Jazz Trio Research Articles

Jazz Trio Database: Automated Annotation of Jazz Piano Trio Recordings Processed Using Audio Source Separation

Recent advances in automatic music transcription have facilitated the creation of large databases of symbolic transcriptions of improvised music forms including jazz, where traditional notated scores are not normally available. In conjunction with music source separation models that enable audio to be “demixed” into separate signals for multiple instrument classes, these algorithms can also be applied to generate annotations for every musician in a performance. This can enable the analysis of interesting performer-level and ensemble-level features that have often been difficult to explore. To this end, we introduce Jazz Trio Database (JTD), a dataset of 44.5 h of jazz piano solos accompanied by bass and drums, with automatically generated annotations for each performer. These annotations consist of onset, beat, and downbeat timestamps, alongside MIDI for the piano soloist. Suitable recordings, broadly representative of the “straight-ahead” jazz style, were identified by scraping user-based listening and discographic data; source separation models were applied to isolate audio for each performer in the trio; annotations were generated by applying appropriate algorithms to both the separated and the mixed audio sources. Onset annotations generated by the pipeline achieved a mean F-measure of 0.94 when compared with ground truth annotations. We conduct several analyses of JTD, including with relation to swing and inter-performer synchronization. We anticipate that JTD will be useful in a variety of music information–retrieval tasks, including artist identification and expressive performance modeling. We have made JTD, including the annotations and associated source code, available at https://github.com/HuwCheston/Jazz-Trio-Database

Computer Tools for Modeling Swing in a Jazz Ensemble

Abstract In a jazz ensemble, the timing patterns within each instrument and between instruments vary systematically depending on the instrument, tempo, style, and other parameters. A set of computer tools is described to modify these timing parameters according to previous measurements, allowing a large flexibility to account for individual differences and preferences. Four different jazz trio recordings were transcribed and annotated, and the tools were then used to recreate or modify the timing patterns in synthesized versions. These tools can be used for pedagogical purposes in which a music example can be played with different timing interpretations. It can also be used as a tool for research in which controlled factorial experiments can be designed.

AESCHYLUS’, EURIPIDES’, CACOYANNIS'S—AND SHORTER-SPALDING'S IPHIGENIAS

Like Euripides’ play, Iphigenia at Aulis, the Shorter-spalding opera is open-ended and unresolved—partly because, again like the Euripidean version, it is multi-authored and somewhat incomplete. Euripides’ play, in the form(s) in which we possess it, presents at least three different endings, none of which is likely to come from Euripides’ own pen; other authors certainly contributed to various sections of the final scene. Euripides himself also had a musical collaborator, Cephisophon, who presumably continued to work on finishing and rehearsing the play after Euripides himself died, up to its first production. The Shorter-spalding opera, …(Iphigenia), likewise is the result of collaboration—often at a distance, and over several years—between musicians, writers, and designers (as Morales describes in her Introduction to this issue). At least six different authors altogether are identified in the program notes as contributing to the libretto, including the three poets whose lyrics were sung in Act II: Ganavya Doraiswamy, Joy Harjo, and Safiya Sinclair, respectively South Asian, Native American, and Jamaican. As for the opera's ending—the most notoriously uncertain aspect of this myth ever since archaic Greek times—esperanza spalding states in her notes on the opera that the process of creating an ending has been one of constant adjustment, wholesale rewriting, and improvisation, and that even through the rehearsals the singers themselves onstage, as well as the instrumental jazz trio, were still trying out new things, right up to and including perhaps the performance that we saw. (I attended the Berkeley performance on February 12, 2022.) The opera is, we may say, unfinished.

Babbitt Jazzed: The Bad Plus’s Jazz Trio Arrangement of Semi-Simple Variations

In 2008, the jazz trio The Bad Plus (piano, bass, and drums), on their album For All I Care, released two performances of their own arrangement of Babbitt’s Semi-Simple Variations (one of which includes an improvisation within it). A founding member of the group discusses the origins of this along with a tongue-in-cheek video in which three members of the Mark Morris Dance Company dance to this jazz rendition of Babbitt’s composition.

The Tight-interlocked Rhythm Section: Production and Perception of Synchronisation in Jazz Trio Performance

This study investigates the production and perception of timing, synchronisation and dynamics in jazz trio performances. In a production experiment, six trio combinations of one saxophonist, two bassists, and three drummers were recorded while they performed three popular jazz songs. Onset timing and dynamics of each performer were extracted and analysed. Results showed that the tempo was significantly influenced by the timing of the drummers and all performers showed higher temporal precision on the backbeats. The drummers demonstrated individual swing-ratios, accentuations of beats and intrapersonal asynchronies between simultaneous hi-hat and ride cymbal onsets, which resulted in a hi-hat played 2–26 ms ahead of the pulse of the music. In a subsequent perception test, participants ( ) rated 12 excerpts of the jazz recordings. They selected their preferred version from a pool of stimuli containing the original version, but also manipulations with artificially increased or reduced asynchronies. Stimuli with reduced asynchronies smaller than 19 ms were preferred by the listeners over the original or the fully quantised timing. This suggests that listeners endorse a ‘tight-interlocked’ jazz rhythm section, with asynchronies smaller than the perceptual threshold (temporal masking), but with natural timing variabilities that makes it distinguishable from a computer-generated playback.

ФОРМУВАННЯ ВМІНЬ ДЖАЗОВОГО АКОМПАНЕМЕНТУ МАЙБУТНЬОГО ВЧИТЕЛЯ МУЗИКИ У ПРОЦЕСІ ФОРТЕПІАННОГО НАВЧАННЯ

The article highlights the ways of development of jazz accompaniment skills of future music teacher in the process of his piano training. It examines the genre and stylistic peculiarities of solo piano jazz standards, specificity of jazz trio music playing. It suggests the methods and musical creative tasks for effective development of jazz accompaniment skills. A piano is an important musical instrument which plays a significant role in jazz development. The artaesthetic development of student, his creative abilities training and formation of music performing competence occur in the process of such education. An important aspect of development of jazz accompaniment skills is mastering the stride-piano technique. This style requires a perfect performing technique and ability to play with the left hand as fluently as with the right one. Considering the individual peculiarities of a future music teacher, his technical level and a step-by-step methodology will provide for effective stride-piano technique mastering in the process of his piano training. The use of the jazz accompaniment creation method will provide for the broadening of a performing capability of a future music teacher while accompanying a solo singer or a music band. In the following article the musical creative tasks and practical exercises aimed at the development of the left-hand playing technique and coordination on a piano keyboard and mastering the basic jazz accompaniment elements, its rythmic patterns have been suggested.

Polyrhythms, negative space, circuits of meaning: making sense through Dawn of Midi'sDysnomia

AbstractDysnomiais a 2013 recording by the jazz trio Dawn of Midi scored for acoustic piano, bass and drums. Eschewing jazz chords, improvisation, swing rhythms and theme and variations, the music is instead organised around repeating rhythmic loops and interlocking melo-harmonic fragments, as one groove assemblage segues into the next like an evolving DJ set. The music sounds equal parts minimal process, electronically sequenced and traditional African. This article engages the musical and philosophical concepts at play inDysnomiato think through writing about music via three paths of speculative inquiry. The first part of the article considers works by Kodwo Eshun, Paul Morley and David Sudnow, idiosyncratic thinkers outside of the mainstream of academic music discourse who vividly approach writing about music through defamiliarising language and inventing concepts, generating associations based on comparative listening and describing the dynamics of musical process. In the second part of the article I draw on these writing techniques to direct my repeated listening encounters withDysnomiaand construct a prose interpretation modelled on the polyrhythms of the music. I conclude with a brief discussion of the phenomenological perspective on musical essences and suggest that music is a model for thinking through writing about music.

The Hearing-Aid Audio Quality Index (HAAQI).

