easier, that 'd allow for arriving at economies of scale
| quicker which will improve things for everyone, yes, even for
| those whose property was reassigned to better owners".
| mh8h wrote:
| Saw the title, and thought it is going to be about what Erdos
| referred to as The Book, in which God keeps the most elegant
| proof of each mathematical theorem.
| FabHK wrote:
| Incarnated as the wonderful _Proofs from THE BOOK_ by Martin
| Aigner and Gunter M. Ziegler.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_from_THE_BOOK
|
| > During a lecture in 1985, Erdos said, "You don't have to
| believe in God, but you should believe in The Book."
| cecida wrote:
| I love 99% Invisible.
| Udo_Schmitz wrote:
| Didn't know about the legal implications. A bunch of Real and
| Fake Books were readily available at the music library in Germany
| I frequented in the 80s. I'd bet they're still available now.
| pthreads wrote:
| When I was learning to play the saxophone my instructor had an
| old copy of the Real Book. The transcriptions of songs by some of
| the jazz legends would blow my mind. I thought the people being
| able to transcribe those were geniuses (still do). They had no
| sophisticated software to help them. It was all done manually by
| listening to countless hours of recordings over and over again.
| All those chord changes, harmonies, the extra fast tempo...
|
| That also reminds me of Phil Schapp. He used to run (probably
| still does) a radio program at Columbia University. Most
| astonishing encyclopedic knowledge of jazz!! Have a listen
| sometime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Schaap
|
| Edit: Added Wikipedia link.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| No sophisticated software, but you could take a turntable and
| play a 33 1/3 RPM record at half speed (16 2/3 RPM) and that
| would drop the recording by an octave but keep the notes the
| same.
| bori5 wrote:
| Another way was put stacks of coins on the LP to slow it down
| jpitz wrote:
| I've spoken to a few professional arrangers, and I always ask
| "How many times did you have to listen to that to write it
| down?"
|
| "Just once."
|
| Genius indeed. Or 10,00 hours. Or both.
| tjr wrote:
| I would think definitely some 10,000 involved. I have done
| transcriptions for years, but not very frequently. I don't
| have 10,000 hours, but I have more hours today than I did 20
| years ago. And I'm definitely better at it. Ive reached the
| point where some music I really can just hear and write down,
| but there's still plenty that I need to work at meticulously.
| dhosek wrote:
| I had the misfortune of having a friend in high school who
| could listen to something and transcribe it. I remember at
| band camp watching him with a cassette player and manuscript
| player transcribing an instrumental break from a Chicago
| song. He'd play a couple seconds, score it out, then play a
| couple more seconds until he was done.
|
| I say misfortune because I assumed this was a binary thing:
| you either could do it or you couldn't, and I was in the
| latter category. Later in life, I found that it was a
| learnable skill (probably what did more than anything else
| for me in developing my ear was being part of the cathedral
| choir and doing a lot of sight singing in harmony) (another
| aside, having done a lot of church music over the years, it
| was interesting to see the level of musicianship of the
| cathedral choir, and I was in the larger amateur group rather
| than the smaller professional group--where in most church
| choirs, each section would have their part played at the
| piano and they'd sing it back, the cathedral choir would have
| all four parts played together at the piano and everyone
| would sing back in harmony. The professionals didn't bother
| with the piano part and just sight-sang everything, including
| some really tricky harmonies, like having the sopranos sing a
| high F against an E minor chord in the lower voices.) At my
| peak, I was able to work on writing music while walking
| without any instrument and come home and transcribe what I'd
| written including all the harmonizations. I've lost some of
| that skill from lack of practice in the years since and I had
| to use Capo to recover the chord progression of a piece I
| wrote where I couldn't remember one of the chords in the
| middle 8.
|
| So bottom line, there are some people for whom this comes
| naturally but it is absolutely a learnable skill.
| JoshCole wrote:
| This is true of other skills that seem magical. One that
| stands out to me as being learnable, but often seen as
| magical, is 'savant like' memory capabilities.
|
| People assume that these people have different minds and
| that is how they have such incredible recall, but the truth
| is our memories are really strong when the recall is a
| spatial query and the object being recalled is encoded
| well. People mistake their short term memory for their
| actual memory and they often don't do the work of encoding
| and decoding their thinking to improve its compression
| properties. This leads to the impression that our memory
| capabilities are much worse then they are.
|
| If you properly encode the memory into a spatial context
| you can have rather incredible feats of memory. It just
| takes work to do the proper encoding and decoding and the
| creation of spatial contexts in which to store the things
| you want to remember.
|
| That happens often with things that seem magical. Edward
| Tufte had an amazing observation about magic that really
| sticks with me: magic is an art of misinformation wherein
| the objective is to hide the work that was done. Oftentimes
| magical things are things which take a lot of work, but
| that work is hidden.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > They had no sophisticated software to help them.
