Double Bass A question for Tom Waits fans

#22
Rachel Price could sing the alphabet song and it would sound like a masterpiece.

I've covered Tom Waits tunes in bands for at least the last 15 years, and never found any of them to have odd turnarounds in them. Maybe it was just the stuff people were picking for the band. I'm not an expert on his whole catalog. My deep dive was mainly is 80's stuff.
 
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#23
What particular song(s) is the OP referring to? I’m also unaware of his songs that have odd meter changes. He seems firmly rooted in the blues, Tin Pan Alley, country, traditional song forms to me.
 
#24
"Make it Rain" is a standard 32 bar AABA form. Quickly written in Nashville numbers with no major/minor indication:

vamp on 1
A 1 1 4 1 5 4 1 1
A 1 1 4 1 5 4 1 1
B 4 1 5 1 4 1 2 5 fermata
A 1 1 4 1 5 4 1 1
 
#28
K. Powell said:
What particular song(s) is the OP referring to? I’m also unaware of his songs that have odd meter changes. He seems firmly rooted in the blues, Tin Pan Alley, country, traditional song forms to me.
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"Strange Weather" is the one that prompted me to post this. But, "Please Call Me Baby" also has an odd measure in it, if I recall.
 
#29
Those are both great, I see what you’re saying. Strange Weather has the two beat feel switching to a waltz.
Please call me baby has a bar of 6/4 in there at the end of a phrase. I have always dug his music and the cool bass players that are on the recordings. His collaboration with Robert Wilson, The Black Rider, is a truly remarkable work, especially in how it is orchestrated.
 
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#32
smeet said:
From what I understood, it was painful and unnatural for the recording musicians too. But that’s how he got that feel I guess. It really makes me wonder what a live performance of this music might sound like.
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I can't comment on the recording process, but his music always works out incredibly well in a live setting, IMO. He has a semi-regular set of recurring musicians who appear to be 100% all in with his vibe, and there has never been any lack of groove in my experience.
 
#33
Our group does Come on Up to the House, Hold On and Walk Away. Maybe another one or two that don't come immediately to mind. Fun stuff.

I remember seeing him on Fernwood Tonight when I was a kid. I just assumed he was one of the show's fictional personae.
 
#34
I had a rehearsal with him years ago for a possible duo set at my friend Matthew Sperry's (Sperry was on a few albums of his) Memorial. He was cool, but he brought a boombox and shopping bag of his own CDs - he would play a song and then relearn it himself on piano - with out playing any roots. He wanted roots, but didn't know them, so I would give him choices based on his voicing and he'd pick one and I'd write it down. It was just too slow of process. It was weird that he didn't keep a band together or have a book.
My guess is a lot of things are fixed in the studio and the players who tour with him learn the parts from the albums. I'd say the later, 100%.
TroyK said:
I googled this and can't believe that it doesn't appear to have ever been discussed online, but it will be now. And, I know Tom Waits fans are rabidly loyal and I'm not trying to stir anything up, he's had a very successful career and inspired a lot of people.

But, occasionally I get asked to play something and it goes something like "It starts out in 4/4, but then there's a bar of 2/4, go to back to 4/4 for x measures and then there's a 9/8 measure followed by a ...

Do you think he really composed that or did he just not care about time and people that he played with were somehow able to follow him? I can't help but think, trying to transcribe something today, that it's the later.
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#35
TroyK said:
I googled this and can't believe that it doesn't appear to have ever been discussed online, but it will be now. And, I know Tom Waits fans are rabidly loyal and I'm not trying to stir anything up, he's had a very successful career and inspired a lot of people.

But, occasionally I get asked to play something and it goes something like "It starts out in 4/4, but then there's a bar of 2/4, go to back to 4/4 for x measures and then there's a 9/8 measure followed by a ...

Do you think he really composed that or did he just not care about time and people that he played with were somehow able to follow him? I can't help but think, trying to transcribe something today, that it's the later.
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If he plays it crooked on "THE RECORD", why not just square it off when you play it? It'll make everything a lot easier for you and the other musicians, and no one will notice.
 
#36
Talking my language.

One of my regular jazz groups was interested in one of his tunes with an odd measure in it last year and I insisted on doing just that, but got shot down by the vocalist. In the end, we just didn't do it.

What prompted this post was that I had been asked to play with an established Americana band. I picked apart strange weather and found that: there was a 4/4 section, a 3/4 section, and some dramatic retards and pauses and suspensions here and there.

When I played with them, I realized that they were loose in their own special ways. I think "squaring it off" and playing strict time and form would be much harder for them than it is for me to just listen and float with them.

I think it's just contrast between how we approach jazz and how people exist in that genre.
 
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#40
Makes sense, but compositionally, the songs have a form and a time signature and don't get clipped or extended at a whim, right? There's chorography, the music has to be in time, or am I being naive?
 
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