You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Choosing Material for a Recording - #58

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

Today, we answer a question from listener, Elia: "How do you choose material for a recording?". See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Menace and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Today we're going to give you some tips on choosing material for making recordings. Let's do it. It's very important. Very important. Okay, so by recording, we mean, well, I should just say, this is a question from Elia. Yeah, yeah. Who's got some great other questions that we're going to start incorporating here on the You'll Hear at Podcast.

So keep those coming in, folks. But I think what we're talking about here is making CDs, making albums, recording projects, and going through sort of that process of what the material is. And I'll just kick it off first with, I think it's good to think about a theme for the recording before you even go choosing the material. Yeah, I think that's going to dictate everything else that happens after that. I always like to think of my recording projects

or even just like concerts in the same way as like starting out big picture, right? What is the overall project going to be? And then sort of coming in closer and closer and closer to like, you know, what are the solo orders or how's the outro going to sound? But this part, the choosing the actual material is sort of mid-funnel, as we like to say around here. You know what I mean?

Of the larger project. Right, right. Yeah, and I think that, you know, by saying we're looking at the overall theme, it doesn't have to be, you know, the music of George and Ira Gershwin. I mean, you could do that. That's kind of an obvious thing. But it's okay if the overall theme is, you know, maybe even something that you couldn't write down. like new sounds in your personal compositions that you're working on. And you kind of have an idea about it, though.

So it doesn't have to be as specific as the music of. But I think as long as you kind of have an idea. So for me, what all ended up happening, especially when I do a lot of original material, I'll have certain tunes and the sound and how I think that they can probably work together in telling a story throughout a recording or a gig. And then that will also start to eliminate other songs

maybe that I've written or are working on and saying, okay, I still like that other tune, but it's not going to work in with this concept that I have here. Of course, when it is the music of Gershwin, that makes it easier because, you know, there's no original material, there's no Irving Berlin or anything. But short of that, I think just having kind of a concept of the sound helps. Yeah, and then I think the next consideration is probably the flow

between, you know, from song to song. Is this song, is this song, is this tune, is this piece going to fit with the flow of the things that I know I want to have on this. Because a lot of times we go into recording projects, they're kind of anchored around tunes that we know work for, you know, that's why we're making this record, right? We have these songs. And so if you're choosing things to kind of go along with your anchor tunes, the number one question for me is, is it going to flow? That doesn't mean is it the same vibe at all, actually, kind of the opposite. Like, is it going to provide a contrast or the

contrast that I want, is it going to, you know, color the album in general in the way that I feel like is the best for that time in the record, you know? Yeah. And I think that, you know, doing it, like we're talking about compositions a lot and that sort of being the theme and the flow. Normally, you know, when we put together projects with this in mind, you'd be thinking then, okay, I want to get, you know, players, vocalists, drummers, whatever it is, that fit within, in sort of the concept of the tunes that we have going. There is another way to do it. I've kind of done both, and I think that they can both work,

but the other one is where the overall concept is more based around the personnel that you have in place in advance, which is a fun way to do it. So, like, you might say, like, I've done some trio recordings like this, where I had, I remember some of the early ones I did with Christopher Thomas on bass and Brian Blade on drums, and I put the whole concept of the recording together really thinking about them. So we were kind of working as a regular trio, so that helped. but I wrote some new tunes, we did some standards, so it wasn't like the compositions weren't necessarily the thing

that pulled it all together. It was the personalities of the players and kind of how I imagine we would play as a trio over those tunes. And that's another great point, is you could do it by the players. You can choose the material as in choosing the instrumentation. Maybe you do an entire record of just string quartet. Well, you know, you can play whatever tunes you want to play.

It's going to sound like a string quartet. That's the theme, right? Yep. I think that's a great point. Yeah, yeah. So basically in terms of choosing the material, I would say keep that in mind that you have a couple different angles to come at it and how you do it. But the end result is you want to have a cohesive project. So if the material ends up being kind of all over the map, you've got Baroque things and you've got hip-hop tunes and you've got whatever,

maybe the string quartet is the thing that pulls it together. Maybe it's the instrumentation. Maybe it's the specific players. But something I think has to pull it together. Because it's still important, I think, for a recording, for an album to have that cohesion, to be an overall story. A lot of people think it doesn't, and they're like, all it has to be is individual tracks. But if you're going to do that, just release individual tracks, and that's the whole thing. And you know, it doesn't have to be, like we were talking about, like, it doesn't have to be the typical, we're going to start with like a medium swing,

and then maybe a Latin, and then a burner, and then a ballad, and then a burner, and then a medium swing, and we'll end on a burner again or whatever. Is that burner tune or a burner phone? because we use both around here sometimes. It's a burner tune. It can be that, and you can have this, you can tell a story and have the album build. That's one way to do it. And actually, it's good to check out

how other people that you, you know, players that you love, how they've done this. I think Herbie Hancock is a master at this. You can do it that way where you tell a story and you have an arc with the tunes and then you end on a high note or a low note or however you want to do it. Or you can do the opposite,

and the entire album, the whole concept, is, you know, maybe everything is a ballad. You know, there's some great albums that are just all ballots. Or maybe everything is like crazy fast or out, you know, that you can look at it from above, again, pulling back and coming up with the overall concept first. And then, you know, choosing the material after that should be a lot easier. Right, right. When it's funny, you say, like, bring up Herbie Hancock, some of his more recent recordings,

you know, I mean, I love his whole thing. And I've always thought he's done a great job of putting together projects. But if you think about him, I was going to say on some of the more recent ones in particular, like he did the Joni Mitchell project, River, I think it was called River Letters to Johnny Mitchell. And it's mostly Joni Mitchell tunes, but he's got solitude on there, like a trio version. Right. With, you know, a Duke Allington tune where it's just... It's a great moment, though.

It's a great moment, and it fits into the overall arc. So that would be another thing is like, as you're choosing material, always be open to the moment. And I don't know when he decided that, but sometimes you get into the recording and it starts to go in a certain direction. So you might pull out some other material actually at the session. Be open to that. I mean, this is jazz. We don't know how it's going to sound. It's not like going in and doing a symphony recording where you're like recording Miler's fifth symphony and Moller's third symphony.

And we know what it's going to sound like. We just have to bring it to life. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. So, all right. Well, that's pretty good. So hopefully that'll be a few good tips for you in building the material for your recordings. So have fun with that.

Yeah. Thank you, Ellie. and you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. You can go to you'll hear it.com to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello. You can do that. Absolutely.

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