This paper presents an index designed to predict music quality for individuals listening through hearing aids. The index is "intrusive", that is, it compares the degraded signal being evaluated to a reference signal. The index is based on a model of the auditory periphery that includes the effects of hearing loss. Outputs from the auditory model are used to measure changes in the signal time-frequency envelope modulation, temporal fine structure, and long-term spectrum caused by the hearing aid processing. The index is constructed by combining a term sensitive to noise and nonlinear distortion with a second term sensitive to changes in the long-term spectrum. The index is fitted to an existing database of music quality judgments made by listeners having normal or impaired hearing. The data comprise ratings for three music excerpts (classical orchestra, jazz trio, and jazz singer), each processed through 100 conditions representative of hearing-aid processing and listening situations. The overall accuracy of the index is high, with a correlation coefficient of 0.970 when computed over all of the processing conditions and averaged over the combined groups of listeners having normal and impaired hearing.

"Art of drumming within jazz piano trio"

Name: Pauls Pokratnieks Main subject: Jazz Drums Research Coach: Yvonne Smeets Title of Research: “Art of drumming within jazz piano trio” Research Question: How can I through historical and stylistic understanding of jazz drummers in significant piano trios during jazz history, improve my skill as an interactive trio member? What are the differences and similarities in drummers playing within significant jazz piano trios during the history of jazz? What are the characteristics of these great jazz piano trios? How can understanding of these differences, similarities and characteristics help me to react appropriately in different musical situations and combinations? Summary of Results: As I remember myself jazz piano trio was always my favorite band format in jazz music. I like the simplicity of it and in the same time the magic how great players could get it to sound like an orchestra. Especially in this band format we can see how great musicians are as listeners and supportive players, there is a much bigger role and responsibility for everyone to make the music interesting and happening than in bigger settings. Individual levels are equally important because every one of the musicians can choose directions where the music will go. Music is really about collective improvisation and truly listening to each other. This “platform” is great to explore dynamics, interaction and to become as a one – a great rhythm section. After listening to all these albums and analyzing what the drummer chooses to play I understood that it’s not just the drummer’s personality that counts, but big impact to drummers decisions are what the other two band members are doing and suggesting in music. One needs always listen to each other and go one way musically. One’s job within jazz trio setting is to make other musicians sound good and make their job easier and more comfortable. This setting is really fragile and it can work only if each member of trio is working towards the same goal. In different jazz styles the basic fundament of drummer is the same – to keep music going with nice feel and energy. During my presentation I will show and explain how I applied specific exercises/concepts in my playing and I will perform with my own jazz piano trio to show different ways, approaches to play within this setting in different styles, with knowledge gained from this research. Biography: Pauls Pokratnieks is jazz and other improvised music style drummer and composer. Up until the age of 18 he actively performed in various local and international orchestras as a classical percussion player and took first prizes in competitions. At the age of 16 Pauls began to play a drum set and first developed an interest in jazz music. At the age of 18 he enrolled in the Riga Dome Choir School (RDCS) in the Jazz department, and there started to deeply study drums, jazz theory, harmony, bass, composition and other subjects. After graduating RDCS in 2009 Pauls decided to continue his music studies in Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands. Now he is doing Master studies in Royal Conservatory in The Hague and working as freelance musician and teacher.