|
| Which is a shame because they sometimes make bad
| transcriptions...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWCbGzxofU is a deep dive by
| Adam Neely into "Girl From Ipanema" covering how "The Real
| Book" neutered the blues countermelody because ... someone just
| didn't write it down in the 70s and everyone learns it from TRB
| now.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that! What a great dive into the
| particulars--way beyond my music theory knowledge, but still
| accessible.
| leephillips wrote:
| This video is absolutely fascinating. Thank you!
| lc9er wrote:
| Guitar tab sites always had the same problem with bad
| transcriptions. Fortunately, there's a whole generation of
| musicians that do fairly accurate "how to play" series on
| YouTube.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| IMO Ultimate guitar has really great tabs for most
| reasonably popular songs. The ratings don't seem to be
| gamed as much as other sites as well. It's _almost_ good
| enough to forgive all the shady UX patterns all over the
| site.
| achn wrote:
| The current version of this website is so shaddy and
| specifically geared to destroy the original concept of
| tabs being easy to copy and edit. This website is now the
| antithesis of where it started. It is a perfect example
| of everything that is wrong with the modern web.
| fortran77 wrote:
| The software that helps is the ability to play and replay any
| part of the track, or slow things down a bit. The
| "transcription" is usually done by someone who knows music...
| biggieshellz wrote:
| Same thing with Blue Bossa. The syncopation in the original
| is completely missing in the Real Book chart, and now every
| high school jazz musician learns it the Real Book way and
| runs it into the ground.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If you're just straight up reading from The Real Book and
| not listening to the records, you're playing yourself.
|
| I was also lucky to have a piano teacher who would correct
| the wrong stuff in the real book for me.
| bonthron wrote:
| When I was a teenager, my music teacher always had a copy of the
| Real Book around. I went to a local music store and was looking
| through their music books when one of the employees asked, 'is
| there something I can help you find?' When I said the Real Book,
| he said, 'oh, we don't keep that out here'... he disappeared for
| a minute and came back with a copy from the back room. At the
| time, I felt like I had been admitted into a secret club.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I have a very clear memory of taking the subway to a random
| music shop in Boston near Berklee as a teenager that an older
| musician friend had told me about that had Real Books in the
| back. Went up to the counter and when I asked for it the person
| working there got real quiet, asking me what key I needed it
| in, and then ducked into the back to grab it. I think it was
| something like $45, which was a lot for 15 year old me in the
| 90s at the time. It definitely felt like a secret club! I
| loaned it out to a drummer friend in college and never got it
| back, I should ask him if he still has it.
| bewareandaware wrote:
| I thought they were all in the same key! I got mine because
| someone gave it to me. Then later I gave it to someone.
| hoprocker wrote:
| The Real Book, often considered the Real Inaccurate Book.
| blueboo wrote:
| The Real Book is a great and weird learning tool. It's a rite of
| passage in jazz education to realise that your favorite tune
| isn't actually how it was written in the Real Book. Miles Davis
| didn't get it wrong -- the Real Book did! And just like that, you
| have your first bit of secret jazz knowledge...
|
| There are also some dated, now-seemingly-bizarre choices that
| were included. These quickly become in-jokes among folks boning
| up on classic tunes. "Should we do Speak No Evil, Ceora,
| or...General Mojo's Well-laid Plan?"
|
| My favorite weirdness is the creative harmonisation of late 60s
| free jazz. The chords offered for "Orbits" are quite cool but
| very much the transcriber's imagination.
|
| Yes, it's inadequate and flawed if it's the only resource
| offered. But it's no gatekeeper, it's a gate-opener. I prefer to
| see it as an invitation to dig deeper. Someone practicing
| "Billy's Bounce" might gaze in disbelief at "Some Skunk Funk".
| What's going on with the mixed meter in this Charles Mingus guy's
| tunes? And thus it facilitates our going out to discover more
| styles, more players, more music.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| To be fair, General Mojo's Well-Laid Plan is from "Duster" by
| Gary Burton's band with Larry Coryell, which is considered to
| be one of the first fusion records and was really influential
| at the time.
| tjr wrote:
| Gary Burton was also a Berklee local, as were composers of
| many of the other seemingly obscure selections. Those tunes
| probably were in fact "standards" in that time and place, and
| through _The Real Book_ , likely achieved more prominence
| than they would have otherwise.
|
| I find it curious though that _General Mojo_ didn 't make it
| in to the Hal Leonard "6th Edition". I find it hard to
| believe that they couldn't secure the rights; did they just
| deem it too obscure? For trying to recreate the old book,
| seems like an unfortunate loss. Those tunes gave the book
| part of its character.
| skybrian wrote:
| I never saw the original Real Book. I bought the _New Real
| Book_ from Shel Music and it seems pretty good? (I mostly don
| 't play jazz and bought it out of curiosity.)
|
| For beginners I recommend starting with _The Real Easy Book_
| which has some simpler tunes, mostly blues-based.
