A Big Band Misconception (new blog)

Roger Aldridge

Roger Aldridge

Composer in Residence
Distinguished Member
Here's a brand new blog entry on my website. It's called A Big Band Misconception. It is intended to be read with my article on mid-size jazz ensemble (a link to the article is in the blog). These are ideas that I've been thinking about for a period of time.

http://www.rogeraldridge.com/news--blog/a-big-band-misconception

This might create some discussion! :)

Roger
 
That includes some fascinating ideas. Thanks Roger. In my experience, arrangers often try to get a "big band sound" with a smaller ensemble, say 3 saxes---alto tenor and bari, one trumpet and one trombone. Do have any thoughts in this regard?
 
One of the books (locally arranged some years ago) used by a band I play with calls for 10 pieces -- 4 reeds, 2 trumpets, 1 bone, PBD. The reed sound varies by chart. First alto, 2nd tenor, 3rd sax sometimes alto, sometimes tenor, 4th sax moves between bari and tenor, clarinet likely to pop up on any chair. It's fun to play, lots of swing tunes and some '50s pop, including mambos, and even a few polkas. Older audiences love that book.
 
Thanks for the question Jbtsax! 5-horn bands are fairly common. Many of them take a "little big band" approach. A good writer can get a full & rich sound with only 5 horns (using open voicings & higher tensions). One can also use piano, guitar, or bass to fill out or extend the horn voicings. I have great respect for those who are doing creative work with this kind of a band. However, it's not my vision. I spent many years playing in and writing for big bands. Around 6 years ago I burned out on big bands. Simply put, I became tired of the core concept of a big band -- namely harmonized saxophone, trumpet, and trombone sections -- and I wanted to do something different. I have a long list of composer heroes who do incredible writing for a large jazz ensemble. The ones that inspire me the most -- like Duke, Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Michael Gibbs, Maria Schneider, Gary McFarland, etc -- found ways to go beyond conventional sections to extend a band's range of tone color. I'm not sure how I formed this concept, but it occurred to me that a woodwind quintet is a great role model in how each instrument has a unique tone color. The colors in a WW quintet can blend in various ways as well as stand out. When I started to think of a mid-size jazz ensemble that's based on the concepts of a woodwind quintet (with each line having a distinct tone color), instead of a little big band, then everything fell into place for me. As you have time, please read the article that I wrote about mid-size jazz ensemble. A link to it is in my blog. It goes into detail about these ideas.
 
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A Dissenting Viewpoint

While there has been a lot of talk about the musical side of "big band" versus a smaller group, the main question in my mind has always been not about the full and lush harmonies (which I enjoy as much as the next person) but rather about the economic side of things.

Popular music has descended (if that is the correct term) from the expectations of art music (with dozens of performers) down to the "big band" (which comes in a variety of flavors, minus the occasional sax, trombone or two, and trumpet), through smaller groups, all the way down to the instrumentation made popular by the rock era: lead guitar, possibly a rhythm guitar/vocalist slot, electric bass, drums and a keyboard. This has been played around with over the years (with a single sax, or three horns, or some other variation), but that's what you see with "popular" music, and that's what people are willing to pay for, whether we like it or not.

Since opening up a six horn group (alto, tenor, baritone (all double on something else), two trumpets (doubling on fluegelhorns), trombone (doubling on rhythm and vocals), "the combo" (upright/electric bass, guitar, percussion and keyboards) plus vocalists, I've seen bookings pick up substantially. The payroll alone tells the story: thirteen shares for the six horn, versus twenty for the "big band". Talking better harmonies and the like is all well and good, but a forty per cent discount speaks louder than any nice music talk.

I prefer the full group (which we call a "Vegas style revue band", this to get away from the "big band" stigma that has now become almost all encompassing). But, I'm not the one footing the bills here - i.e., the client (regardless of being right or wrong) is always right. (I'll pitch a big band to a specific group, looking for the Forties experience, but limit music from that era in most other settings.)