2013 Academy Proceedings

2013 Academy Proceedings

Summer Solstice, Berlin

Summer Solstice, 2013: Berlin. It is a perfect midsummer night’s eve, not a cloud in the blue sky at 8:00 p.m. Today is also the Fête de la Musique, an annual event that began in Paris in 1982 and is now celebrated across Europe. As part of the musical performances occurring in over forty locations in Germany and one hundred different stages within Berlin itself, the range of offerings is as inclusive as one could wish, with plenty of venues for kids and classical music fans. Describing the main kinds of music as pop, rock, and folk hardly does justice to a program that includes “psychobilly,” “reggaetronics ,” “electro swing,” “Russian speedfolk ,” “handicapped rock,” “italofrench futurefunk,” “diamond glam pop,” and “apocalyptic folk.” There are even apparently unclassifiable performers such as “Thomas Tulip mit poppiger Wurstmusike” (Thomas Tulip with trendy sausage music) and the “Blockfl öte des Todes” (Recorder of death). The festival also officially encourages everyone to make their own music spontaneously (as long as it is in public areas, without electronic amplification , and ends at 10:00 p.m.). There is a quite a “public” clogging the streets on this summer evening : besides the tourists, participants in the Christopher Day parade on the morrow have arrived and are already enjoying themselves as flamboyantly as expected. As part of the official program, one particular event strikes me as very “Berlin”: the BVG’s (Berlin’s Public Transportation System) U5 Klangerlebnisse (U5 listening experiences). The U5 is the subway line under construction right in the midst of the city’s biggest tourist attractions, the Brandenburg Gate and the Unter den Linden Boulevard . Cranes and heavy excavation machinery operate unnervingly close to the temporary walkways that are the only access to luxury stores and hotels. The U5 listening experiences offer a “Klangteppich” (sound carpet) of music-making along the walkways, which are already plastered with informational placards about the history of the underground transportation system in Berlin and its future. One of the locations—a Volkswagen showroom—has a rock band competing for attention with the latest cars on display. Although it is completely soundproofed, it also competes, at least visually, with the jazz trio playing in the walkway directly outside it. The jazz group is identified by the official logo of the Fête de la Musique, but its open instrument case for donations makes it easy to confuse them with the other street musicians playing in similar venues every day. This listening experience seems to exemplify the way Berlin appears to be self-consciously compelled to turn everything, even an unsightly and noisy construction site, into a learning opportunity. But is there anything wrong with this? Of course not: what could be wrong with the idea of filling the city with free performances of every kind and encouraging people to appreciate the “sound carpet” that surrounds them every day? Sanna Pederson is the Mavis C. Pitman Professor of Music at the University of Oklahoma, where she specializes in German nineteenth-century music and culture. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Musicological Society and is currently working on a book called A History of Absolute Music. September–October 2013 • 7 World Music Summer Solstice, Berlin Sanna Pederson notebook photo : kie bienert , courtesy of fête de la musique berlin ...

Determination of Preferred Parameters for Multichannel Compression Using Individually Fitted Simulated Hearing Aids and Paired Comparisons

To determine preferred parameters of multichannel compression using individually fitted simulated hearing aids and a method of paired comparisons. Fourteen participants with mild to moderate hearing loss listened via a simulated five-channel compression hearing aid fitted using the CAMEQ2-HF method to pairs of speech sounds (a male talker and a female talker) and musical sounds (a percussion instrument, orchestral classical music, and a jazz trio) presented sequentially and indicated which sound of the pair was preferred and by how much. The sounds in each pair were derived from the same token and differed along a single dimension in the type of processing applied. For the speech sounds, participants judged either pleasantness or clarity; in the latter case, the speech was presented in noise at a 2-dB signal-to-noise ratio. For musical sounds, they judged pleasantness. The parameters explored were time delay of the audio signal relative to the gain control signal (the alignment delay), compression speed (attack and release times), bandwidth (5, 7.5, or 10 kHz), and gain at high frequencies relative to that prescribed by CAMEQ2-HF. Pleasantness increased with increasing alignment delay only for the percussive musical sound. Clarity was not affected by alignment delay. There was a trend for pleasantness to decrease slightly with increasing bandwidth, but this was significant only for female speech with fast compression. Judged clarity was significantly higher for the 7.5- and 10-kHz bandwidths than for the 5-kHz bandwidth for both slow and fast compression and for both talker genders. Compression speed had little effect on pleasantness for 50- or 65-dB SPL input levels, but slow compression was generally judged as slightly more pleasant than fast compression for an 80-dB SPL input level. Clarity was higher for slow than for fast compression for input levels of 80 and 65 dB SPL but not for a level of 50 dB SPL. Preferences for pleasantness were approximately equal with CAMEQ2-HF gains and with gains slightly reduced at high frequencies and were lower when gains were slightly increased at high frequencies. Speech clarity was not affected by changing the gain at high frequencies. Effects of alignment delay were small except for the percussive sound. A wider bandwidth was slightly preferred for speech clarity. Speech clarity was slightly greater with slow compression, especially at high levels. Preferred high-frequency gains were close to or a little below those prescribed by CAMEQ2-HF.

