Weimar Jazz Database (WJazzD) – The Jazzomat Research Project | Hacker News Reader

Weimar Jazz Database (WJazzD) – The Jazzomat Research Project

jazzomat.hfm-weimar.de

55 pointsTomte26 comments

This could be an amazing resource once it gains critical mass. I finally learned about the specific style of music I really enjoyed (bebop, hardbop, postbop) and now I can start creating more intelligent searches for playlists.

Funny how something like Cowboy Bebop suddenly makes so much more sense after someone else turns the light on in the room!

I enjoyed the Bosch tv series but always suspected it was mostly for the jazz music

I wish there was someone out there that would curate a station for me

A tip that has worked for me is to find an album that you like, then find out everyone who played on it and seek out other things they've played on, and repeat until you have more music than you could ever possibly listen to.

Back at in the day this was a great strategy on music sharing services.

Later, on lastfm radio.

Indeed, this is one of the things that's wrong with first-generation music services: they think the song title plus the band is all you need.

For jazz, "who played on it?" has to be answered.

For classical, it's "who's the composer?"

And who played on it, and what label

For jazz it's also the composer. People like Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Billy Strayhorn, Thelonious Monk, etc - all incredible composers

Hmm the transcriptions are interesting, but weirdly inaccurate. I checked out solos by Clifford Brown (Joy Spring) and Miles (So What). A lot of Clifford's quaver (8th note) lines are written a semiquaver (16th note) late when he's laying back on the time - most of the time - making it needlessly hard to read.

There are stranger problems too, e.g. the D starting bar 11 of Miles' solo on the original So What.[0] The transcription has it starting exactly on the first beat of the bar, but it starts a long time before that. Hard to imagine how machine transcription got that so wrong, it being so pedantically literal, to the nearest triplet semiquaver, in a lot of other places.

[0] https://jazzomat.hfm-weimar.de/dbformat/synopsis/solo323.htm...

I can’t decide if it’s an online “fake book.”

Or an online “real book.” [1]

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Book

It's neither.

Real/fake books have the changes and the head, not the solos. They're very generic recipes. This is more like a spectrographic analysis of a complex spice blend.

This is amazing. Great format. It would be cool to link original recordings too, but merely nice-to-have, not essential. I love being able to listen to the solos unaccompanied.

Some of them are there. Joyspring, My Favorite Things, I'll Remember April (Lee Konitz). Probably copyright problems with the others.

Speaking of Joyspring -- Manhattan Transfer does a version of this, where they fit words to the actual solo.

While we're on the subject: Clifford Brown's son is a DJ on KCSM (San Mateo). He didn't know his dad very well, obviously.

"Sing Joy Spring", lyrics by Jon Hendricks. Jon wrote lyrics to dozens (hundreds?) of jazz solos. Was one hell of a singer, too -- check him out singing John Coltrane's solo on "Freddie Freeloader" [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSsT7pcVVpw (third solo is Jon)

Ohh that's awesome, thank you! McFerrin and Jarreau and the Basie band sound so good.

> Speaking of Joyspring -- Manhattan Transfer does a version of this, where they fit words to the actual solo.

Jon Hendricks fitted the words to the actual solo. Sorry, giving the credit to MT didn't feel right. Article about it:

Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring”: Jon Hendricks’ Vocalese Genius https://www.tuneintoleadership.com/blog/jon-hendricks-vocale...

Jon Hendricks was awesome! Hear his scatting (and lyrics) on Airegin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul54NWmwLxs

TIL about the lyrics being from Jon Hendricks. Thanks.

He wrote the lyrics for that entire album (Vocalese) and sings on it too -- one of the solos on "Airegin", and a scat solo somewhere else (maybe the Night in Tunisia thing, been a while since I listened).

He also wrote the lyrics for their versions of "Birdland" and "Four Brothers", and maybe four of the tracks on Swing, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of.

It's certainly been a while since I looked at the CD for Vocalese.

I was wrong about "Another Night in Tunisia" -- the solo Jon sings starting around 1:40 actually has lyrics. I think the melody scatting for most of the rest of the song is actually Bobby McFerrin.

Oh, there we go, the scat solo starting at 2:30 in "Ray's Rockhouse" is Jon.

Weirdly enough, if I cam to believe Discogs got the liner notes faithfully, they're not crediting Jon with singing a solo on "Airegin". I'm still 99% certain Jon sings the last solo in that song. (Interestingly, singing lyrics over his own scat solo from the original Lambert, Hendricks & Ross recording of "Airegin".) For sure it sounds like him, no one other than Manhattan Transfer is credited with vocals on that track, and when they recorded it live they don't even attempt to sing it, replacing it with a sax solo.

I just listened to that again. I don't have a good enough feel for what he sounds like vs. the guys in the group.

He does get a credit for vocals and lyrics in Discogs, but they don't say which track:

https://www.discogs.com/master/97226-The-Manhattan-Transfer-...

Oh, the blog post there is lovely. Just used the lyrics to sing through "Sing Joy Spring" while listening to the original Clifford Brown recording.

How one could use it for particular studies? Any tips?

nice, but where's the swing in the generated midis? Would be also nice to here the midi with appropriate soundfont (not piano)

No Bill Evans! No Oscar Peterson!

Still, this is awesome.

(I know, piano is probably harder, by a lot.)

I went straight just to look for Bill Evans and was as surprised. Still awesome!

There are some transcriptions of Evans solos. I don't have a link to them, sorry.

The advantage of a horn solo is (usually) just one note to decode :)

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