Once again, it's not that I don't like the stuff from the Twenties through the Fifties - my group can still do a knockout version of Boo, Hoo, for example. It's just that the audience for most of that stuff has shuffled off the mortal coil at this point. There'll always be an audience for such classics as In The Mood and the like, and they need to be there in one form or another, but the days of crowding the bandstand with your sweetheart, Cokes in hand, wanting to hear 720 In The Books are gone now.

Incidentally, I've noticed a fall off in interest for stuff from the Fifties, including much of The King's oeuvre. This is sad, since for the small group I've got tons of Presley's greatest hits, but those folks are passing from the scene as well. (My lovely wife, a rabid Elvis fan, is seventy five, and many of his other key-tossing fanatics are older still.)

When doing retirement home stuff (I hesitate to call them nursing homes, since there are a lot of active retirement communities, all of which are loose with the money when it comes to their entertainment), I have even noticed a diminished call for stuff from the Sixties and Seventies. On these jobs, I always made it a point to take the whole book so as to be able to do requests, but for the last four or five I've just loaded up some of the salient tunes from the past into a special "fifth set" folder, just in case. And, it's seldom that those charts get dipped into. In fact, we get more call for waltzes than we do for Swing Era classics.

And, I know youse guys and gals like jazz a lot. But, with the exception of some classics during the cocktail hours (I do (or, should I say, did - the baritone hasn't been out of the box for about six months now) a great rendition of Basie's Misty, and there are a few others), we generally stick to four to the bar stuff that people remember.

Of course, there are "jazz bands" and "stage bands" that present the classics all of the time. But, they're not usually the ones people are willing to pay to hear, unless they have A Famous Name From The Past® fronting them (or at least on the music stand). And, even there, what's being presented is a ghost from the past.
 
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Sotsdo, Interesting to hear your comments about the reality of producing with a larger band (as opposed to a group) and there is obviously a call for it in your region.
I would be interested to hear from someone about the potential in the UK, I get the impression that there probably is not the same market.
 
More than just a call...

When the recession in 2008 hit, it hit here hard, at least as reflected by our musical bookings. The last big gig that I did not have to "work" to get was one thrown by Shell Oil, that being a party for a group of employees that were being laid off (go figure). And, that one was only for my musicians, not my excellent vocalists - we were hired to provide the horns for a vocalist and his musical director (on piano).

After that, the full size group gigs have almost completely dried up. Not a problem for me - I've never looked to have to make any money out of this. But, a number of others are scrabbling to rake in a few bucks to supplement their lower income, and it hurts them a lot.

Things have picked up (slightly) since the advent of the recovery, but the need for economy still exists. Plunk down a thousand buxs or so and you can hire a DJ (with a full complement of lighting) who can spin the actual recordings of the songs that have become popular over the years. And, you only have to provide him one meal, instead of the twenty or so for a "big band". Unless you can sell the "live music is real entertainment" concept well, you are frozen out from the get-go.

Returning to the experiences of my grandfather (who was a union musician back in the days after World War I, when he arrived here in the US as a former member of the aristocracy in Imperial Germany with little more than a wife and an armful of clarinets), the trajectory that "live music" is following has been consistent for many, many years.

Back in the day, every hotel worth its salt had a small orchestra for dining and dance purposes. The big ones had a showroom/night club (in Saint Louis, ours was the Chase-Park Plaza, with a huge roof garden venue, where I once had the honor of filling in with a "big band"). Every upscale movie theater had a small group to accompany the silents. If you wanted an entertainment with live music beyond a piano, you had to hire a group.

Grandpa made a tidy second income (he was a fire station chief as his day job) from his time in the pit and on the stand (although he never moved over to saxophone in all of his days), something he needed with his flock of ten or eleven children. (I lost track over the years, and they're all dead now.)

Then came the "talkies". Almost overnight, he saw his colleagues drop away like flies, as the movie theaters moved to the more appealing (and much more economic) films with sound tracks. (Granpa even recalled playing at a few theaters which were unwilling to make a complete cut from live music - the group played in the lobby, and the film provided its own sound in the theater.)

