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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: milo@mvuxi.att.COM
Subject: REVIEW: Jazz Through MIDI
Message-ID: <1992Sep17.172037.6919@menudo.uh.edu>
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.audio
Keywords: jazz, MIDI, music, sequence, commercial
Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Nntp-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Reply-To: milo@mvuxi.att.COM
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1992 17:20:37 GMT
PRODUCT NAME
JAZZ: Introducing Jazz Through MIDI
Volume 1, version 2.0
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
New Sound Music bills "Jazz Through MIDI" (JTM) as "A New Approach
to Learning Jazz Improvisation Using Your MIDI Sequencer!" It is
actually a series of 60 sequences of jazz solos with rhythm
accompaniment. The JTM manual, in addition to providing "lead
sheets" of all the solos and chord progressions, provides several
pages of jazz improvisation hints and guidelines. The manual states
that it is usable by beginners through advanced jazz improvisers.
It is, but I'll add my thoughts on that topic later.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: New Sound Music
Address: P.O.Box 37363
Oak Park MI 48237
Telephone: (313)355-3643
LIST PRICE
US $45.95
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
A multi-timbral synthesizer setup is required, as this software
relies upon piano, bass, and drum sounds. I suppose it is possible,
with considerable effort, to use this software with your Amiga's
internal sounds (this would entail editing the sequence to re-map
sounds, especially the drum sounds). A drum machine and hardware
sequencer are not necessary (as long as your synth can play the drum
sounds and you have a software sequencer), but can be used. All
told, you'll probably need at least 10-voice polyphony and 4 timbres
(4 voices for drums, 4 for piano, 1 for bass, and 1 for lead). More
polyphony wouldn't hurt.
SOFTWARE
It is necessary to have a sequencer that understands Type 1 Standard
MIDI Files. JTM is delivered in other formats, however, such as Mac,
IBM, Atari and selected hardware sequencer formats. Call New Sound
Music for details.
COPY PROTECTION
The disk is not copy-protected, and the files are easily copied to a
hard disk.
REVIEW
As stated above, JTM is a series of 60 jazz solos with rhythm
accompaniment, organized into MIDI sequences. JTM comes in a
variety of formats, but my version is a set of Type 1 Standard MIDI
Files on an Amiga disk. I have an Amiga 2000 (soon to be an A3000)
and Dr. T's Tiger Cub. My synth is a Korg M1.
It is easier for me to refer to the 60 solos as separate sequences,
each 4, 8, 12, or 16 bars long, even though they are delivered
concatenated into four Standard MIDI files. In each file, the
sequences are separated by 8 beats (two bars of bass drum thumps).
Each MIDI file, or each sequence, is four tracks: drums are assigned
to track/channel 1, piano to track/channel 2, bass to track/channel
3, and the lead voice to track/channel 4. Your sequencer will
probably let you change track and MIDI channel assignments.
From there, your sequencer takes over: load one of the Standard
MIDI Files into your sequencer, figure out which sequence you want
to play, and delete the parts of the file that come before and after
that particular sequence. All of this was pretty straightforward in
my copy of Tiger Cub, but your mileage may vary. Set it to loop,
and hit "play", and listen to a jazz quartet jam non-stop.
The 60 sequences come as many different styles and progressions:
ii-V-I in a swing style, ii-V-I swing with turnarounds, ii-V-I
latin, 12-bar blues, and over 20 sequences in the style of such
folks as McCoy Tyner, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Dizzy
Gillespie, John Coltrane, Bird, and others. Those sequences can be
best described as fragments of jazz standards. For example, one of
the John Coltrane sequences is like an excerpt of him playing "Giant
Steps" (I don't think the sequence is the complete chorus, and I
don't know if it is a transcription of his solo from the original
recording).
The sequences are written in different keys (for example, not all of
the ii-V-I sequences are Dm7-G7-CMaj7), but you can always use your
sequencer to transpose the non-drum tracks.
The manual (40 pages, spiral-bound) provides a few details for
specific setups, such as loading certain formats into hardware
sequencers or timing problems with A1000 (relating to older Dr. T
sequencers), and also provides the specifics for MIDI program
mapping. The manual also provides drum note mappings, which happens
to conform to Roland's standard. A quick note on this drum mapping
stuff: you need to have a drum machine which knows these mappings,
be able to configure your drums to meet those mappings, or edit the
note values in the sequence. Since all the drum sounds are on one
track, you'll probably want to avoid this latter choice.
The manual has a supposed "lead sheet" of every solo, that has the
solo and chord progressions notated, the style, a suggested tempo,
and a suggested lead voice (mostly vibes or alto sax).
The manual also contains about 15 pages of guidelines on topics such
as practice suggestions, scales, chord/scale mappings and
substitutions, ii-V-I progressions, turnarounds, voicings, walking
bass, modal tunes, and comping. With all of that covered in 15
pages, you can imagine that none of it is covered in any great
detail.
So, how is JTM meant to be used? Well, you can use it for practicing
jazz stuff. Keyboardists can mute the piano part and practice
comping, or perhaps practice their left-hand walking bass. Bass
players could work on their lines. A horn player can mute the solo
line, and practice over the progression. You could also use these
sequences to create larger works. Since I wouldn't even know how to
begin to create an interesting drum groove, I suspect that I'll start
out by modifying the groove in these sequences. You could work on
analyzing the solos. Maybe you could try something really tedious
like transcribing these lead lines (your sequencer will slow things
down without changing pitch... an advantage over tape decks). There
are probably lots of other ideas as well.
LIKES AND DISLIKES
Any time I listen to sequenced jazz, I think the same thing:
swing quantization sometimes feels unnatural. That's mostly
because swing eighths aren't really dotted-eighth/sixteenth or
quarter/eighth triplets. Sometimes it can be either, sometimes
it's neither. It depends on a few different factors, including
style and tempo. For example, some of the extremely fast Charlie
Parker solos, e.g. Ko-Ko, approach even eighths. Find some early
swing from the 1920's and you'll probably find exaggerated
dotted-eighth/sixteenths.
Where all this is leading is that "swing" is not easily quantized
into a sequence, and will tend to sound unnatural when the tempos
of a sequence are varied too much. JTM, it appears, quantizes the
"swing eighths" into a triplet feel, which is OK, but it won't
always do. The user can always tweak the sequences for a better
feel. The other styles that are supplied, such as the latin, don't
necessarily fall into this quantization trap, and feel quite natural.
Another dislike... the manual. I'm a firm believer that a manual can
make or break a program, and I think the manual supplied with this
program is a little weak. Not so much on content, but rather
presentation. It is a little amateurish: it looks as if the author
dashed off a copy on a NLQ dot-matrix printer, and then photocopied
it to make multiple copies of the manual. Also, there are
transcriptions of all the solos in the sequences, with chord changes
noted, but these are all crammed together in the manual, and it is
difficult to see where one solo stops, and the next starts. I would
have liked to see some white space in between staves.
The jazz improvisation guidelines provided in the manual can be
pretty useful, especially if the user has not studied jazz theory.
Most experienced musicians