I love jazz. It’s no secret at this point.
It didn’t use to be that way, though. For the longest time, I was very intimidated by it. The players’ skill and the complexity of the music was scary to a self-taught, alt-rock musician. I was trying to understand the music, but couldn’t. I thought it was show-offy and too complex for no goddamned reason.
Then, at some point, it flipped. I started to enjoy it. I understood. I understood there was nothing to understand. Some sub-genres of jazz are quite intellectual and still too complex for my taste. But most are about soul, individuality and team effort. Sounds contradictory? Bear with me. Jazz is about playing together in a way that enables each musician to best express their own individuality. There, that makes more sense.
I listened to a lot of old-school jazz over the last six years or so. By old-school, I mean anything before the free jazz revolution of the sixties. While some of it is interesting, most stays unmusical to my ears. Jazz nerds will put down their glasses of Chardonnay and crucify me for this. I don’t give a fuck. I enjoy Taylor Swift just as much as Charles Mingus, and I love it.
Jazz is divided into time periods. It has evolved quite a lot, and although we thought for a long time it was geographic, it wasn’t. The stuff the New Orleans cats were playing in 1912 is very close to what the Chicago blokes were playing. There wasn’t much exchange between cities at the time, as communication was quite limited back in the day. But it seems that, organically, jazz evolved pretty much at the same rate in different areas. That alone is fascinating.
But I digress.
My favourite period is hard-bop. With players like Mingus, Davis, Trane, and Adams, there is a lot to learn from that golden era. Let’s have a butcher’s at the recording side of things. That’s where the magic happens.
At the time, jazz players were brilliant musicians leading exhausting lives.
Many of them died way too young, from overdoses and accidents. If you think rockstars invented the fast way to live, think again and dive into jazz history. These cats were cuckoo.
To be able to make a living, jazz musicians were playing constantly. Two or three sets a night in clubs, seven days a week, plus session work during the day. It’s that age-old question: do you work a lot because you’re great, or are you great because you work a lot?
Point is, there wasn’t much sleep involved, and they were playing many, many hours a day. So when they went into the studio, things moved fast.
Back then, recording studios were owned by labels. Everything was a lot more rigid than now. In my early days, I’ve done many twelve-hour sessions at night with rappers. You end up exhausted, with only a couple of sentences worth of material. Back then, sessions worked in three-hour increments, 9AM, 12PM and 3 PM. What you were tracking didn’t affect the studio time allowed. You could record a singer-songwriter, a big band or a full orchestra in these three hours slots.
Jazz acts, small combos or big bands alike, would record albums in a single day, sometimes two. I know. These days, particularly in pop music, it’s not uncommon to spend two years in the production stage.
What’s the catch here? Where’s the magic bullet? It’s simple, really. As I said, these cats were playing day and night. They were at the top of their game. They knew how to play together. They knew how to balance, without any external equipment.
In other words, when they got to the studio, they were ready.
They only had to play the tunes. They’d listen back, and re-do a take if they weren’t happy with it. Rarely did they do more than three for a song, though. They didn’t need to, and studio time was expensive. If you weren’t able to cut the tune live on the floor in a couple of takes, you had no business being in the room in the first place.
Engineering was also different back then. Setups were simpler. There were fewer microphones to install, no outboard gear to mess with. You’d plug the mics into the console, get some sounds and create a balance that worked right there and then. No “we’ll fix it in post” mindset. It had to sound great on the spot.
After all, you were making a record now, not tomorrow.
Engineers had a documentary approach to recording music, especially in jazz. You were there to capture a moment. Not to distort it and edit it and make it all perfect later down the road. No. Your job was to capture the magic happening in the live room, on the other side of the glass.
If you look at the liner notes of many jazz records of that era, you’ll see things like “recorded on April 4th, 1947”. That tune that you listened to many times was tracked that day. Not the fifth, not the third. The fourth. And there’s a good chance the version from the fifth would have been quite different indeed. A bad gig on the night of the fourth, or someone’s hangover. Someone’s in a bad mood, or has a train to catch to Chicago for a date, and just like that, the atmosphere changes.
It might also be raining that day, or be extra hot, and the recording gear doesn’t work on its nominal level. All of a sudden, everything sounds different.
The way we make records nowadays couldn’t possibly be more different than this.
I wasn’t born when records were still made like that, but I miss it very much. We could all benefit from trying to bring some of these methods back in our process today.
I know I do. Whenever I’m working with a band, I always make them lay down the basic tracks together in a room. I use the smallest amount of editing possible to make it work. I pick the best take and then change the few things that are subpar. Some people edit vocals syllable by syllable.
Might as well say it: I won’t do that for you, for any kind of money.
While there’s no way we could go back to the way music was made in the fifties, the mindset is eye-opening. Capturing a moment. This is all I aim to do. Sure, sometimes you get the urge to go crazy and edit it all very tight to the grid. And sometimes, it would be the right decision. But it shouldn’t be the default setting.
Music made by humans needs to sound human.
I cannot connect with a freaking robot. We all fuck up. The mistakes are endearing. They are the most relatable part. So leave some of them in. Capture a moment.
But then again, what do I know…
*****
Like what you read? Buy me a coffee!