If this topic illustrates nothing else,
may it illustrate that people HEAR differently.
I'm replying to SS's points to bring this disparity in hearing to the surface, not to argue the points.
We could each listen a hundred times and hear the same thing different ways.
Listen for yourselves and form your own conclusions.
Hopefully, having this simple record of disagreements when listening to the same clips will illustrate how differently we hear and evaluate one from the next. Again, that is the real point to chew on here.
Quote from: sonicsilver on Mar 07, 2017, 02:29AMHe's consistently late on "they're the modern stone-age family" after breathing. In fact, there's a few places where he's late after breathing.
No, sir. I do not hear that at all.
And having noticed on a second listen that the rhythm section has different feels happening amongst themselves -- who do you think he is late according to? the Drummer? The Bassist? This phrase in Delf's delivery is SPOT on with the ride cymbal of the drummer. It's relaxed and it surely swings. It swings through and through. Delf's time is flexible enough to collaborate with different members of the band at different times, which gives much more variety and challenge and adventure for him to negotiate. I wouldn't dare get on stage with a band like this, but Delfeayo welcomes this difference to be hashed out in motion on the bandstand, and he "officiates". Handling this would be unlivable tension for me, but perhaps musical tension (espeically over rhythmic timing) feels like home to him. It's a routine trademark of his touring bands, and it's no accident. As much JJ as Delfeayo has in him, and as much as JJ's rhythm sections were completely unified in time, this must be an intentional, aware, feature that Delfeayo is involving.
We can't agree on his lateness in the spots that you mentioned, and I simply can't hear it late like you do. Of course our definitions of swinging may not the same....
Quote from: sonicsilver on Mar 07, 2017, 02:29AMLittle things, but you wouldn't hear them from Carl Fontana.
In the Fontana clip, you also don't hear resonance of tone and command of the instrument at any semblance of mezzo forte or above, command of articulation nuance at mezzo forte and above, and you hear very minimal interaction with the rhythm section (no responsiveness or conversation going in any direction). It's a monologue. There's also severe shifts in momentum and flow. Maybe these, too, are "little things", but things you don't hear in the extended solos of JJ Turre, Al Grey, Wycliffe, Dease, etc...I mean - if these two clips (Delfeayo and Fontana) had to speak for each artist's viability playing Rochut Etudes....
I don't see any of the above to take away from Carl - his recording Heavyweights with Bobby Shew should be on all brass player's listening list, and as a matter of learning the influential styles of the instrument, a reasonable performance-level familiarity with the line of playing from Urbie-Carl-Watrous-Fedchock should be a matter of required method study for graduate jazz trombonists. There are still some gigs to be had, and some recording sessions to be paid for that apply that style. And I strongly believe graduate study should require a student achieve a performance standard with ALL commercially viable avenues of performance related to jazz.
Speaking of undergraduates -- I've been shocked at the minimal amount of resonance and tonal command of recent undergraduates. If you are in college as a jazz major, and you aren't cultivating enough sound to play traditionally in a brass band, modern 3 piece horn section (with sax and trumpet), big band, and in some cities - a salsa band, then you need a new teacher, and your jazz degree is not preparing you for a broad jazz/freelance career. It's rough when a cat with a degree can't hold down My Girl on a wedding gig....
Quote from: sonicsilver on Mar 07, 2017, 02:29AM
...how much of the material takes the easy option of blues scale over the A section rather than getting hold of the actual changes...
First of all, he's playing THE blues.
It's not a scale.
Nor is it performed here like a scale (which is a fairly undergraduate thing to do, and why sounding like you had a degree was so often spoken of as a negative among blues-saavy musicians of ANY genre across the last 40 years).
And your notion of the blues being an easy option...may I again refer you back to the average undergraduate's conception of playing the blues?
Oh wait -- speaking of the blues scale...In the clip you posted of Fontana on Rhythm changes, at 1:31, starting on the cracked A-flat, we find Carl taking the option of applying "blueness" across half a chorus - in fact coming very close to repeating the whole 8 bar sequence back to back...did you hear that?
Quote from: sonicsilver on Mar 07, 2017, 02:29AM
Someone made the comparison with Wycliffe Gordon and I think it's a good one. Wycliffe's command of the instrument, including New Orleans style techniques, is way beyond Delfeayo's and he seems to have an endless stream of crazy motifs and lines. Here he is soloing over the same changes at 2:22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH5GIbu7M6I I think we can all hear that that's a different level of playing, can't we?
We can all hear that's a different level of playing?
Depends on who's listening. I can't hear with your ears, and you certainly aren't hearing with mine.
First of all -- this whole clip of artist A vs clip if artist B approach is shallow to begin with. In Wycliffe's clip, yes there's deft command of the horn, primarily espoused in sweeps including the high register and multiple tonguing, and in a great milieu of sounds being created. But there is very little linear, be-bop rooted, JJ-Curtis-Slide represented.
Now, that's not a problem to me - (I LISTEN TO LOUIS ARMSTRONG for enjoyment.)
But let's say I'm Elvin Jones, who leads a post-bop jazz combo. Can you see that I would be struggling if I called a horn player who played with the swing, riff based phrasing that Wycliffe uses here in this particular clip? I mean - Coltrane could unpack a descent from the top of the horn to the bottom out over two minutes! The fact that Wycliffe can get from high F to low Bb in a split second would mean very little on Elvin's bandstand, and Delf's short repeated notes would actually provide an intensity that Elvin could do something with. I mean, that's how Elvin and Delfeayo's performances together sound to me.
Have you heard them together?
Even as I ask that, I realize:
my, how people HEAR differently.
I remember taking an arranging class with Cecil Bridgewater, and cats came in trying to write in the funk and soul idiom. Cecil played a recording of an alto sax player for the class, and half the class started tearing up the guys's intonation, time, tone, blues dependance, etc...and one guy said he sounded like a fifth grade David Sanborn. Meanwhile those of us who could hear and relate to what the cat was gettin' said were shocked, because we knew we were hearing a BAD MF, a legendary player, and we knew it was Hank Crawford. The uninformed had to shut up when Cecil read one of the many quotes where Sanborn cited Crawford as a great, and said without Hank Crawford, there would be no Sanborn. And shut up they did, despite not HEARING any differently.
I also had a professor that would grade compositions and arrangements like this: Does it sound like you wanted it to sound? If yes, then you get an A. (Even if the piece was so weak it wouldn't have passed for good music of any genre.) That professor had figured out that he was there to equip seekers with arranging solutions, but he could not make students HEAR any different (or better) than who they were and what they were ready to tackle. I remember watching him sit through AWFUL performances, and gleefully ask at the end, "Is that what you wanted it to sound like?" And the student was like, "yeah, that was cool, I think." "A-plus, and Congratulations," he'd say.
No feedback on the What A Wonderful World clip?
Did you hear it? Did you hear the humbling, lengthy applause after? I'm not making any arguments, I'm just wondering if you heard it. Does that cause you at all to question what you might be missing if you hear nothing special in this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN--yTnS45Q
At near 400,000 views - again, I'd recommend to the aspiring trombonist - check this out. There's a reason people come back to listen to you again and again, and this performance is a classic. A classic to me is a piece of music that gets better on repeated listening.
And if you can't hear anything worthwhile in this performance, then once again - people hear very differently.
I can't help but remember what the veterans used to say to a critic who popped up with a negative critique on what many heard as great playing:
"Yeah, but yo' lady sho' like it tho."
To each his own...
(Ears that is...)