Ethan Hein's blog - Latest Comments

Re: Round Midnight

ethanhein — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:00:54 -0000

Glad you found it helpful. Have no fear! Listen to all the versions, absorb them and forget them. Sing it like yourself, and like you mean it, and I'm sure you'll sound swell.

Carmen McRae's Monk album is a must-listen. It's wonderful to hear someone singing not-so-well-known tunes like "Ask Me Now" and "Ugly Beauty," especially when it's Carmen.

Re: Round Midnight

MaryB — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:46:24 -0000

Thank you for posting this, Ethan. I'm learning this tune for a jazz vocal workshop, and though I'm now even more scared of trying to tackle this, it's great to have the history of the song, along with several great performances of it available in one place. Ella has been my favorite singer for a long time, and I'm just now discovering Carmen McRae. I have a lot of work ahead of me! Thanks again!

Re: Hawaii, part one

ethanhein — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:48:16 -0000

Just calling it like I see it.

Re: Hawaii, part one

yippeekayay — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:09:53 -0000

I hit this blog searching for images of saffron finches. When I read "the most tourist-packed, overdeveloped strip of the Kona coast," I nearly snorted my Kona microbrew. You make it sound like Virginia Beach. Even in the context of Hawaii, the Kona coast is hardly overdeveloped. Your descriptions of the market and hippies are likewise hyperbolic and tinged with a mixture of liberal guilt, cultural self-consciousness and racial insecurity I've found to be peculiarly endemic to a certain variety of East Coast cubicle-dweller. Locals here have an expression to describe you: "fresh off the boat".

Re: The Lick

ethanhein — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:03:55 -0000

Will look into it, thanks for the tip.

Re: The Lick

ethanhein — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:03:24 -0000

You know, I don't, and I would love to. If anyone reading this has suggestions, please respond.

Re: The Lick

Tim Johnson — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:53:31 -0000

Another interesting one to add to The Lick and the Amen Break is the 'In Nomine' - a tune by John Taverner that spawned a whole genre in 16th century England.

Re: The Lick

Petter Naess — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:48:36 -0000

Do you know of any studies of the classical counterpart to the lick? Those conventions (ie, cliches) that abound, defining baroque, classical, romantic, etc.

Re: Gimme Shelter

Scottydangs — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:59:54 -0000

gimme shelter is in open E, not open G

Re: Jay-Z and Alan Lomax

John Culpepper — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:59:45 -0000

The book is written by a professor of communication and a professor of law and economics (whether he is a practicing entertainment lawyer is not clear). Why this book even mentions Alan Lomax is a mystery since his copyrights date from the 1950s and both laws and practices have changed considerably since them. The writers seem to be just trading on Lomax's name, since what they do to have to say about him is completely speculative ("we assume" and so forth). Apparently they never bothered to interview anyone connected to him. Nor, in a book dedicated to sampling, do they even bother to mention the most famous and successful sampling of Lomax's recordings by Moby!!!! Due diligence anyone??

Nevertheless, chapter 3 mentions (in passing) that "musical copyright" is distinct from other kinds of copyright. It also acknowledges that all kinds of people are put down contractually as "authors" besides those who actually wrote or performed the songs. The book also mentions that copyrights can be bought and sold and most often it is large corporations (music publishers) who end up getting all of the money, while the artists, band members and arrangers see very little. Needless to say, to find out about a particular copyright you would have to look at the specific contract for each song.

Re: Jay-Z and Alan Lomax

John Culpepper — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:55:22 -0000

Pete Seeger did not copyright Wimoweh, this was done by his publisher, who assigned Seeger a share of "author's" rights. When Pete found out there was a known author, Solomon Linda, he immediately directed his publisher (Folkways/AKA Harry Richmond, Harold Leventhal, and Pete Cameron) to send his share of the (artists' half) of the royalties to Linda. However, the publishers did not bother to do this and Seeger had no way of checking up on them. In fact although Seeger "renounced" his royalties, he continued to receive them, Rian Malan discovered. Pete was not very business like and was chagrined. No doubt he had let other people handle his finances. See the wikipedia article for this. Richmond continued to take a share of authors' royalties (using a pseudonym) for the Tokens hit version (a rearrangement), which was copyrighted by Abilene music.