Book Review: The Vienna Jazz Trio: A Novel

Book Review: The Vienna Jazz Trio: A Novel

Mr Vertigo (review)

Reviewed by: Mr Vertigo Hana Worthen Mr Vertigo. By Paul Auster. Translated by Jukka Jääskeläinen. Adapted and directed by Kristian Smeds. Finnish National Theatre, Suuri näyttämö, Helsinki. 28 October 2010. The Finnish director Kristian Smeds's theatre has been synonymous with conceptual and aesthetic unpredictability, a postdramatic mise en scène suspending the boundary between the onstage and the offstage; for his distinctive work he received the XII Europe Prize New Theatrical Realities in April 2011. Smeds critically extended this exploration with Mr Vertigo—an adaptation of Paul Auster's 1994 novel—at the Finnish National Theatre. In the novel, Master Yehudi, a powerful magician, takes an orphan boy, Walt, into his tutelage. Recognizing the orphan's innate ability to fly, the Master's brutal instruction transforms him into Walt the Wonder Boy, marvelous centerpiece of a vaudeville show touring towns small and large across 1920s America. Adapting this narrative to the stage, Smeds's production interrogated the illusions and realities of theatre, dreams fulfilled and unfulfilled, blending the worlds of characters, actors, and spectators. Onstage, magic, showmanship, realized and broken dreams sustained Master Yehudi's (Jukka-Pekka Palo) carnivalesque family, which shapes the talents of the orphan "pus-brained ragamuffin" Walt (Tero Jartti) to its own purposes. Much as Yehudi operates on Walt's aspirations to fly, Smeds worked on our longing for illusion, dialectically satisfying and frustrating our desire to be manipulated by his artistic magic. Smeds limited the 700-seat capacity of the main auditorium to 200 spectators, in the first half Click for larger view View full resolution Walt, in his Wonder Boy costume, walks on water in Master Yehudi's magic show. Tero Jartti (Walt) in Mr Vertigo. (Photo: Antti Ahonen.) [End Page 253] Click for larger view View full resolution Kristian Smeds's theatre of magic imagery: Walt, levitating above the Finnish National Theatre main auditorium, disappears into the light. Tero Jartti (Walt) in Mr Vertigo. (Photo: Ville Hyvönen.) seated on bleacher-like benches set on the stage's turntable. The audience revolved, vertiginously, observing scenes around the exposed, partially decorated stage walls. On occasion the curtain opened, sometimes on the abyss of the empty auditorium, sometimes to surprise us with magical effects. At one point, we heard music from Twin Peaks and the entire empty auditorium we stared into began to sway; suddenly, it seemed to shatter, flying apart like glass. The effects of lighting (Pietu Pietiäinen), visual and acoustic (Ville Hyvönen), and scenic (Kati Lukka) design were intense; Smeds's artistic team materialized illusions that few spectators will ever experience again, often disrupting or dissolving them just before we could fully consume them. Like Master Yehudi, Smeds used the disposition of the theatre to arouse, frustrate, and channel our desires. After a long, suspenseful intermission, the audience was abandoned in the plush but ghostly auditorium; it was a pleasure to be invited back onto the stage. Smeds's mise en scène interwove scenes of marvelous transformation with critical reference to the materiality of the theatre itself. Once seated on the turntable, our layering into the magic show had already begun. Master Yehudi entered, ordering us to silence our cell-phones and commanding the lights to be lowered; we shared a prolonged moment of darkness and silence. Then a low rumble vibrated through us as the turntable began to turn. As in a fairytale, we revolved three times while an excellent jazz trio onstage (Verneri Pohjola, Aki Rissanen, Joonas Riippa) played curious music and the stagehands lit candelabras, illuminating the backstage playing areas that were arrayed like stations of the cross: a shabby theatre dressing room; a dark recess with a mysterious figure in a white boxing robe, an oversized W taped to his back; a stage dungeon with a corseted dominatrix. A series of imagistic vignettes staged the horrific emotional and physical means Master Yehudi used to discipline Walt's appropriated dreams of flight. At one point, his journey recalled a baroque processional as a Christ-like Walt bore a yoke and water buckets, moving forward as the audience rotated with him, part of the procession. He climbed the bleachers to his own Golgotha...

