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My Love Supreme / Homage to John Coltrane
Perhaps my best jazz track ever. Inspired by Coltrane’s masterwork A Love Supreme, my bass line employs a slightly different figure, but you'll surely recognize it’s origin.
This is a long track. 12:00. The saxes come in around 6:00 when the first six minutes are repeated adding three saxophonist tracks. 1/Sensual Sax 2/Sensual Sax transposed down an octave 3/iFretless Sax, layering soprano, bari saxes plus bass clarinet. I was really a bit stunned at how the saxes reinterpreted the piano lines of the first six minutes. Hardly recognizable as the same tune!
The bass is iFretless. Two drum tracks: Soft Drummer and (using the SoftDrummer midi track) a Micrologue hip hop drum kit. A single, unembellished track of Ravenscroft Piano (proving to me, once again, that it is a fabulous software rendering.
Used Harmonic Exciter on the Sax tracks. Very helpful. That was about it except for Waves UltraMax on a couple of parts. No problems mixing this in Cubasis. Sensual Sax is very stable.
Please trim the bass to your taste. It works great on my Roland hps, but a little shallow on the old Apple ear buddies. I hope you dig this one. It made me remember why I became a jazz player.
Comments
Sorry. I can't place the bass figure. Slip us a clue.
I'm only getting some hints at "Lullaby of Birdland" in the early solo fragments.
I like the spare linear approach to the solo lines. You always seem to find new paths
avoiding the well worn options.
This is most excellent LL. I love the vibe. Your playing is beautiful. The mix sounds good too. Quality.
Hi @McD, haha, I could just as easily made it a homage to John Lewis. It is more in keeping with Lewis’ paucity and clarity in the simple linear line. My rendering does not utilize fast scale playing lot Coltrane. It is more of a tribute to his note to note feeling and enclosing a sax sound in piano notes (which is why, IMO, the repition of the piano part works so well as a sax line. Listen at 3:37 and 5:37 for the Love Supreme tribute. Also, the first two bass notes, repeated in short order hint at it. It was not my conscious intention to channel ALS, but upon hearing it back it was undeniable (to me)
Thanks @gusgranite, always happy when you listen. Glad you liked it.
Btw, I hope @Janosax will give this a listen. I think this is my best fake sax sound yet. Also that the piano line functioned equally well as a sax line, perhaps better. I would love to hear JSax play this!
@McD, I wrote this to a forum member and thought it might be helpful in this discussion as welll...
“The whole “structure” concept repeats again and again with my stuff. McD has often chided me about the seeming lack thereof. There is not much theoretical support in what I am doing. I am truly some minor league savant when it comes to improvising. @JanKun asked me recently about substitutions, for example. I directed him to others for better informed than I. . If you asked me what is a good substitution of Cm7 flat5 I would respond “Anything!’ I think the best answer about structure in my playing is that it is embedded deeply in the guise of a straight ahead linear line accessed from a nonlinear source (a paradox is always good to clarify/muddy the waters!) The “structure”, if you can call it that, emerges (even to me) upon repeated listening. Remembering what comes next, or hearing the now familiar is a kind of structure the brain imposes since it longs for the familiar and predictable. Training myself to let go of any imposed and preconceived structure was central to Connie’s teaching. The definitive quote of hers when I asked “If I play something I like, should I repeat it.?” Her answer: “ANYTHING BUT!”. That has organized, defined and structured my playing for almost fifty years. And it is why my stuff is still full of musical surprise for me. I hope that helps in some way,
I told McD that My Love Supreme could as easily been a tribute to John Lewis. When I was in my late teens I only wanted to play super fast jazz lines (like Coltrane). But in my mid twenties I had an increasing appreciation for what Lewis could do with the fewest of notes. That became a new, and more difficult goal. Also, Lewis (and Coltrane) had remarkable note-to-note feeling. Piano, as you of course know, is rather limited when it comes to playing a single note with feeling. However, Lewis, and others, somehow broke thru this sound barrier. There is depth, gravitas and rich feeling for them in the playing of each individual note. With My Love Supreme, I attempted to do the same (tho not as a preconceived goal). It is just a part of my playing now, to whatever degree it is accessed.” (Self quoting now... sheer pomposity!)
@LinearLineman: Thank you for the extra details. I can see why I didn't get the reference. For me "A Love Supreme" is a rhythmic ostinato in the bass. For you the intervals are enough to hear a tribute. Linear line's are essentially sequences of intervals so you have this
fine tuned sense of interval that only works for me if the rhythms match more closely.
On the subject of musical analysis: Have you listened to any examples of tunes re-generated using negative harmony? The rhythms and (negative) intervals are preserved but major becomes minor like music passed through a mirror.
Listen to this cautiously because the moody, sombre Stairway to Heaven becomes a bright, shiny major key tune with an ascending bassline:
Or "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" made darker and sinister:
Every note is converted around the mirror line:
A <-> A#/Bb
A#/Bb <-> A
B <-> G#/Ab
C <-> G
C#/Db <-> Gb/F#
D <-> F
D#/Eb <-> E
------------------ MIRROR LINE for C Major to Minor -------------------
E <-> Eb/D#
F <-> D
F#/Gb <-> C#/Db
G <-> C
G#/Ab <-> B
A <-> A#/Bb
A#/Bb <-> A
@McD Interesting
Well, it is interesting, but that version of Somewhere will only sell in Bizarro world, no? Are we not as good looking when we look in the mirror?
Is there an app that accepts Hungarian Minor as an option?
Michael, that is an awesome piece of music that you put together here.
I am extremely sensitive to instruments timbre. I usually cannot stand to listen to "fake" real instruments, but it is so well thought that you kept me listening until the end. Beautiful piano, both playing and sound. How I wish you had session musicians on that one!
@jankun, good to hear from you! Thank you very much for listening and liking this track. Sometimes I wish for Kontakt libraries and more acumen on an MPE, but they are still fake as you rightly say. Aside from piano, bass and sometimes drum sounds, which are pretty good, I have tried to stop hearing acoustic "fakes" as. real instruments but, instead, just think of them as synthesized (tho sampled) sounds. It helps a bit. If I could engineer the effects better I think the Sax part could be deeper, but still it is not a real Sax section. And thanks for hanging in till the end. 12 minutes is a bit of a chunk of anyone's free time!
Re the session musicians.... not possible for me, I am afraid. I am not able to replay my stuff live, and, as you know, it is improvised without a thought, which makes it more and less impressive at the same time!
I guess a solfeggist (?) could transcribe it and cats could play it. That would be cool, indeed. But it is enough for me to flash like lightning and be gone forever. It's the thrill, after all.
Are each track completely improvised in one take? If so, " chapeau bas, maestro!"😉
Lol @JanKun. It's all a trick! There is just one track to this plus the drums (x2). The midi track was split before recording into two separate tracks (bass and midtreble) using MidiTools keyzone splitter. It was interesting to me that even tho the Saxes were just repeating the midi piano data of the midtreble midi track that it sounded related but completely different than the piano part.
Part of the magic of midi, I guess.