Re: Jay-Z and Alan Lomax

John Culpepper — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:46:16 -0000

You should familiarize yourself with entertainment law before spouting off.

Re: The Choice Is Yours

Ian — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:58:43 -0000

Awesome article. Most of those video links are broken, however you can still find most of those songs on youtube at other url's.

Re: It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 01:28:54 -0000

Wonderful read!

I'm just starting to appreciate jazz and it was hard for me to put the pieces together and your post really put things into perspective.

Re: Jay-Z and Alan Lomax

John Culpepper — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:08:28 -0000

This is not correct. There is widespread public ignorance of the fact that the rules for music publishing copyright are not the same at all as those for print publishing, but are sui generis, and date back to the sheet music era. Under music publishing laws both publisher and author receive royalty income, split 50 / 50. These percentages can be and frequently are further subdivided in various ways among producers and arrangers. (Today recording artists normally form their own publishing companies to avoid having to give half their royalty income away.) After World War 2, when the sheet music publishers realized that they were losing income to the recording industry, they figured out they could make up the loss through publishing copyright income; and they began to raid the field of traditional music and copyright everything they could get their hands on, usually using pseudonyms and spinoff companies. They raided the entire Lomax catalog, claiming that the songs in the Lomax books, which had been edited and arranged by the Lomaxes, were public domain. The fact that the publishers agreed to a settlement demonstrate their awareness of the weakness in their case. However, Lomax would have preferred to have been offered a share from the publisher's half rather than the artists' half of the publishing right, as was not infrequently done. Lomax was advised by his lawyers, however, that the pockets of the music publishers were too deep for him to fight against. It may be argued that the attacks on the Lomaxes that persisted over the years were calculated to distract the public from the publisher's role and to make him a scapegoat. Redbaiting may have also played a convenient role in this.

Re: How does jazz work?

Cheers — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:27:07 -0000

That's it. That's the most you can get from music writing - fun. Thanks!

Re: How does jazz work?

Esedensky — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:16:15 -0000

That explanation is primo college Jazz 101 material. Very, very good. Thanks.

Re: How does jazz work?

Tristan Mills — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:38:28 -0000

Staying tuned - and will checkout those books.
Thanks!

Re: How does jazz work?

ethanhein — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:50:45 -0000

This post got such a positive response that I'm going to write a series of them as time permits -- next up will probably be Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight," so stay tuned. If you're interested in Coltrane, I recommend the book John Coltrane: His Life And Music by Lewis Porter. It's a well-written biography interspersed with a lot of excellent close musical analysis, probably the best single book about a jazz musician that I've read. To understand the improvisational process more generally, check out Beethoven's Anvil by William Benzon, which combines music and neuroscience.

Re: How does jazz work?

Tristan Mills — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:10:35 -0000

Excellent article. I love jazz, but miss a lot of this. Understanding it just adds to my enjoyment.

More analyses of tracks would be great - are there any sources for them?

Re: How does jazz work?

ethanhein — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:11:58 -0000

Thanks man!

Re: How does jazz work?

the droid — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:51:43 -0000

Brilliant stuff Ethan. Nice one.

Re: What is the best song by a solo Beatle?

notabilia — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:37:12 -0000

"Imagine" is an awful song, insipid, with a rolling, stupefying non-melody that will eat a corner of your brain if you are subjected, as I am, to it as endless loops to begin every atheist podcast that I subscribe to.
That said, I fully enjoyed your exposition on Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" as referenced on the Sound of Plaid.
Best solo ex-Beatle work? Nothing by John Lennon or George Harrison, hackwork all across the board, and McCartney is as stale as there could be - must be Ringo's "It Don't Come Easy."

Re: The Michael Jackson sample map goes viral

Paul B. Bellamy — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:35:19 -0000

"Do It Again/Billie Jean" by Club House. This song came out shortly after the "Thriller" album was released, in 1983. I'm thinking it was possibly the first song that sampled a cut from "Thriller." I heard it one summer while visiting my dad in Maryland on a Washington, DC radio station. Keep in mind there was no widespread Internet back then, so it was several years before I was able to find it...and I searched hard! It interpolates "Do It Again" by Steely Dan and "Billie Jean" by MJ. It is a HOT cut. Here's the link from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re: How to get web traffic from Google

SEO Sheffield — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:00:20 -0000

What percentage of web traffic is generated by Yahoo versus Google?