Saturday Transcription

A transcription of Miles' solo on Victor Feldman's Joshua from the record Seven Steps to Heaven with George Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.

Living Room Recording Comparisons

Here's a snippet of a trio recording I did in my living in a really low tech way: one mic on me, one on the tenor (Ben) and two mics on the drums (Dylan).  No isolation, no baffles, no overdubs, no ulterior motives.  What?  You can record that way?

Anyhoo, I made 2 clips, each one comparing what I did to several tenor/bass/drums trio recordings that I like.  Bonus points if you can guess the other recordings.

Here's the first one:

And here's the second:

Did I mention that all of the mics were either modded or built by me?

Another tune

On the Sounds page is another tune I wrote  which was recorded at the same session as this one.

Lincecum No Hitter and Mic Samples

On the Sounds page is a tune I wrote which I recorded using my mics.  The k-47 on flute and tenor, the K-7 on bass and the two tube mics on drums.  Nothing was amplified and there was no isolation, just acoustic instruments and the room.  Ben Herod on sax and flute, Dylan Stokes on drums.

Oh Yeah, this too.

Alan Felix Video

Special thanks to John Mount for shooting some video at Pierce Winery of the Alan Felix Quartet.  Check it out at the video page.

Saturday Transcription(s)

One tune, three trumpet solos 

(only 2 today, the 3rd one is on its way).  

Here are two trumpet greats: Chet Baker and Donald Byrd (Kenny Dorham's solo to follow) playing over one of my favorite ballads, "My Ideal".  Chet's is from 1954's Chet Baker Sings featuring Russ Freeman, James Bond and Larence Marable.  The second version is from Donald Byrd's 1967 album Slow Drag, featuring Sonny Red, Cedar Walton, Walter Booker and Billy Higgins (highly recommended).  As an aside, anything with Cedar Walton and Billy Higgins together is worth buying.  If Sam Jones is also on it, triply so.

DIY Tube Microphone Part 3

Next is drilling the enclosure and wiring up the PSU boards.

On the left is the power switch, below that is an LED to indicate power.  On the right top is the 5 pin XLR which goes to the mic and below it is the 3 pin XLR output to the preamp.  On the far right you can see the audio transformer.  I scored a couple of vintage Jensens on Ebay.

I put a mic on each side of the box with a separate power switch and light for each mic.

Front of PSU

Back of PSU

I also had to make some tube mic cables.  Since tube mics require their own power supply, a regular 3 pin XLR won't cut it.  These require 5 pin.  I made them out of star quad cable.  See this post about making cables.

 How do they sound?   At first, they didn't work, but I had some conversations with the good folks at the Yahoo mic builders group, (especially Ricardo) and I was able to diagnose the problem and fix it.  It had to do with the wiring of the tubes in the microphone.

After I got them working, they sounded great except for  some minor hum or buzzing, which was really annoying.  I solved that problem by shortening all of the wiring in the PSU, keeping the audio cables well separated from the AC lines and some general clean up.  Result:  zero noise, pure tube goodness.

I am going to use these to record drums, hoping to get some vintage RVG drum sounds.  I will post something when I have it.

Update: see Sounds page.  The drums were recorded using these mics.

DIY Tube Microphone part 2

The build involves taking a cheap Chinese condenser and stripping it of everything except the case and the capsule:  All components were stripped off of the PCB and the 3-prong XLR was removed, leaving basically a hollow tube with a mic capsule on the end.  A 5-pin XLR is retrofitted into the end of the capsule and wired up directly up to the tube leads.  The original chassis ground of the mic is wired to pin 3 as per the schematic.

Not my prettiest work, but functional.

  By the way, check out these NOS tubes I scored on Evilbay:

RCA 5840

I used some perfboard to build the boards for the power supply. These are wired up just like the schematic.  Lots of good advice on the tape op message board and groupdiy.com .  This guy did this same build, but has quite a bit more skill than me.

Power supply boards front

Power supply boards back

More to come.

DIY Tube Microphone Part 1

My most ambitious mic project yet.  David Royer of Royer microphone fame published an article in Tape-Op magazine in 2003 about building a tube microphone from a cheap Chinese pencil condenser.  Here is the schematic for the build:

I thought I'd try to build one.  And, since I am definitely not an obsessive nut job, I figured if I'm going to build one, why not build two of them.  Here is some documentation of it.  I left out the hair pulling and cussing.  Fill that in wherever you see fit.