Concurrent with the talkies, the full adoption of the Berliner disk recording system (and improved recording techniques) provided quality music reproduction to the masses (and to the businesses smart enough to start using it), driving another nail in the coffin. Radio broadcasting wasn't far behind, although the class acts in the industry provided a live orchestra to avoid the time limits of disk recordings. Drive another nail.

Perillo was an unsung hero of the craft when he shut down live music until the suits agreed to provide some form of continuing compensation to the musicians who created the recordings. I still bank a check (small though it may be) on a periodic basis as a direct result of the union's goal line stand back in the day, but the end result was to enable the music making of a few (through recordings) to extinguish the livelihood of the many (as recorded music was freed to penetrate into all areas of life).

Live performance still has one great advantage over recordings - the "wow" factor that a live performer can deliver. Flashing lights and a thumping beat are competition here, but throw a "performer" out there (particularly one with charisma, which usually means a vocalist), and the disco delivery of the DJ will lose every time - as long as there's enough money in the budget to compete.

And there are venues where "jazz" is still a draw. They are few and far between, and are more likely to hire a piano and a bass player than anything else, but they are there. If you see one, grab it and hold on for dear life - that's what the guys around here have done.

(They also like the free food and free booze. But then again, who doesn't? At that Shell Oil gig mentioned above, they had the best carving station for roast beef that I have seen in many a year. I ate my set up lunch, my dinner, and then took home the rump of what was left, all off of their beef roasts (when the caterer offered one to me), something for which I am grateful to this day.)

There's still a niche for live music, produced by the likes of us, but the ledge upon which we exist is growing narrower by the day. Want to play for free? Sure, bring your group on down, since it's cheaper to have that done than to play the ASCAP fees for running a recording in a real business setting. But, as soon as money enters the equation, that recorded music service starts to look really, REALLY good.

(And, even there, they are shaving pennies off of their costs. Around here, groups are welcomed to perform at a local shopping mall for some events. However, you have to carry your own liability insurance, even if your group is performing gratis work.

How some of the groups so appearing pull this off, I have no idea - I imagine that they say they have the insurance but don't really acquire it. After all, the insurance cost runs to about half of what a combo might receive in such an appearance.

(I do know that "Pay to play" is a no-no as far as I am concerned. We once put together a quartet of three clarinets and a transposing pianist to play my old favorites, SSA vocal arrangements, at a local mall. But, after one rehearsal (which went great - SSAs are a great way to perform "pop" music with traditional instruments), I (as the group representative) got hit with the liability certificate requirement, and that was the end of that. Incidentally, they didn't require such a guarantee from the local school groups that performed.)
 
I don't think there was much call for a big band in Seattle when I started up my band. And there certainly is no real money in the project. But for ten years I have been playing 9 to 13 gigs a year as a hobbyist big band just because I love providing dance music for anyone who loves swing music. Most dance schools use DJs now a days, but we can still get low paying gigs at malls, an occasional corporate gig, and and at charity events. Mostly I put this band together because I wanted to play more.

I don't know what UK music environment is like today, but in the US we compete with pop, rock, and country who can make a go of it with much less money than we ever could with our 20 people in the band. But if you can find enough musicians interested in starting up your own band, AND you don't care if you make money, do remember that it can take a number of years before you get a name for yourselves. Good luck!
 
Lots of good discussion happening on this thread!

For me, I did not decide to write for a mid-size ensemble based on economics. It was simply because I became burned out on conventional big bands and wanted to take a different direction with my writing. However, the ideas that I posted on my blog, in effect, come around full-circle and enable big bands that are interested in exploring new sounds to try my scores.

This blog was inspired by a conversation I had several months ago with a big band director. I told her about my idea of doubling players on a part with my 6-horn charts and she did not like that at all. As I remember, she talked about the importance of having one player on a part. As I thought more about her reply (and I've received similar replies from other big bands), I thought about the considerable amount of harmonic doubling that's used in conventional big band arrangements. With that in mind, the notion that each player in a big band has a completely individual part is pretty much an illusion. At least, that's how I see it. :)
 
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