The Improvisation of Tubby Hayes in 'The New York Sessions'

<p>Tubby (Edward Brian) Hayes; prodigious self taught multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso tenor saxophone player has been proclaimed by some to be the best saxophonist that Britain has ever produced: "Indisputably the most accomplished and characterful British jazzman of his generation." His career, although cut short (he died undergoing treatment for a heart condition in June 1973, aged 38) was perpetually intense, incredibly prolific, and non-stop from his debut at the age of fifteen until his premature death. Hayes was proficient on many instruments; all saxophones, clarinet, flute, violin and vibraphone as well as being an accomplished bandleader and arranger. However it was his virtuoso tenor saxophone playing that found him acclaim. Although well known in his time and widely renowned for his ability, Hayes until recently has been little studied. It is only in the last few years that many critics and students of jazz have attempted to gain an understanding of Hayes' improvisational concept, which has been both praised as genius and criticised as directionless: Tubby Hayes has often been lionized as the greatest saxophonist Britain ever produced. He is a fascinating but problematical player. Having put together a big, rumbustious tone and a delivery that features sixteenth notes spilling impetuously out of the horn, Hayes often left a solo full of brilliant loose ends and ingenious runs that led nowhere in particular... However, Hayes, his legacy, and his inimitable style of tenor saxophone playing would truly leave their mark on the British Jazz community for generations to come. Dave Gelly summed up Hayes by saying that Tubby "played Cockney tenor - garrulous, pugnacious, never at a loss for a word and completely unstoppable."</p>

The Improvisation of Tubby Hayes in 'The New York Sessions'

<p>Tubby (Edward Brian) Hayes; prodigious self taught multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso tenor saxophone player has been proclaimed by some to be the best saxophonist that Britain has ever produced: "Indisputably the most accomplished and characterful British jazzman of his generation." His career, although cut short (he died undergoing treatment for a heart condition in June 1973, aged 38) was perpetually intense, incredibly prolific, and non-stop from his debut at the age of fifteen until his premature death. Hayes was proficient on many instruments; all saxophones, clarinet, flute, violin and vibraphone as well as being an accomplished bandleader and arranger. However it was his virtuoso tenor saxophone playing that found him acclaim. Although well known in his time and widely renowned for his ability, Hayes until recently has been little studied. It is only in the last few years that many critics and students of jazz have attempted to gain an understanding of Hayes' improvisational concept, which has been both praised as genius and criticised as directionless: Tubby Hayes has often been lionized as the greatest saxophonist Britain ever produced. He is a fascinating but problematical player. Having put together a big, rumbustious tone and a delivery that features sixteenth notes spilling impetuously out of the horn, Hayes often left a solo full of brilliant loose ends and ingenious runs that led nowhere in particular... However, Hayes, his legacy, and his inimitable style of tenor saxophone playing would truly leave their mark on the British Jazz community for generations to come. Dave Gelly summed up Hayes by saying that Tubby "played Cockney tenor - garrulous, pugnacious, never at a loss for a word and completely unstoppable."</p>

The Magnitude of the Frequency Jitter of Acoustic Waves Generated by Wind Instruments Is of Relevance for the Live Performance of Music

It is shown that a gold-plated device mounted on a tenor saxophone, forming a small bridge between the mouthpiece and the S-bow, can change two characteristics of the radiated sound: (1) the radiated acoustic energy of the harmonics with emission maxima around 1500–3000 Hz, which is slightly reduced for tones played in the lower register of the saxophone; (2) the frequency jitter of all tones in the regular and upper register of the saxophone show a two-fold increase. Through simulated phase-shifted superimpositions of the recorded waves, it is shown that the cancellation of acoustic energy due to antiphase superimposition is significantly reduced in recordings with the bridge. Simulations with artificially generated acoustic waves confirm that acoustic waves with a certain systematic jitter show less cancelling of the acoustic energy under a phase-shifted superimposition, compared to acoustic waves with no frequency jitter; thus, being beneficial for live performances in small halls with minimal acoustic optimization. The data further indicate that the occasionally hearable “rumble” of a wind instrument orchestra with instruments showing slight differences in the frequency of the harmonics might be reduced (or avoided), if the radiated acoustic waves have a systematic jitter of a certain magnitude.

A Conflux of Musical Logics: Memory, History and the Improvisative Music of SLANT

The author discusses SLANT, an improvisation-based project he coconceived, recorded and performed on tenor saxophone in duo with pianist and new music specialist Richard Valitutto. The project deconstructs sound worlds such as late nineteenth-century Romanticism, avant-garde/free jazz, microtonal spectralism and southeast European rural music. Drawing on George Lewis's systems of improvisative musicality, the article analyzes SLANT through the lens of sociomusical experience. The author shows how Afrological, Eurological and other systems of musicality participate together, manifesting in dialogical improvisative music-making that emerges from multiethnic and multicultural histories of improvised music.