| barrenko wrote:
| Since this is HN, any advice for someone wanting to get from
| basically zero music knowledge to reading and playing jazz stuff?
| Let's say keyboard or guitar.
|
| I do know some music theory from elementary / high school.
| cjaybo wrote:
| I've played both piano and guitar for over a decade, at what
| I'd consider to be a relatively advanced hobbyist level. I
| enjoy playing jazz, but I'm not so sure anyone would enjoy
| listening!
|
| For me, lots of theory concepts "click" more easily on the
| piano. I think it's partially a visual thing -- on a keyboard
| things like intervals are visually apparent (how many keys are
| between these two notes), whereas it requires a bit more mental
| overhead to conceptualize the same things on a guitar
| fretboard.
|
| I greatly prefer to discover and play around with new musical
| ideas on the keyboard first for this reason. Others' mileage
| may vary!
|
| As far as resources go, I'm a fan of Mark Levin's "The Jazz
| Theory Book". It starts with basic theory then works through
| more advanced concepts.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I think you're probably right, but I do think guitar has one
| ease of use advantage over piano. scales and chords are
| "moveable" on guitar in a way they are not on piano. once you
| learn, say, the c major scale on guitar, you can just slide
| it up a fret and you have a c# major scale. same pattern and
| muscle memory. to do the same on piano, you have to actually
| keep track of what is sharp/flat in the scale. ideally you
| would develop a good understanding of the circle of fifths
| either way, but you don't necessarily have to on guitar.
|
| maybe it makes no difference and I just feel this way because
| I've spent more time with guitars than pianos. when I sit
| down in front of a piano, I can't escape the feeling that
| it's biased towards c major.
| kaoD wrote:
| Go back to the fundamentals first.
| https://www.musictheory.net/lessons Learn this by heart then
| learn it again!
|
| Best lessons ever for Music Notation and Music Theory 101. Just
| keep in mind this is for the "western common-practice period",
| not some kind of intrinsic property of music.
|
| Then watch a lot of Adam Neely, learn on
| https://www.justinguitar.com/ if you play guitar, and just
| devote lots of hours to the many, many, many free resources on
| the internet (which now you will be able to search for, since
| you will start to know the unknown unknowns).
|
| See you in a few years, the self-taught way is long but
| rewarding. Have fun!
|
| EDIT: Also, remember learning both horizontally (theory) and
| vertically (play the damn tunes!) It's easy to fall into the
| unidimensional growth trap.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm a part time working jazz bassist. Agreeing with the others,
| my advice is to first just learn to play, but make sure you
| experience both reading and playing by ear. The latter you can
| start at any time by listening to recordings and trying to sing
| the tunes. In fact, when someone says they are struggling with
| playing a tune, a teacher will often ask: "Did you try to sing
| it first?"
|
| You can find teachers who focus on jazz. Let them know your
| intentions. Make sure they force you to play melodies in
| addition to chords, and to read from standard notation in
| addition to tabulature.
|
| Eventually you should look for a beginner jam session. In my
| locale, before the COVID, there were multiple jam sessions at
| different times and places, but one of them was deliberately
| organized as a learning session for beginners. It was hosted by
| some local jazz educators, and they may even have gotten some
| sort of grant for it.
|
| A good thing about guitar or piano is that you can function in
| a rhythm section before you are fully up to speed as an improv
| soloist. The same is true of the bass.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| I'm going to give different advice from the other person. Start
| out getting some basic technique and reading ability, but when
| you want to play jazz stuff, it's really a language. Learn by
| imitating -- transcribe (by ear) and play other people's solos
| and try to get the articulations, dynamics, rhythms, and so
| forth exactly right. Train your ear -- learn to hear the
| different chord colors (major/minor/dominant/diminished/half-
| diminished) and degrees of the scale.
|
| A lot of this can be self-taught, but it really helps to have a
| mentor, and lessons can really be helpful. That's what I did
| when I initially learned in high school. Go on your own until
| you hit a roadblock or get stuck in a rut, then take a lesson.
|
| Also, don't forget that jazz is a communal activity. After you
| achieve some base level of competence, you really need to start
| playing with other people, and preferably other people who are
| better than you are.
| mooneater wrote:
| I love my Real book, for me its a lifetime worth of music.
|
| Though I consider its versions as vanilla, it would be cool to
| see a real bebop version.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Does it also contain the drumming part scores?
| 7357 wrote:
| What is the Real Book? (a jazz shibboleth)
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD0e5e6wI_A)
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm a bassist. I got my Real Book in 1982. I was already playing
| in the high school jazz band, but as a suburban kid, I had zero
| exposure to things like jam sessions and live jazz performances.
| Nobody had taught me how to learn harmonies from recordings, so I
| was kind of lost. The Real Book gave me a way to follow recorded
| tunes and grasp what the players were doing. Later on, being able
| to play from "lead sheets" enabled me to play with musicians who
| were a lot better than me, and was really how I learned to play.
