Jazz Post - Take 5, by Paul Desmond

Apologies for the late post, followers, life has been crazy. Today we take our first look into jazz, with Take 5 by Paul Desmond.

This piece was written by Paul Desmond in 1959, and performed/recorded by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Original recording can be found here.

This piece has been recorded by a huge amount of artists, and is still relevant today. Panzerballet recorded a version of it in 2012! It was also the intro for the Today show back in the 60's. It is recognizable for the saxophone solo, and its meter.

MUSIC LESSON. Meter refers to the amount of beats, as well as which beat gets the most emphasis. I won't go into it much more than that, but if you want to know more, feel free to email me at musicgeekage@gmail.com.

Take 5 is written in 5/4. It was hugely influential for jazz and music in general, and was the first popular jazz piece to use 5/4. This meter had been used previously in a great number of classical compositions, plenty of folk tunes, and more. Some other familiar stuff that uses 5/4: The battle theme from Final Fantasy VIII, by Nobuo Uematsu, the Isengard Theme from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy by Howard Shore, "Living in the Past" by Jethro Tull, and "Last Night" by Vanessa Hudgens.

Dave Brubeck took a trip around Eurasia. He heard a group in Turkey performing in 9/8 and had the bright idea to have an album featuring unusual meters. The album went platinum. Brubeck was interested in expanding music to include new and exciting ideas (well, new and exciting to Westerners, anyways, it was old news to a good chunk of the rest of the world). Brubeck studied with Darius Milhaud, a French guy who taught a lot of notable students (Philip Glass and Steve Reich to name a couple...don't worry, we'll get to them) and who's compositions focused on polytonality.

MUSIC LESSON 2. Polytonality is when a piece is using more than two 'keys' at once. If a piece is using 2 keys, it is bitonal, or maybe even bicurious? Hah. Okay sorry. Bad pun. A key is a set group of notes to play within that all sound generally recognizable and "good" together. Example: the key of C has the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B (the musical alphabet repeats after G). The key of D has the notes D, E, F#, G, A, B, D, C#. If you had both these keys playing at once, it would be bitonal. And so on for polytonality.

I DIGRESS. This piece doesn't use polytonality. This is your brain, on music (also a fantastic book by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin, I highly recommend it if you are interested in the psychology of music)! I digress, AGAIN. This jazz piece has become a standard in the music community, and I can guarantee you've heard a good version (I hope) on a commerical or at a festival, or a bad version (oh no) recorded as some MUZAK crap played softly in elevators or department stores. 

To end this post, I'd like to introduce you to my all time favorite cover of Take 5, recorded by Tito Puente (Latin Jazz king of the universe) and George Shearing.

Listen Here. 

Hear how it sounds a bit different? That's the latin jazz influence. Don't worry, we'll get to latin jazz on the next jazz post.

Stay tuned! Next time - MINIMALISM.