Digital Jazz

August 14, 2004 12:12 AM

Jazz in 2500? iTunes versus Preservation: "The digital music era should offer listeners more information about jazz, not less. The stakes are high. If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle. This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts." (via ArtsJournal.com)
posted by josephtate (21 comments total)

Maddening jigsaw puzzle? My God!

If anything can be said about the digital movement it is that preservation has been guaranteed. In the era of instant gratification, I say that almost any form of digitized music is walking the plank of attention deficit disorder.

Where would Mozart's symphony be without the vinyl record, the analog tape, or the compact disk? How can one dissuade an audience from the marvel of technological achievement?

Mpeg Layer 3 is simply another cornerstone in the advancement of preserving the art itself. The argument that Jazz (or any genre for that matter) will be a "cultural jigsaw puzzle" based upon the premise that people will only care to listen to single tracks of albums is a fallacy at best, and a lie at worst.

I have downloaded Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis's entire albums, albums which I would never have purchased physically. I have been presented amazing music that otherwise would have never been presented. To explain to me, and people like you, that music like this is being destroyed by the digital movement is maddening.

We will only get stronger, and our words will be written in history: Download more music.
posted by Keyser Soze at 1:48 AM on August 14, 2004

In retrospect, vinyl is immensely more gratifying, because of its art and physicality.
posted by Keyser Soze at 1:55 AM on August 14, 2004

The consumer that buys an album on ITMS should have access to the same liner notes, session information and songwriting credits that are sold with the CD version. Online music stores should facilitate rather than hinder...

It's Jazz...just listen to the music.
posted by lightweight at 3:01 AM on August 14, 2004

Did you guys read the article? It's about the poor quality of ID3 tags and the metadata associated *with* the music, not the music itself. It's an important issue.

Blaming Apple is a little weird, since they 1. didn't write the ID3 spec and 2. don't encode the music they sell themselves. But I hope Apple has enough weight in the digital music arena to make sure the next version of ID3 includes far, far more metadata. It would be great if they put pressure on the major labels that keep all this information locked away (probably mostly because they forgot where they put it, frankly).
posted by bcwinters at 5:46 AM on August 14, 2004

What Keyser said, plus the sound quality is often better on vinyl as well.

ID3 tags are great, and I deplore how they are being wasted. However, they by themselves fail to carry the information found on many album liner notes. They are too limited in space even for one song and are limited to but one song.

Approaching music one song at a time reduces our intimacy with the artist. With an album an artist can provide a whole collection of music. The best albums frequently relate all of the music in some fashion. You can immerse yourself in the band and their music for more than a single song. Bands publish songs that may not be as satisfying on the first listen as on the tenth. When sold one song at a time these may flounder and be lost, especially if the cost per song is too high.
posted by caddis at 6:25 AM on August 14, 2004

I agree completely with Bremser. His points about album art and liner notes are particularly important. I would extend the problem to just about any piece of audio that isn't within a contemporary popular music context: historical pieces, Folkways, wax cylinders, bootlegs, radio archives, classical... it's a long list. During the salad days of Napster I collected many interesting pieces of audio, but because of poor labeling and tagging have no idea where they are from. But I find the tagging and labeling on many P2P files better than what one finds though legal download services.
posted by tranquileye at 7:04 AM on August 14, 2004

According to this TV show, jazz could even survive a catastrophic hyperspace accident destroying Earth.
posted by inksyndicate at 7:48 AM on August 14, 2004

In other news, the sky is falling.

Like other music genres, jazz is 95% horseshit. Also, like other music genres, the jazz album culture (followed by the CD culture) sold the crap along with the occasional gem.

With the file culture, the wheat will rise from the chaff, and like other music genres, jazz will benefit from the sifting.

Let the music speak for itself.
posted by mischief at 9:31 AM on August 14, 2004

"This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts"

Isn't it already?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:40 AM on August 14, 2004

If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle

If jazz fragments into thousands of albums, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle.
posted by kindall at 9:51 AM on August 14, 2004

Listening to music one song at a time versus one album at a time is just one more manifestation of our short attention span society.

Rather than sift out the wheat from the chaff, single song purchasing preferences so called hits, rather than more involving works. If it doesn't sound great on the first listen, forget it. However, the best music frequently takes a few listening sessions to sink in. This can be because it is more complex or explores new areas with which we are not familiar. On an album the "hit" sells the album and the other music carries through.

I think single song distribution can work, and perhaps work much better than albums, when it becomes possible to acquire many songs from a band at once without undue expense and download time. However, I am not sure we will ever get there.

Currently there is one major reason to purchase CDs or vinyl versus downloading MP3s - MP3s suck! Their sound quality is abysmal, along the lines of an eight track tape. We seem to be regressing rather than progressing. What makes the iPod so cool is that it can store CD quality sound. If you just listen through ear buds I suppose MP3s suffice, but then you miss out on a lot of fidelity.
posted by caddis at 10:29 AM on August 14, 2004

caddis
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:34 AM on August 15, 2004

Unfortunately, caddis, only a very small fraction of music listeners actually listen with the habits you describe. Further, even diehard music fanatics often play music as background noise rather than as an engaging event. No exhaustive metadata is needed, only knowing that "it sounds good and I can dance to it".
posted by mischief at 8:57 AM on August 15, 2004

Wagner used to complain about people performing "bloody chunks" of his operas. Don't just come for the Ride of the Valkyries, dang it, you're supposed to sit through the whole 16-hour cycle!

