Thatch_Ear
Addicted Member
Well I got a present today in the form of Harry Connick, Jr.'s new release "Only You". Great stuff, big band, strings and trio and parts there of with the Connick touch. He arranged, orchestrated and directed this and not only is it a great recording of some of the best love songs written 40 to 50 years ago but it is also a bit strange. Harry always has had a unique phrasing or what some might call timing but I never realized just how much he has developed it.
Someplaces with the strings in the background in a kind of styling reminesent of Nelson Riddle something strange happens with the pace between the orchestra and the trio, or just within the trio itself.
Since these songs have been recorded by greats like Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald to Stevie Wonder they are all familier tunes. You know what to expect and how the rythm goes and where the accents have fallen in the past. Well it does all that but in places the accent falls a beat ahead or behind, slightly skewing it. One passage that is with a group of saxaphones up front it almost seems like the pace slows down and speeds up from one measure to the next. It is very subtle and quite fasinating.
Harry has always been able to keep an accent where you know it is supposed to be on the piano while not doing it with his voice. Or vice versa. With this album he seems to have everyone doing it at different times.
As is my practice when reading I like to have music playing. Since I was engrossed in some pulp fiction I decided for the 1st playing of this disc just to continue reading while it played. Well something kept taking my attention off the book and focusing it on the music. It wasn't like the style of music or the tunes weren't very familier, but something kept grabbing me.
So I put the book down and listened. All still familier and known but with something added. I found myself fasinated as I listened to the accent slip and slide around in a very subtle way and became completly fasinated.
Finished I started it over. The first listen there had been db competion from the washing machine and other things going on around me. This time I turned it up a bit and closed my eyes and listened to a couple of cuts and I get this word in my mind, syncopation. So I go back and grab the collegiant dictionary and look it up. Yep, that is exactly what is happening but it is being done to tunes you would not expect it to happen to.
I am really listening for it now and find it happening in different ways with different instrumentation in different songs. Again it is all very subtle but it completly changes the complexity.
Wonderful!!! I really like this CD and its great recording to go with the fasinating music. Julia picked it up at Target and there is a 5 cut bonus disc with the 1 st cut being "Try A Little Tenderness" that has such a clarity to it that I am going to have to go back and roll the tubes before I listen to it again. Seemed kind of bright but you can hear the sax players tongue move on the reed, that is how closely miked it was.
I will probably listen to this again with the JanZen/ Fisher PP system in the bedroom tonight when we go to bed. There it will be played softer and lower in a different system and I will listen to see how pronounced the syncopation is.
2 thumbs up! Oh, yea, I almost forgot. All the instruments are acoustic. Cellos to trombones.
Someplaces with the strings in the background in a kind of styling reminesent of Nelson Riddle something strange happens with the pace between the orchestra and the trio, or just within the trio itself.
Since these songs have been recorded by greats like Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald to Stevie Wonder they are all familier tunes. You know what to expect and how the rythm goes and where the accents have fallen in the past. Well it does all that but in places the accent falls a beat ahead or behind, slightly skewing it. One passage that is with a group of saxaphones up front it almost seems like the pace slows down and speeds up from one measure to the next. It is very subtle and quite fasinating.
Harry has always been able to keep an accent where you know it is supposed to be on the piano while not doing it with his voice. Or vice versa. With this album he seems to have everyone doing it at different times.
As is my practice when reading I like to have music playing. Since I was engrossed in some pulp fiction I decided for the 1st playing of this disc just to continue reading while it played. Well something kept taking my attention off the book and focusing it on the music. It wasn't like the style of music or the tunes weren't very familier, but something kept grabbing me.
So I put the book down and listened. All still familier and known but with something added. I found myself fasinated as I listened to the accent slip and slide around in a very subtle way and became completly fasinated.
Finished I started it over. The first listen there had been db competion from the washing machine and other things going on around me. This time I turned it up a bit and closed my eyes and listened to a couple of cuts and I get this word in my mind, syncopation. So I go back and grab the collegiant dictionary and look it up. Yep, that is exactly what is happening but it is being done to tunes you would not expect it to happen to.
I am really listening for it now and find it happening in different ways with different instrumentation in different songs. Again it is all very subtle but it completly changes the complexity.
Wonderful!!! I really like this CD and its great recording to go with the fasinating music. Julia picked it up at Target and there is a 5 cut bonus disc with the 1 st cut being "Try A Little Tenderness" that has such a clarity to it that I am going to have to go back and roll the tubes before I listen to it again. Seemed kind of bright but you can hear the sax players tongue move on the reed, that is how closely miked it was.
I will probably listen to this again with the JanZen/ Fisher PP system in the bedroom tonight when we go to bed. There it will be played softer and lower in a different system and I will listen to see how pronounced the syncopation is.
2 thumbs up! Oh, yea, I almost forgot. All the instruments are acoustic. Cellos to trombones.