|
| But eventually, I was hauling a ton of fake books to every gig.
| About 20 years ago, I was running late, and decided to leave my
| fake books behind. And I survived. I had memorized most of the
| tunes that were played regularly in my locale, and forced myself
| to learn the rest by ear, on the bandstand.
|
| So I tell people that the two best things I've done for my jazz
| playing were: Getting a Real Book, and getting rid of my Real
| Book. Today, those tunes are hopelessly overplayed, and I prefer
| finding bands to play with, who are willing to venture off the
| beaten path, with less familiar tunes or especially original
| material.
| gooseyard wrote:
| hah I had the same problem, finally about two years ago I
| decided it was time to ween myself off the book. A guy in my
| area has a small school which is largely focused on getting
| players off-book with the top couple hundred standards. It's
| definitely a slow process at first, but what I think is
| remarkable is how (even setting aside the blues or rhythm
| changes tunes) how much faster memorizing new tunes goes once
| you've done 50 or 60.
|
| I think that I had assumed, perhaps partly because of the
| existence of the book, that while memorizing pop or rock songs
| is relatively easy, permanently memorizing standards with a lot
| of changes was not a realistic thing, but now I know that its
| really more that the problem space is just larger for
| standards, and its just a matter of exploring that space for a
| while that you get familiar enough that you can listen and
| guess your way through tunes you're shaky on. Now, the book
| seems like more trouble than its worth on gigs because it takes
| a lot of my limited cycles to stare at it. But boy did it take
| a while to get to that point!
| analog31 wrote:
| I've learned that the changes are actually relatively
| forgiving. Many of the fake book changes are different from
| the harmonies that were used when the tunes were show and
| popular tunes.
|
| Also, even if you're a rhythm player, tunes are a lot easier
| to memorize if you learn melodies. And that helps in two
| ways. The first is just having a better grasp of the tune,
| and the second is that if you're unsure of the changes, you
| can improvise directly from the melody.
|
| Granted, as a bass player I can get away with not knowing all
| of those 7ths, 9ths, etc. "I solemnly swear to play the root,
| the whole root, and nothing but the root, so help me Dusty
| Hill."
| bsder wrote:
| > Today, those tunes are hopelessly overplayed
|
| Which is, in fact, the point.
|
| You can't "jam" over a tune that everybody doesn't know
| forwards, backwards, and sideways.
|
| I do agree that it would be nice if musicians added something
| from the latter half of the 20th century to "standards".
| analog31 wrote:
| Jamming over a tune that you don't know is called "faking."
| That's a skill unto itself. ;-) But I think it's also a skill
| worth learning.
| zwieback wrote:
| I had the original Eb version but later bought the licensed C
| version. Some of my favorite tunes disappeared, now I understand
| what happened. Great article.
|
| I remember learning to play classics but also just enjoyed
| reading along with stuff I had no chance of learning myself.
| cousin_it wrote:
| Someone should make an online "real book" for electronic music
| production, with a bunch of popular beats and instructions for
| how to reproduce them in a DAW. Does such a thing exist?
| jontutcher wrote:
| Not what you asked, but a digital version of the current Real
| Book does exist and makes common appearances on band stands!
| https://www.irealpro.com/
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Other commenters have mentioned books with beats and patterns
| in them. While we're at it, here is a great one for classic
| (and not-so-classic) synthesizer sounds. "Welsh's Synthesizer
| Cookbook"
|
| https://www.synthesizer-cookbook.com/
| indigochill wrote:
| Syntorial is a comprehensive hands-on introduction to
| subtractive (IIRC?) synth programming (not DSP programming, but
| fiddling knobs like you would in a typical commercial soft
| synth), including add-ons specifically for popular commercial
| soft synths like Massive. Their forum also encourages people to
| share synths they hear in popular music and help each other
| recreate the sound.
|
| They also produce Building Blocks, which is all about music
| theory and composition and teaches some basic beats (and, more
| importantly, I think, how to think about beats so that it
| becomes easier to recreate ones you hear from scratch).
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Both are by the same creator - great resource:
|
| Building Blocks - https://www.audiblegenius.com/
|
| Syntorial - https://www.syntorial.com/
| [deleted]
| biggieshellz wrote:
| They had them for Minimoogs, where you could buy a book of
| patches with the control settings to get different sounds,
| including those from some popular songs:
| http://www.synthzone.com/midi/moog/minimoog/MINIMOOG%20PATCH...
|
| But that doesn't convey the melody/harmony/rhythm, only the
| sound design.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| Not quite what you're asking for, but it's really good.
|
| https://makingmusic.ableton.com/
| flycaliguy wrote:
| Attack Magazine has a section called Beat Dissected which
| teaches sub-genre beat making.
|
| https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/beat-dissected/
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Will second. This is about as granular and well put-together
| as I've seen for teaching electronic beat-making.
|
| It's sometimes hard to do this because oftentimes in
| electronic music the sound or technique can rely on a quirk
| of the specific synth or sample. Attack do a great job
| considering.