He did actually have a point. There are motives and such woven throughout the entire works, and you will miss out on the full experience if you only hear the highlights. His problem was that he was too successful in those same highlights--they've become some of the most recognizable streches of music in the classical (or any) tradition.
posted by gimonca at 10:22 AM on August 15, 2004

...some of the most recognizable streches of music in the classical (or any) tradition.
Kill the Wabbit! ; >

Hasn't (non-vocal) jazz already moved into that category classical is in? It's just a good thing there's a continuing upswell of jazz (or jazz-influenced) vocalists. If you have to know certain things, and can't just sit and listen to something, the battle's already lost.
posted by amberglow at 10:43 AM on August 15, 2004

While I sympathize with Bremser's concerns, they seem to me misplaced. The idea that "future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle" is just silly; "more information" is what the digital age is all about. If anything, there's too much information flashing by all around us; it's hard to concentrate on anything in particular. You can't really understand a piece of music (or any other art) without experiencing it over and over, but it's not easy to get yourself to listen to Hawk's "Body and Soul" or Miles's "In a Silent Way" or Komeda's "Astigmatic" for the twentieth time when there are thousands and thousands of other tunes clamoring for your attention; furthermore, if you're the type who wants information about your music (and plenty of people don't: see lightweight's "just listen to the music") it's easy to get absorbed in reading articles and books about the music and musicians and forget to listen to the actual music. Whether a given piece of information (beyond the basics needed for identification) is bundled with a particular online version is irrelevant -- anyone who's interested will be able to find out all they want (sidemen, original issue, &c) elsewhere.

Hell, when I got interested in jazz it seemed like a "maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle" even with no internet around to confuse things! It took years to sort out who was who and what was what and why beboppers and Louis Armstrong said such nasty things about each other and why everyone revered Blue Note so much and why sensible people liked Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. That's always going to be the case, no matter what package the music comes in. "Beauty is difficult," to quote Pound quoting Beardsley. A few lines more or less on your iPod aren't going to change the world.

I tried to post this comment three or four times yesterday and kept getting error message.
*crosses fingers*
posted by languagehat at 12:14 PM on August 15, 2004

He gripes about the information quality of songs downloaded from P2Ps later in the article, which seems to imply that digital music is Bad as a whole, but one wonders why it didn't occur ot him that with P2Ps, you get what you pay for.

I have Carroll V. Dashiell Jr. to thank for my knowledge of jazz history, not the labels of old forty-fives. I don't read most of the liner notes in jazz CDs because the writing style of those essayists grates on my nerves. Everybody can't be astounding amazing prodigies, but if you read those liner notes, it sure seems like everyone is.
posted by eustacescrubb at 3:09 PM on August 15, 2004

Bear in mind, eustacescrubb, that the usual liner notes writing style evolved out of the blurbs that used to adorn the back of LP jackets, which had to do double duty as both informative comment and ad copy. Even though most people nowadays will have actually payed for the CD before they crack the wrapper and read the booklet, it's probably a given that they want their purchase validated on some level, and the liner notes fulfill that role.

I've got to agree with the article's central point, though, in that having a cover, liner notes, etc., makes listening to the music seem more of an immersive, multi-media experience (obsolete buzzword alert!), and that ID3 tags alone don't really even convey all the necessary information, let alone invoke a visual response the way cover art does. The irony is, though, that while P2P filesharing can be one of the worst offenders metadata-wise--apparently there are millions of people out there incapable of grasping the concept that a comedy song might *not* be by Weird Al Yankovic or They Might Be Giants--there's also the possibility there to correct some of these shortcomings. Shareaza has the ability to search for "collections"--.ZIP files with multiple mp3s, cover art, etc., all in one file--and the obstacles towards this sort of package becoming a standard the way mp3 files have seem to be more social than technical.

One idea that might work is a central CDDB-style site/service that offers fan-contributed packages with cover art, liner notes (as HTML?), playlists (to ensure proper track order) and the like, everything *except* the audio itself. Most people are too lazy to enter metadata themselves--I know, I'm one of them--but if it's in a central, standardized place, it only needs to be entered once per album.

If anything, there's too much information flashing by all around us; it's hard to concentrate on anything in particular. You can't really understand a piece of music (or any other art) without experiencing it over and over

True dat, but there's a difference between learning to dig the aesthetic of a strange form of music, and learning about the people who made it, their connections with each other and the time & cultural context they live in. Better metadata can't give you the former, obviously, but it might help with the latter.
posted by arto at 8:12 PM on August 15, 2004

"learning about the people who made it, their connections with each other and the time & cultural context they live in"

Hence Google or Wikipedia.
posted by mischief at 8:53 PM on August 15, 2004

Hence Google or Wikipedia.
Hence, much more effort involved than merely reading the back of the album you just placed onto the turntable.
posted by caddis at 7:51 AM on August 16, 2004

I guess what I really meant by that last comment is sure you can go do research, or better yet get yourself a pre-researched, well written book. But, who will take the time? So many people don't even want to get more than one song by the artist, much less spend time researching them. Liner notes provide just the right amount of info at just the right time and it is sad to see that disappear.
posted by caddis at 7:56 AM on August 16, 2004