Saturday Transcription

Wayne Shorter's solo on "Witch Hunt" from one of my all time favorite albums, Speak No Evil released in 1964.  This music is 50 years old and still defines what is modern.  Stellar group featuring Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Elvin Jones.  Do I have to ask if you own it?

Saturday Transcription

Miles Davis' solo from the 1954 recording of "Solar", from the album Walkin'.  You have the recording, right?   Go get it.  I'll wait. 

Interesting fact:  Miles Davis is probably not the composer.  There is a recording of guitarist Chuck Wayne performing the melody from 1946.  Get the details here.  I'm not accusing anyone of anything.  Jazz journalist Marc Myers writes this on his site:

...who knows how Davis came to the melody line in the first place. For all we know, Wayne was whistling it in the men's room at  Birdland while Davis was in there washing up.

However, if you asked Bill Evans about "Blue in Green", you might get a different angle...

Another Mic Mod

Same cheap Chinese condenser (MXL 990), this time I used a different capsule, an Rk-7, also purchased from Microphone-Parts.com.  It's supposed to give a more vintage 47 type sound.  I'm looking forward to trying it out on the ole doghizzle (through a tube preamp).

Saturday Transcription

As promised, a transcription from Kenny Dorham's Quiet Kenny album.  This is Kenny's solo on I Had the Craziest Dream by Harry Warren.   Here is the music:

Saturday Transcription

A classic from Prez:  his Lady Be Good solo from the Count Basie small group recordings.  No further discussion necessary.

Mean Tone Scale

The next evolution from the Just Scale was an attempt to solve the problem of uneven perfect fifths, while maintaining the just major thirds.  This was accomplished at the expense of the Pythagorean perfect fifth and is called the Mean Tone Scale.  The idea is to keep all three major thirds: C to E, F to A and G to B at a 5:4 ratio, make all of the major seconds equal and then make the minor seconds so the math works out (i.e. everything fits in one octave.)

Some Harmonic Problems with Just Intonation

We noticed in the last Just Intonation Post that we encounter 2 different perfect fifths: between C to G, E to B and  G to D are all the Pythagorean ratio of 3:2, but the perfect fifth from D to A is 40:27, or one syntonic comma flatter than 3:2.  This leads to some problems with basic harmony.  If we only consider I, IV and V, everything works out fine, but as soon as we add some more interesting chords to the mix, namely ii, iii and vi minor triads, we encounter a phenomenon known as drift.

Saturday Transcription

OK, busy week, so just one chorus of a really good solo, Charlie Rouse on Green Chimneys.  Tons of motivic development and improv based around the melody.  I guess after playing with Monk for like a million years you'd have to develop some of that.  I'll get back to ya with the other choruses.

Saturday Transcription

I am going to try to stick to this schedule and make this a weekly thing.  Just so you don't think I only work on tenor solos (although I do seem to a lot), here is a solo from the great trumpet player Blue Mitchell.  It's the tune Strollin' from the Horace Silver record Horace-Scope.  If you don't have this record, go buy it now, then come back and finish reading this.

Just Intonation, part II

In the last section, we noticed that the Just Major Third, 5:4, is one syntonic comma (81:80) flatter than the Pythagorean Major Third (81:64).  Observe that the 3 notes that differ between the two scales are the major third, the Major Sixth (5:3 for Just vs. 27:16 for Pythagorean) and the Major seventh (15:8 for Just and 243:128 for Pythagorean).  If we perform the division, we notice that each of the Just Intervals is exactly one syntonic comma (81:80) flatter than its Pythagorean counterpart.  This gives rise to some new issues.

MXL 990 Mod

I got a good deal on a cheap Chinese mic and upgraded using parts and a new capsule from Microphone Parts.  The capsule is an RK-47.  The mod went super quickly and I'm really happy with the results.  Matt at Microphone Parts is super easy to work with and I received the parts 2 days afer I placed my order. 

