Quote:

Thanks for your opinion Mac. I will make the suggestion but I could imagine that the company would prefer to unload the soloist tracks seeing as how they (hopefully) paid the musicans to make them.



I've been a happy camper with pgmusic products for over a decade now. In all that time, I've always had simpy GREAT response from PGMusic Sales, Support and Service.

This. Company. IS. Different.

They don't approach marketing with that "unload" philosophy.

And I guarantee they pay the musicians.

PGMusic staff are mostly musicians, BTW. And they boast some damn good ones up there, too. Peter Gannon's brother, Oliver Gannon, who does the Styles dept. at pgmusic, is also Canada's leading Jazz Guitarist. Cat can play. Miles Black is in there, too. Bad cat. Trust me on that, Miles can blow some piano in a whole lot of different styles, perfectly every time. Backbeat is understood at PGMusic. Don't expect that at Cakewalk's Twelvetone Systems, 'k?

Quote:

I'm afraid I can't agree that any student would benefit from a study of the soloist real tracks. Concentrating on a lick-based solo ESPECIALLY on one randomly generated by computer is focusing on "Jazz" at its most perverse. At first listening some of the real track solo creations almost seem to make sense but its the kind of sense one hears from badly put together Musak. Students deserve the best models, not hash served up by butchering the meanderings of some studio hack.



In some cases, I can agree about that. Sometimes, though, I've had BIAB generate something interesting and useful, if not as an entire solo, which has happened from time to time, an interesting approach to a change that I'll say to myself, "lemme grab that" -- and then incorporate into a fuller solo at some time once that particular device is learned and available on my personal pallette.

This is new technology in its infancy. I expect to see and hear improvements as time marches on.

Quote:

That said (admittedly a bit harshly but there you go) I can imagine the real track * rhythm backgrounds * would make a nice tool for my students.



Well, if I wanted to do so, being a rather skilled old Trumpeter, Keyboard and Guitar player, i could take the same position regarding what you call the, "rhythm backgrounds". BB can only get so close to the kind of groove Barney Kessel could lay down. And I could go on forever about the constant need for more Piano Comping in jazz styles that yields the kind of variety that a Live Player can bring to the process. But we also have to deal with the technology *as it exists today* -- which rules out the program being able to *hear us play* and respond to that at the same time as a live player can do. So I take BIAB for what it is and don't focus on what it isn't. My personal private students have learned quite a bit from the lesson mp3s and drills I've worked up using BIAB. Matter of fact, the program pays for itself here in just that instance, although I use it for a lot more, production work of jingles, underscoring, industrial musics, arrangement of parts and layouts, the harmony generator alone and its ability to quickly generate section parts for bigband has saved many and hour (and pencil point!) here over the way I originally had to do arrangements. The BATS for the saxes is now a matter of a button push. Export over to Sibelius and a bit of human intervention, note edit and cleanup and its on to the bone parts. That is like a 90% reduction in time for this old arranger.

Quote:

I myself practiced many years ago with Music Minus One play-alongs which featured entire performances from some of the great mainstream players (Hank Jones, Osie Johnson, Barry Gilbraith, Milt Hinton etc.).



Man, so did I. MMO was good stuff when I needed it. Aebersold is good too, but a lot more "generic" in the sense that you seem to want.

You know, back in the sixties, when I was kid with the MMO albums under one arm and the trumpet case under the other, I recall some musicians who were older than me poo-pooing the use of MMO records and saying much the same as you are saying here about BIAB. Hmm. One in particular was upset because he wanted them to sell 45's with single songs on them so he wouldn't have to purchase other songs he already knew or had no interest in. He also viewed the MMO marketing as a conspiracy against him personally. Maybe it had more to do with the cost of toolup to cut 45's or maybe the company had done a market study and the demographics showed that 45's for the purpose would be the kiss of financial death or maybe it just never came up. So what? I did notice that he wanted to borrow my MMO records so he could record some tracks. For free. THAT really supports other artists, right?


Quote:

However with the advent of real tracks BIAB has evolved into a very acceptable comping tool which can accommodate different keys, tempos and rhythms. Unfortunately Hank, Osie and company were unable to record every song ever written in every key. If they had, I think its self evident that playing with those recordings would be far superior to practicing with music generated by a machine, no matter how closely that machine approximates human performance.



i very soon tired of the same arrangement behind my solo practice every time, as the MMO and Aebersold records do. BIAB generates a slightly different accompaniment every time the song is loaded. Depending on the Style chosen, that alone is a VERY refreshing thang. And it really does help the student of improvisation to have that happen or they get stuck in the same thing pretty quickly and may not even realize that is taking place. The Aebersold Soloist. That kid with a Realbook under the arm, ready for open night, but must have the backing played pretty much like the record. And if the kid puts that Realbook up on a stand, well, this pianist wants ta puke. Go home and learn the song, kid. Internalize it. Play it in all keys around the circle until you can nail that suckah in yo' sleep. Because we cut heads here.

Cherokee in Db is up next. I've always wanted to hear Clifford's famous solo on a 'bone, how bad are ya?


--Mac

PGmusic FAQs, Tutorials and Updates! click here

You must be Audiominds.
www.audiominds.com