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| Yes! I am surprised there isn't a definitive source for common
| sequencer beats and grooves.
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| not a definitive resource but recently learn about the pretty
| cool https://hiphoptranscriptions.com/
| matthewh806 wrote:
| There are some older books like:
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Machine-Patterns-Leonard-
| Publishing... which is just tabulating lots of common rhythm
| patterns from a wide number of genres.
|
| and some more modern ones like: https://op-
| forums.com/t/pocket-operations-a-portable-book-of...
|
| Neither of these are online though and would be well suited
| to it I agree.
|
| A quick search also came up with: http://808.pixll.de/ which
| has drum patterns uploaded by users for popular songs
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| I already have the Pocket Operations book - it's great.
| Thanks for those other links.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| There is a book called "The Theory and Technique of Electronic
| Music" written by Miller Puckette (creator of Max / Pure Data
| visual programming languages). That is quite heavy on the
| mathematical side though - really is more like the title
| suggests the theory underlying the DSP.
|
| Ableton have some online content like
| https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ which is laid out in chapter
| form and uses https://tonejs.github.io/ for browser synthesis /
| sequencing etc
| cousin_it wrote:
| That's more like textbooks though. I was talking more about a
| tune by tune cheatsheet. That would probably involve some
| shorthand notation (does that exist?)
| matthewh806 wrote:
| yeah, fair point about the Miller Puckette book - that is
| indeed a full on textbook.
|
| Check some of the Ableton chapters a bit more closely
| though - https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-
| basslines/good-life.h... is this not something like you're
| referring to? Has a grid with the midi notes in place
| arranged just like you'd see in a DAW. I think they have an
| exporter for the MIDI into ableton as well
| [deleted]
| borepop wrote:
| Attack Magazine put out a book called The Secrets of Dance
| Music Production, which has some fairly good "beat starter"
| breakdowns of how a 16-step beat would be sequenced different
| styles of electronic music, such as deep house, tech-house,
| trance, etc. https://store.attackmagazine.com/products/the-
| secrets-of-dan...
| mberning wrote:
| If you like music nerd stuff you should check out Rick Beato on
| YT.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| Also if you like having a person with an inflated ego stuff his
| awful opinions down your throat you should check out Rick Beato
| on YT
| justsignedupnow wrote:
| I like him for the storytelling. He reminds me of my primary
| school teacher, fond memories, who always turned any subject
| into personal anecdotes, gently opinionated, slightly
| inflated and imaginative. Rick's generation perhaps among the
| last who grew up on low bandwidth media and loads of
| storytelling all day long among everyone.
|
| His music theory approach is useless. It's just a checklist
| of terms that fit into his particular grid that day. No one
| wrote any worthwhile pop or rock songs with theoretic
| emphasis, ever.
| miobrien wrote:
| Examples of his awful opinions and ego? I've watched him
| occasionally over the years but haven't noticed this.
| dharmon wrote:
| For the record I generally like Beato's channel. I suspect
| part of what you dislike is a result of the YouTube-
| ification of his videos. Making everything amped up, strong
| opinions, etc. Watch some videos from 5 years ago. There
| are no "wow!"s in response to every line in a song, more
| nuanced opinion, etc.
|
| Unfortunately, though, he's been a little more clickbait-y
| of late. For example his "rant" videos, which are both very
| clickable and don't have copyright claims like most his
| videos. I expect to see more of these going forward now
| that he knows he can rant for 30 min, cut it down to 10
| min, post it, and make $10k from ad views.
|
| The "What Makes This Song Great?" series is wonderful. If
| for no other reason where else are you going to here
| isolated tracks from your favorite songs? But I somewhat
| suspect he was trolling his viewers with doing one on
| "Since You Been Gone" a few weeks ago. I enjoy the song and
| am happy to crank it up and dance with my kids, but the
| production / arrangement is typical Dr. Luke blandness. But
| of course I still watched the whole video, waiting for him
| to "break kayfabe". :)
| Galanwe wrote:
| I share the same feeling as parent post.
|
| The video where they sit down listening to various string
| gauges and nod at the obvious tone change comes to my mind.
| I'm 99% sure they would not see any difference in a blind
| test.
|
| He also has plenty of videos about his past, his
| achievements, very opinionated tastes about what is good,
| etc. I find it quite annoying and over self centered.
| justsignedupnow wrote:
| Agreed on the blind test prediction.
|
| However, electric guitarists are placebo addicts and if 4
| nice men spent a 20 minute internet video agreeing on
| something one of the bearded guys from ZZ Top maybe once
| said, some guitarists will play along with a little bit
| more ease in their hearts.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFaRIW-wZlw
|
| He doesn't really understand electronic music in my
| opinion. I find these sweeping statements about how "x
| ruined y" to be extremely lazy. Especially when it comes to
| comments about computers and music from these traditionally
| rock-ist people
| tonystride wrote:
| Totally agree, needing to groove or follow harmony in
| some ways is a limited way of thinking about music. And
| my job is to teach people how to groove and follow
| harmony! One of my favorite types of music is electro
| acoustic because it is soooo far from the ideas of
| western music, probably most similar in formal structure.
| That being said Radio Head's 'Amnesiac' is a superb
| example at bringing together the extended sonic pallets
| of electro acoustic in a main stream setting. What are
| some examples where you feel technology has enhanced
| traditional music forms?
| matthewh806 wrote:
| Yeah, Radiohead are a great example indeed of bringing
| these two worlds together. Kid A is another amazing one
| from them.
|
| When you say "traditional music forms" what do you mean
| specifically? I'm trying to avoid going down a rabbit
| hole of references which answer the wrong question :D
|
| My answer to any question would change day to day really,
| especially at the moment as I'm finding lots of new and
| interesting ways to think about and approach production.
| Last night I was watching this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VspVQiG6hj8 (most well
| known as the artist Rrose making pitch black techno)
| which presents such a simple idea for creating an
| interesting drone sound using resonance alone & without
| any actual audio input.
|
| I think a lot of the early IDM people like Aphex Twin,
| Autechre etc in their music have really used technology
| to push music beyond its traditional forms. And you have
| people like Oval that go with this kind of idea of "the
| medium is the message" (https://archive.aec.at/media/asse
| ts/b3d9569953edbc479d2a7bf6...) marking CDs to create
| glitches etc and surfing through filestystems to create
| microsamples
| tonystride wrote:
| yeah 'traditional music forms' was a poor choice of
| words, guess I meant western music, or modern popular
| styles.
|
| I really love synthesis & IDM but I tend to gravitate
| more towards soundscape compositions that are made of
| samples that have been abstracted to varying degrees. For
| example here's a piece I made that loosely follows Sonata
| form but has very little harmony or rhythm. Made
| completely of samples from an outside field and my living
| room. https://soundcloud.com/anthony-nagid/the-reality-
| sculptor-st...
|
| Thanks for the essay, I'll put that in my que! There's a
| book I really like on 'The Art of Sound Organization'
| that got me into these styles.
| https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Art-Sound-
| Organization-...
| aphextron wrote:
| This is the problem with modern jazz. Treating it as some kind of
| canon is the antithesis of what it was in the first place. It's
| tantamount to writing down a conversation between two ancient
| philosophers and repeating it ad nauseum, expecting some new
| insight. Keith Jarett wasn't concerned with the stuff Art Tatum
| had done. Miles Davis wasn't trying to build on Louis Armstrong's
| rendition of _Wonderful World_. They were both exploring new
| spaces and trying desperately to _break_ from the past to
| discover new forms. The mindless repetition and riffing on
| standards is why jazz has died as a relevant genre of music, and
| is seen as something that corny old men in suits listen to while
| sipping whiskey and feeling refined. Jazz used to be _the cool
| sound_ because it was the avant garde, not some pretentious
| collection of standards written by dead people.
| p_j_w wrote:
| If you're not familiar with what those old philosophers said
| and how their arguments work, you're liable to make yourself
| look like a fool when you tread old ground not realizing it's
| old. Similarly with Jazz, if you wanna be avant garde, you
| should have some idea of the body of work that's come before
| you. A lot of the best musical rule breakers were classically
| trained and knew their shit.
| dcist wrote:
| It's a mix of both. Musicians often want to seem like they
| didn't take lessons and don't have in-depth knowledge of
| music theory and old songs, but they often do (e.g., how many
| guitarists don't admit they took lessons and want to make it
| seem like they're just riffing but they mysteriously seem to
| hit the chord tones on the changes and manage to play in
| modes that work for a song). It's just not "cool" for a
| musician to be knowledgeable about music theory and history.
| I think every pursuit - not just music - is presented with a
| challenge once it's been around for a while, it's no longer
| new and unusual, and there exists a body of knowledge and
| history. It becomes a large task to learn from past
| performers and then try to innovate in your own way. Once a
| body of knowledge becomes large enough, it's a big life-
| consuming task just to get your head about the prior body of
| knowledge before you're able to go out on your own and
| attempt to innovate. I think the same thing is happening with
| rock. The same could be said for philosophy itself -
| philosophy used to be practical and applicable to everyday
| people (see Greeks and Stoics, for example). Now, it's
| largely confined to academia and extremely esoteric arguments
| among a cloistered elite.
| aphextron wrote:
| >A lot of the best musical rule breakers were classically
| trained and knew their shit.