First some photos:

Front view

 

Back view

 I am eventually going to do a head-to-head with a stock MXL 990, but for now, here is a clip of me playing my bass recorded by the modded mic followed by Paul Chambers playing through what I assume is a tube U-47, just for comparison.  By the way, the drummer on my chorus is Billy Jones and on PC's it's Roy Haynes.

Saturday Transcription

Mingus Ah Um is one of those records to recommend to people that want to get into jazz and don't know what to listen to.  I remember when I first discovered this record when I was in High School.  It blew me away.  Everything about it is off the hook.

Anyway, one of the things on this record that knocked me out was the tenor break which starts the song Open Letter to Duke.  Once I found out who this sax player was (Booker Ervin) I went out and bought everything I could find from him.  To me, his best albums as a leader feature the rhythm section of Jaki Byard, Richard Davis and Alan Dawson (The Freedom Book and The Space Book, but The Song Book, which replaced Byard with Tommy Flanagan is pretty killing as well.)  Also check out Tex Book Tenor, which features Kenny Barron, Woody Shaw, Billy Higgins and a bass player I never heard of named Jan Arnet.

Just Intonation, part I

The next evolution after Pythagorean Tuning came into common practice sometime around the fifteenth century.  Before the Renaissance, chords other than fifths weren't played much and intervals were thought of as melodic (played in succession) rather than harmonic (played simultaneously).

One of the major artistic changes which occurred during the Renaissance is that music evolved to be polyphonic and harmonic intervals such major and minor thirds and sixths became common.  To understand how the scale evolved, let's go back to the overtone series.  Recall, the first overtone or harmonic is given by a frequency of 2:1 with the fundamental and produces and octave.  The second is 3:1 and produces an octave plus a fifth, which we reduced to 3:2 to keep it within an octave of the fundamental.  These are the only ratios required to complete the Pythagorean Scale.  The next harmonic is 4:1.  Any power of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) will produce an octave, so no new information here.

Problems with the Pythagoren Tuning

Let's say we wanted to change keys using the Pythagorean Tuning based on a fundamental pitch of C.  First we'll transpose up a fifth to move to the key of G.  We expect all of the pitches to remain the same, but the seventh degree f needs to move up to f#, so we maintain a leading tone between the 7th degree and octave.  Remember, to change pitches we multiply (to go up) or divide (to go down) by the appropriate ratio.  In this case we multiply by 3/2 to go up a perfect fifth.

In the figure below, the down arrows indicate multiplying by 3/2.  In some cases, the notes leave the octave, so the next round of arrows divides by 2 (where necessary), to keep all of the pitches in one octave.

Pythagorean Tuning Part 2

We left off with the scale consisting of {C, G, C'} and containing frequencies with ratios of {1:1, 3/2:1, 2:1} with the fundamental pitch.  Notice that we get a second interval for free: the prefect fourth between G and the octave C.  To determine the ratio of these pitches (Pitches be crazy), we divide the higher ratio by the lower ratio.  If you remember back to grade school when you learned how to divide fractions, we simply flip the bottom and multiply straight across:

the upshot being that the ratio of a perfect fourth is 4:3.  

Pythagorean Tuning part 1

I am teaching a class at Cal State Monterey (C-scum) on the Mathematics of Music.  We are currently studying the evolution of our modern tuning, starting with Pythagoras.  (The same guy with the right triangles.)  Pythagorean tuning is based solely on perfect fifths and octaves.  Given a starting pitch, all of the remaining scale degrees are arrived at by going up or down by a fifth (which corresponds to multiplying or dividing the fundamental frequency by 3/2) or going up or down by an octave (which corresponds to multiplying or dividing by 2.)  This came about seemingly because the fifth is the first overtone which differs from the fundamental pitch.

Coltrane Transcription

A great solo from one of Coltrane's earlier records, Lush Life, from 1958.  Like all of my transcriptions,

• It's in bass clef (if you want a copy in treble or transposed, drop me a line)
• If you find a mistake, let me know

DIY Mic Cables

I made these xlr cables.

Same quality as Monster: nuetrik connectors and quad star cable, but at a fraction of the cost and in whatever colors I like.  You should make your own cables too.  This is where I got the materials.  You need to do a few at a time to make the shipping charges worthwhile.  Also, you need a soldering iron, some solder and a little bit of time (about 10 or 15 minutes per cable).