Idiom Musikal Minangkabau dalam Komposisi Karawitan, Sebuah Analisis Konteks Adaptasi Musikal

The study aims at understanding and analyzing (a) understanding of the terminology of the composition and method of cultivation so that the terms of composition and arrangement can be understood contextually, (b) the mustering of Minangkabau musical idioms developed using Western elements and instruments to become a work of music; (c) Adapting Minangkabau karawitan to Western music concepts in a musical work in Karawitan ISI Padangpanjang. This research is field work, field includes observation, interview, and recording. Work in the laboratory includes processing, selecting, and filtering field data. The method used is qualitative method verivikatif begins with data collection both field, interview, and library then looking for theoretical approach to analyze the data that have been obtained. The results of the analysis show (a) The existence of inappropriate perception of the term compositional terms to be confused with the term arrangement. Cultivation works tend to be done collectively, not purely from the creativity of the owner of the work, but the work of the music on behalf of a person alone. (b) There is the use of Western musical elements and instruments in musical works in the form of harmonious harmonies, homophonic textures and polyphony and the use of flute instruments, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, tuba, guitar, bass guitar, keyboard and drum set. (c) Minangkabau Karawitan adapts to Western music in an academic context, in ISI Padangpanjang on musical forms.

"We Can Draw!": Toronto Improvisation, Abstract Expressionism, and the Artists’ Jazz Band

The Artists’ Jazz Band (AJB) was founded in 1962 in Toronto by abstract expressionist painters Graham Coughtry (trombone), Richard Gorman (double bass), Dennis Burton and Nobuo Kubota (alto saxophone), Robert Markle (tenor saxophone), and Gordon Rayner (drums). The AJB’s personnel shifted around this founding core, including pianist/trumpeter Michael Snow, electric bassist Jim Jones, guitarist Gerald McAdam, and saxophonist Bill Smith. They continued to perform into the 1990s. Few ensembles anywhere in the world so strongly foregrounded the relationship between abstract expressionism in the visual arts and jazz improvisation. Because of this, it is instructive to discuss the AJB’s music in terms of twentieth-century modernism, particularly in relation to the musicians’ immediate predecessors on the Toronto scene, Painters Eleven, and in the context of the automatistes in neighbouring Quebec, whose pioneering visual art also had ties to the free jazz of the 1960s and afterwards. The AJB’s introduction of modernist discourse—on the canvas and, by implication, in their music—influenced other improvisers associated with the AJB in the 1970s and 1980s. Modernist influences, stemming from the visual arts, encouraged a generation of musicians in Toronto to depart from more conventional “jazz” practices in order to pursue “free jazz,” free improvisation, and a host of performance possibilities.

Using Strange Attractors to Control Sound Processing in Live Electroacoustic Composition

This article explores the possibility of using chaotic attractors to control sound processing with software instruments in live electroacoustic composition. The practice-led investigation involves the Attractors Library, a collection of Max/MSP externals based on iterative mathematical equations representing nonlinear dynamical systems; Attractors Player, a Max/MSP patch that controls the attractors' performance and live processing; and the two compositions based on the software: Strange Attractions for flute, clarinet, horn, and live electronics, and Sabda Vidya No. 2 for flute, tenor saxophone, and live electronics. In the article I discuss some specific attractors' characteristics and their use in interactive composition, relying on the experience from the performances of these two compositions. The idea is to highlight the experience with these nonlinear systems and to encourage other composers to use them in their own works.

Editorial

The President of the USA and I have something in common: we play the saxophone. And having briefly heard Clinton play, I would say we are at roughly the same acceptable, though unmistakably amateur, standard. Nevertheless, we are no doubt both so attuned to the sound of the saxophone that it would not be easy to fool either of us into believing that a real instrument is being played if in reality the sound of the instrument had been electronically synthesized. Certain instruments are easier to synthesize than others. For instance, it is hard even for sensitive ears to distinguish between a genuine church organ and a church-organ sound coming out of a good synthesizer. This is partly because the sound quality of the organ is not dependent on the organist: a two-year-old child who presses an organ key achieves no better or worse sound quality with that key than the most gifted organist. On the other hand, a synthesized solo saxophone (like most synthesized instruments) tends to have a certain unnatural, mechanical quality which is difficult to pin-point but which to the saxophonist immediately rings false. It was therefore with astonishment that I recently listened to two solo saxophone pieces, one played on a real tenor saxophone by a top-flight jazz saxophonist, the other the result of some keyboard input and clever programming by computer scientists who may well have had only a rudimentary knowledge of music and perhaps no playing skills whatsoever. I was quite unable to say which of the two was synthesized even after repeated listenings. The fact is that the perceived perfection achieved by a professional saxophonist is not perfection at all but an amalgam of skill, flexible reactions and numerous little human errors, and provided that this skill, these reactions and these errors can be identified and quantified - clearly, they can - they can all be coded so that the result is perceived perfection. In short, perceived perfection in instrumental synthesis seems to be merely a matter of how long a programmer is willing to spend on fine-tuning the program code.DOI:10.1080/0968776940020201

The Metasaxophone: concept, implementation, and mapping strategies for a new computer music instrument

The Metasaxophone is an acoustic tenor saxophone retrofitted with an onboard computer microprocessor and an array of sensors that convert performance data into MIDI control messages. The instrument has additionally been outfitted with a unique microphone system that allows for detailed control of the amplified sound. While maintaining full acoustic functionality it is also a versatile MIDI controller and an electric instrument. A primary motivation behind the Metasaxophone is to put signal processing under direct expressive control of the performer. Through the combination of gestural and audio performance control, employing both discrete and continuous multilayered mapping strategies, the Metasaxophone can be adapted for a wide range of musical purposes. This paper explores the artistic and technical development of the instrument, as well as new conceptions of musical mappings arising from the enhanced interface.