|
| Classical training is a different story. Musical theory is
| endlessly useful to know. But jazz has been stuck in a
| certain kind of sound for the last 40 years since those
| people who actually _made it_ gave way to those who simply
| _play it_. And now there 's just this idea of what jazz is
| and ought to be, rather than treating it as what is was
| originally; a complete break from the roots of the western
| classical tradition into a wholly new art form informed by
| the limitations of what they were leaving behind.
|
| It's sort of a cargo cult situation, really. You have these
| incredible artifacts left behind that came about as a result
| of complex processes of intense effort and struggle, yet
| those who inherited them act as if by imitating the same
| thing, they will get the same results. It's completely
| missing the point.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| "a complete break from the roots of the western classical
| tradition into a wholly new art form informed by the
| limitations of what they were leaving behind"
|
| Wait, what? A whole lot of the western harmonic tradition
| went right into jazz. The "standards" are Tin Pan Alley
| songs from the first half of the 20th century. A lot of the
| bebop harmony came straight out of Debussy and Ravel. Third
| Stream music was an explicit synthesis of classical music
| and jazz. Some of Coltrane's innovations came out of
| Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Musical
| Patterns. The walking bass was in Baroque music (Bach).
| While you cannot neglect the African side of it (rhythm,
| the blues, improvisation) nor neglect that it was Black
| people who put together the pieces and created the music,
| saying that it was a "complete break from the roots of the
| western classical tradition" is farcical.
|
| And it's a tradition, not a cargo cult. There are still
| people alive today who played with Miles Davis, Charlie
| Parker, and so forth. I have played with some of them. They
| tell stories, give advice, and pass on things that you
| might not get otherwise. Before the advent of jazz programs
| in colleges, the music was passed on via an apprenticeship
| system, which is diminished but still extant.
| analog31 wrote:
| Even in jazz, there has always been an interplay between
| old and new. During the jazz era, jazz was the sound of
| popular music, meaning that a lot of work for jazz
| musicians consisted of playing in dance bands that were as
| locked into a sound as some jazz performances are today.
| The jazz era didn't end with a bang, but had a very long
| tail, resulting in me getting hired for the same kind of
| work within my own lifetime. Everybody recognizes it for
| what it is, artistically, but on the other hand there's
| something to be said for making an audience happy.
|
| Today, people approach jazz for different reasons, and of
| course at different levels of proficiency. Jazz is old
| enough to have a history and a canon, and the enjoyment of
| exploring and preserving that history is a good reason for
| some bands (hopefully not all of them) to exist. Given my
| stature in the local music scene (not a first-call player),
| a lot of my work is of that ilk. I approach it respectfully
| but not with utter obedience. As a bassist, the instrument
| that I play has undergone steady evolution, even post jazz
| era, so that what I play on a "traditional" gig is informed
| by the present as well as the past.
| t_serpico wrote:
| True, and the exact same thing can be said about classical
| music. The average person needs some sort of framework to learn
| the art form. And yes, this is more imitation than innovation,
| but nevertheless can serve as a framework for musical
| expression.
| zamfi wrote:
| _See also_ Monty Python.
|
| Different crowd (fewer suits, less whiskey) but same
| phenomenon: work deliberately created to be avant garde now
| repeated as canon.
| skybrian wrote:
| Sheesh, it sounds like you are overly obsessed with being cool.
|
| Learning songs written by other people is something every
| musician does. There's nothing wrong with playing covers and
| being able to play music that's familiar to your audience is
| essential for many working musicians.
|
| That doesn't mean you have to play old standards when you could
| riff on newer music, but it also doesn't mean you _can 't_.
| There's nothing wrong with reviving a tune written a long time
| ago and putting your own take on it.
|
| Music is not necessarily more enjoyable just because it's brand
| new. It can be just as interesting if it's new _to you_ , and
| there's plenty to explore.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| tempodox wrote:
| But isn't that how it always goes? Things that were once avant-
| garde become "standard" and the next avant-garde has to be
| something different again. The same thing cannot stay avant-
| garde forever.
| cossatot wrote:
| Back in the days when I was a teenager
|
| Before I had status and before I had a pager
|
| You could find the Abstract listenin' to hip-hop
|
| My pops used to say, it reminded him of Bebop
|
| I said, "Well, Daddy, don't you know that things go in
| cycles?
|
| Way that Bobby Brown is just amping like Michael"
|
| -- Q-Tip, A Tribe Called Quest, _Excursions_
| rocketpastsix wrote:
| I have a stack of them in my office. The Real Book, the Real
| Christmas Book, the Real Rock Book and more. They are awesome if
| you can sight read and great as a learning tool.
| stereoabuse wrote:
| I had no idea this history! My Bb copy for trumpet must have been
| from the first year of legitimate production. Always enjoyed
| reading this handmade comic-sans-y notation and have fond
| memories of my high school trio playing extended version of Red
| Clay.
| kinleyd wrote:
| This was a great read!