Way to New Orleans' Heart Is Through Your Stomach

Way to New Orleans' Heart Is Through Your Stomach

The shadow and the act: black intellectual practice, jazz improvisation, and philosophical pragmatism

Though often thought of as rivals, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka shared a range of interests, especially a passion for music. Jazz, in particular, was a decisive influence on their thinking, and, as The Shadow and the Act reveals, they drew on their insights into the creative process of improvisation to analyze race and politics in the civil rights era. In this inspired study Walton M. Muyumba situates these thinkers as a jazz trio, demonstrating how Ellison, Baraka, and Baldwin's individual works form a series of calls and responses with each other. Muyumba connects their writings on jazz to the philosophical tradition of pragmatism, particularly its support for more freedom for individuals and more democratic societies. He examines the way they responded to and elaborated on that lineage, showing how they significantly broadened it by addressing the African American experience, especially its aesthetics. Ultimately, Muyumba contends, the trio enacted pragmatist principles by effectively communicating the social and political benefits of African Americans fully entering society, thereby compelling America to move closer to its democratic ideals.

Psychiatry and All That Jazz Are Parallel Passions

Psychiatry and All That Jazz Are Parallel Passions

Making It Groove! Entrainment, Participation and Discrepancy in the 'Conversation' of a Jazz Trio

Focusing on a live performance by a jazz trio, this case study examines the wordless dialogical 'groove' between musicians. Building on ethnomusicological theories of interaction in conjunction with the notion of entrainment, the study makes use of in-depth temporal analysis of musical interaction alongside the reported phenomenal experiences of the participating musicians.This approach provides an intriguing triangulation between subjective experience and 'hard' temporal data and thus moves to a consideration of musical meaning away from the formal properties of a work and towards the dynamic interactions of the players. While the study of pragmatics has undoubtedly been important in the refinement of scholarly research into music performance, this article suggests that a turn to 'groove' may be of use in broadening our conceptions of linguistic interchange.

Jazz and Music-Hall Transgressions in Theatre Workshop's Production of A Taste of Honey

Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey in the Theatre Workshop production of 1959 opened to the sound of a fast twelve-bar blues played on trumpet, saxophone, and guitar by musicians sitting in a box to the right of the stage. Though rarely mentioned by historians, the ‘Apex Jazz Trio’, as they were called, were a lively and unpredictable element in the production. Between the actors' open acknowledgement of the band, and Avis Bunnage's direct comments to the audience, the play shattered the ’realistic‘ conventions that still held sway in the West End, at the same time transgressing the distinction between ‘serious’ theatre and music hall (where the boundary of the proscenium was never respected obsequiously). Alec Patton, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, draws on original interviews with actors from the cast, a member of the first-night audience, and the leader of the band that accompanied the show to offer a re-assessment of the role of music and music hall in the original production of A Taste of Honey.

Utilizing variable acoustics at Snow College’s Jorgensen Concert Hall—A user’s perspective along with acoustical parameters measured in the hall

The Jorgensen Concert Hall is the centerpiece of the Horne School of Music at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah. It seats about 720 people and was completed in 2004. By adjusting reverberation and sound reflections on the stage and in the house, the Jorgensen accommodates a wide variety of college concerts, including jazz big band, chamber ensembles, choral groups, concert band, and symphony orchestra. The Jorgensen has also become popular with visiting groups such as the Utah Symphony, the Orchestra at Temple Square, and the Julliard Jazz Trio. Successes and challenges in using the Jorgensen will be discussed, along with a presentation of acoustical parameters measured in the hall.