Hi you all

Well I'm going to start posting the first series of jazz tunes that I've been writing since 2007. The accompaniments are all RT. I imported the accompaniments tracks in Garage Band and then recorded myself playing my themes and improvisations on tenor sax. That's mainly what I've been doing with BIAB since 2007 : accompaniments tracks to jazz standards and writing my own jazz themes. Can't say that I write progressive jazz. If I'd have to categorize it, I guess it's rather in a cool jazz vein. I try to explore different styles : songs in the path of Porter and Washington, blues, bossa, jazz waltz, ballads.

I've been studying (and still studying) classical clarinet for almost 20 years. Around 2005 I started to get interested in playing jazz. Tenor sax seemed to be the right instrument for me to play jazz. So in september 2006 I bought a tenor sax. I learned to play jazz by myself. Now I need to play both classical and jazz. Since my main activity in music is to compose, it seemed natural to try my hand at writing some jazz.

If some of you are interested in RT specifics, I'd have to check in detail. Usually I try and use the jazz styles as is, but some times I mix up a basic style with different real tracks.

I think the recordings are acceptable. Mostly, what I'd like are your impressions on the music and the playing. If you give me sound tips, don't give me complicated explanations. Don't get me wrong, it can only help to have the best recording possible, but I don't have the patience or the knowledge to make professional recordings like most people do around here. I really get lost in all the parameters that can be applied on a single recorded track, and I'm only working with Garage Band ! I mainly want to write and play. So I stayed basic. For those of you who know Garage Band : I chose “solo sax” to record myself and what they call a “lounge” sound for the general ambiance and normalized the sound when converting to mp3. So it doesn't sound, to my ears at least, like I recorded myself in my living room, in front of my MAC. I guess I'd need a real microphone in front of my sax, which I don't have.

That's as far as I went in “sound tweaking”. I did leave here and there some very small “glitches” (don't know how to call them). Seemed like they didn't interfere with the overall atmosphere of the tunes. All the few distortions, dissonances and sometimes “forced” sound, were done on purpose. On some tunes, when taking my breath before hitting a note, I could hear the “click” of the sax keys way too loud, so when I could, I erased a few of those. On some tunes I was wondering if the sax shouldn't be a bit louder, but then again sometimes I think it's ok.

The themes and improvisations were played in one take. I mean, not just once, but themes + improv always in one take. Since I try to be as accurate as possible when I play the in and out themes , I started over some tunes several times, mainly because some themes were not as I wanted them to sound. But I never workout an improv before playing. What I redid though, were some codas. Sometimes after starting over some tunes a couple of times (theme + improv) and if I seemed satisfied enough and missed the coda, I really didn't feel like redoing the whole tune. So some codas were directly re-recorded on a different track and pasted on the original.

I put a link to 5 audio files. If somebody is interested in seeing the lead sheets, there's also a link that contains the sheets (in concert pitch) to each tune. I use Overture for scoring everything I compose. This past month I recorded all I wrote up to now in jazz. I think it would be too much to put everything at the same time, so once a month, if people don't get bored, I'll put another link to 5 new tunes, without writing this much. That's about it. Hope I wasn't to long.

audio : http://www.box.net/shared/an9n9c1jtq

scores : http://www.box.net/shared/0c9oe3ou70

Best of all and hope your day is a nice one

Pierre

IMac OSX 10.6.5 / latest BIAB
vista BIAB 2008