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
|
| Illegal sheet music, underground comics, the "Anarchist's
| Cookbook" and similar... long tradition.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't know if that analogy holds. A fake book is
| indispensable for working dance bands who want to play at
| banquets or whatever where someone will request songs the band
| hasn't played before. The Anarchist's Cookbook is just for
| teenagers to download and feel like they are sticking it to the
| man. There are not, to my knowledge, a whole lot of practicing
| anarchists.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Good point. a closer analogy might be found in that body of
| knowledge i would call "telecom bullshit"; the arcane private
| standards that start to happen whenever you get near anything
| carrier or cell phone type stuff. I'm largely ignorant of it,
| but there is a library of data there thats certainly
| "encumbered" and still necessary.
|
| The minutiae of building codes; plumbing and electrical
| specifically, are such a body of knowledge without a
| corresponding bible. There's the apprenticeship "how its
| done," which implies "around here, where we know what the
| inspectors like"; in many places the inspectors have never
| seen a copy of the codes they're supposed to be enforcing.
| capableweb wrote:
| > The Anarchist's Cookbook is just for teenagers to download
| and feel like they are sticking it to the man
|
| It does contain instructions on how to manufacture some
| smaller types of explosives and other goodies, so it's not
| completely useless. It was also initially released before the
| internet, and since the creation of the internet, lost a bit
| of it's usefulness of course.
|
| > There are not, to my knowledge, a whole lot of practicing
| anarchists.
|
| Maybe not where you live, but anarchism lives on across the
| world and you can find practicing anarchists inside most
| states around the world today, some groups bigger than
| others, CNT and FIJL being probably some of the bigger ones
| today.
| anotheryou wrote:
| I always loved the handwriting :) So consistent, so charming.
| ehnto wrote:
| As much as it is criticized for being used to gatekeep in the
| jazz scene so to speak, it is nice to have somewhat of a
| reference for competency. Music is so subjective that when you
| are teaching yourself it can be hard to know if you are heading
| in the right direction.
|
| Music is all about utilizing shared language, and I feel The Real
| Book was just a way to add some depth to the expected knowledge
| base in a certain scene. Kinda like software patterns.
| hoytech wrote:
| Fascinating! It's sort of similar to "bootlegged" guitar tabs on
| alt.guitar.tab newsgroup and OLGA. There was lots of legal action
| by publishers and a lot of the content is now lost, or at least
| not easily accessible online anymore.
|
| ...except for an archive of the classical tabs, selflessly
| maintained by one guy:
|
| https://www.classtab.org/index_old.htm
|
| Don't tell anyone!
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| > 2900 classical guitar tabs in plain text format
|
| > Use a maximum of 80 characters a line so that the tab prints
| out ok
|
| > An 9MB downloadable zip file is available of the whole site
|
| The fact that I had an upwelling of joy reading those lines on
| a nice, plain webpage just goes to show how far we go to lock
| down and bloat up so many things these days. Thanks for
| linking! The scrolling versions of the tabs are neat as well.
|
| > do NOT use the 'Tab' character for spacing
|
| I had no idea the "tabs vs spaces" debate raged in other
| corners of the universe...
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I'm feeling uneasy because I know there's a whole generation of
| "one-person" shops which run these important websites. I hope
| they have a transition plan in place for the inevitable.
| lupire wrote:
| Archive.org to the rescue
| anchpop wrote:
| Yeah. I got nervous so I downloaded the site and put a mirror
| up on IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWG7VPMwC6T1PCp5G77AjrLCJMr
| mSQshYovf3i...
|
| It's not perfect, because if he updates his site my mirror
| won't necessarily be updated, but hopefully it's better than
| nothing. I'm pinning that on two seperate computers so it
| should have some resiliency, but if someone else wants to pin
| it too that'll do a lot for keeping it up.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Thank you for doing the good work.
| ybbond wrote:
| ahhh, good old days.
|
| back when I was in elementary school, my big bro was learning
| jazz and taught me music (still do, but my progress is slow).
|
| then he went to university. by the end of semester he came back
| home brought some chunky books printed on 70gsm paper. he give
| some to my cousins
|
| the blog's hero image reminds me of that book. one of them is
| still in my house's storage.
| iaresee wrote:
| I can still remember going to Kinkos with a friend's copy of the
| real book in 1996 to make a copy of my own and get it spiral
| bound.
|
| Not only did you get the charts, but you got their notes. And the
| notes of anyone before them from the book's lineage.
|
| Still have. Still use it.
| birgitt wrote:
| I think we had a few copies of this in my high school's jazz band
| (the director of the movie Whiplash was from the same band). I
| played the flute so had inch thick folders of handwritten music
| transposed from the tenor sax or trumpet parts.
| allknowingfrog wrote:
| In case anyone missed it, this article is just the text summary
| that goes along with an episode of 99% Invisible. It's my
| favorite podcast, and I would encourage any HN fan to check it
| out.
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