In Defense of Wrong Notes, Sloppy Playing, and Imperfection
"We play by the 'suggestion' method: one person changes chords, and gradually, the rest of the band comes around to that suggestion." - Dave Barry, interviewed on the Cracked podcast, paraphrased
Rockism—the belief that only music played by live bands has value—is a scourge. Dave Grohl—father of a child outside his marriage and currently working to regain trust of his wife and kids—gets onstage at the Grammys and rants about “music made with computers” [citation removed due to copyright claim by the Grammys]. But everyone’s known since at least the 1960s that good music comes from a combined human and material element—material here meaning that the quality of your tools matters.
A guitar player relies on amps and pedals, a drummer’s sound is as defined by their kit as it is by their playing, and no bass player has ever sounded good on a Gibson bass. Similarly, recording equipment matters. Yes, there have been developments in mic placement strategies in the last 50 years and yes, I do like the way Creedence’s drums sound, but those things are neither here nor there: recording technology has gotten really, really good.
The scales have imbalanced a bit, though. 21st century music, even when it’s ostensibly not electronic, often feels squeezed of every trace of human playing. Now, I won’t waste your time—griping about how pop music is overproduced isn’t even low-hanging fruit, it’s an empty tree branch. So I’ll train my ire to my second-favorite band, Polyphia. Here are guys who think a ton about how they want their instruments to sound, and they make beautiful, complex records. But, idk—listen to them live, and you can really tell how much of their records are made on computers.
Again, this is not necessarily bad. All the Polyphia dudes are great irl players. But I want to take some time to praise more human elements in recording.
Before we get started, I get into some (possibly mythical) reasons I think of Miles and Mingus the way I do here. Also, here’s that Cracked interview with Dave Barry. It’s great! I’m just not gonna re-listen to a decade-old podcast to get a quote right for the epigraph. I got a lotta tables, and I gotta get my kid from school.
The Improviser, Miles Davis
Kind Of Blue is the album people think about when they think about jazz. Seriously—I was at dinner with some friends once and this guy says “I want to start listening to more jazz,” so I says to him I says, “you should start with Kind Of Blue” and he points to the ceiling and says “I want to listen to this” and wouldn’t you know it, “So What” was playing in the restaurant.
“So What” isn’t what we’re talking about, though. We’re talking about “All Blues.”
Miles played with a sextet on this album: drums/bass/piano/sax/sax/trumpet. And before we start, you’re not gonna catch me calling any one of these guys “sloppy” and meaning it-meaning it. Especially not John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, whom I want to focus on. That said, listen to that sax on the head.
Put headphones on, listen to the way each of them sit in your ears.
They’re not perfectly lined up, are they? Coltrane & Cannonball (sounds like a great backcourt) aren’t playing with equal intensity every time. The notes seem like they’re thirds (based on what I could hastily figure out), but they feel so much farther apart. It sounds, purely on an emotional level, that the sax guys know what chords they’re supposed to be hitting, and are kinda wandering around all over the studio, trying to hit the notes the same way you’d have a competitive game of crumpled-paper-and-trashcan basketball.
It’s hard to think of another time I’ve heard three horn players so individualistically play a pretty simple, pretty first-chart-you-read-in-big-band-class head. It still sounds like they’re a band! It just also sounds like I’m standing in the same room, and I’ll hear each players’ note louder if I look at them directly.
Pretty cool feeling to get on wax.
The Arranger, Charles Mingus
Once again, I am telling you to go listen to Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, because it is one of the most intricately composed pieces of chaos ever recorded. There’s a nine-piece band, something like that? And improv solos, but generally, it’s the most well-composed bit of jazz I personally have ever heard. It walks every tightrope nimbly, going from cacophony to euphony and back with complete confidence.
Once again, it’s a bit too long and a bit too, uh, unfriendly to normies non-jazz sickos to do here. We’re instead going to listen to the closest thing ol Charlie has to a pop song, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”
Again, “sloppy” is the wrong word for these horn players. This song is incredibly smooth, with a sax solo that may well be the platonic idea of a slow-tempo jazz sax solo. But there’s something remarkably casual about the playing, like you can hear how much air they’re holding back in an attempt to put you, the listener, at ease.
Hey, the horn players say with their eyes as the notes they just slid into reverb slightly askew off the walls. Don’t worry about it too much. We’re in control, but we’re not losing sleep over it. You chill, too.
It makes every counter-melody the piano or bass plays seem like back-patting affirmations to the horns. It makes the big crescendo at 3:34 seem like the band, who’d previously been circling each other without making eye contact, has finally reached the center of the room and started high-fiving. As well they should.
Let’s Move Outta Jazz A Second And Talk Early Weezer
It’s impossible to keep track of whether this is a cool statement or not, but I think Pinkerton is a near-unimpeachable record. It’s often described as “raw” and “emotional,” and, well. Yeah. It sounds like a 24-or-whatever-year-old loser had some big success and was still trying to process things. Most importantly for our exercise, the dudes play their instruments like it. Let’s listen to “The Good Life.”
As the verses go on, you can feel the band picking up momentum, pushing slightly. There’s palpable energy building. At 2:27, all hell breaks loose with that dual guitar solo. They slide into new chords at 2:45, and all of the instruments play around each other as they get used to their new surroundings. The bass simultaneously holds things down while having a wandering eye—shoutout Matt Sharp, Weezer’s forever best bassist (and it’s not close). By the time you get to the end, you feel like you’re right there with Rivers, and you’re cheering right along for this nerd to get back to the good life (in this scenario, you, uh, do not know what Rivers did with the good life).
We haven’t even gotten to the vocals yet. Rivers, Brian Bell, and Matt recorded their vocals all three in the same room, trying to get that raw, live feeling. Success! Like our horn players above, they’re off from each other, dancing around where the notes are supposed to fall.
Yet it all works. Mostly because you know some humans did it.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris