Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, is considered alongside the most important drummers in history, he worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Booker Little. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992. Roach led his own groups, most notably a pioneering quintet co-led with trumpeter Clifford Brown and the percussion ensemble M'Boom, he made numerous musical statements relating to the civil rights movement. Max Roach was born to Alphonse and Cressie Roach in the Township of Newland, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, which borders the southern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. Many confuse the Township of Newland with Newland Town in North Carolina.
Although his birth certificate lists his date of birth as January 10, 1924, Roach has been quoted by Phil Schaap as having stated that his family believed he was born on January 8, 1925. Roach's family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York when he was 4 years old, he grew up in his mother being a gospel singer. He started to play bugle in parade orchestras at a young age. At the age of 10, he was playing drums in some gospel bands. In 1942, as an 18-year-old graduated from Boys High School, he was called to fill in for Sonny Greer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra when they were performing at the Paramount Theater in Manhattan, he starting going to the jazz clubs on 52nd Street and at 78th Street & Broadway for Georgie Jay's Taproom, where he played with schoolmate Cecil Payne. His first professional recording took place in December 1943, he was one of the first drummers, along with Kenny Clarke. Roach performed in bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, Miles Davis.
He played on many of Parker's most important records, including the Savoy Records November 1945 session, which marked a turning point in recorded jazz. His early brush work with Powell's trio at fast tempos, has been praised. Roach studied classical percussion at the Manhattan School of Music from 1950 to 1953, working toward a Bachelor of Music degree; the school awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 1990. In 1952, Roach co-founded Debut Records with bassist Charles Mingus; the label released a record of a May 15, 1953 concert billed as "the greatest concert ever", which came to be known as Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Parker, Powell and Roach. Released on this label was the groundbreaking bass-and-drum free improvisation, Percussion Discussion. In 1954, Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown formed a quintet that featured tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell, bassist George Morrow. Land was replaced by Sonny Rollins; the group was a prime example of the hard bop style played by Art Blakey and Horace Silver.
Brown and Powell were killed in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in June 1956. The first album Roach recorded after their deaths was Max Roach + 4. After Brown and Powell's deaths, Roach continued leading a configured group, with Kenny Dorham on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor, pianist Ray Bryant. Roach expanded the standard form of hard bop using 3/4 waltz rhythms and modality in 1957 with his album Jazz in 3/4 Time. During this period, Roach recorded a series of other albums for EmArcy Records featuring the brothers Stanley and Tommy Turrentine. In 1955, he played drums for vocalist Dinah Washington at recordings, he appeared with Washington at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, filmed, at the 1954 live studio audience recording of Dinah Jams, considered to be one of the best and most overlooked vocal jazz albums of its genre. In 1960 he composed and recorded the album We Insist!, with vocals by his then-wife Abbey Lincoln and lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr. after being invited to contribute to commemorations of the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
In 1962, he recorded a collaboration with Mingus and Duke Ellington. This is regarded as one of the finest trio albums recorded. During the 1970s, Roach formed a percussion orchestra; each member performed on multiple percussion instruments. Personnel included Fred King, Joe Chambers, Warren Smith, Freddie Waits, Roy Brooks, Omar Clay, Ray Mantilla, Francisco Mora, Eli Fountain. Long involved in jazz education, in 1972 Roach was recruited to the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst by Chancellor Randolph Bromery, he taught at the university until the mid-1990s. In the early 1980s, Roach began presenting solo concerts, demonstrating that this multi-percussion instrument could fulfill the demands of solo performance and be satisfying to an audience, he created memorable compositions in these solo concert, a solo record was released by the Japanese jazz label Baystate. One of his solo concerts is available on video, which includes video of a recording date for Chattahoochee Red, featuring his working quartet, Odean Pope, Cecil Bridgewater, Calvin Hill.
Roach embarked on a series of duet recordings. Departing from the style he was best known for, most of the music on these recordings is free improvisation, created with Cecil
Tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most used saxophones; the tenor is pitched in the key of B♭, written as a transposing instrument in the treble clef, sounding an octave and a major second lower than the written pitch. Modern tenor saxophones which have a high F♯ key have a range from A♭2 to E5 and are therefore pitched one octave below the soprano saxophone. People who play the tenor saxophone are known as "tenor saxophonists", "tenor sax players", or "saxophonists"; the tenor saxophone uses a larger mouthpiece and ligature than the alto and soprano saxophones. Visually, it is distinguished by the bend in its neck, or its crook, near the mouthpiece; the alto saxophone lacks its neck goes straight to the mouthpiece. The tenor saxophone is most recognized for its ability to blend well with the soprano and baritone saxophones, with its "husky" yet "bright" tone; the tenor saxophone is used in classical music, military bands, marching bands and jazz.
It is included in pieces written for symphony orchestra. In concert bands, the tenor plays a supporting role, sometimes sharing parts with the euphonium and trombone. In jazz ensembles, the tenor plays a more prominent role as a member of a section that includes the alto and baritone saxes. Many of the most innovative and influential jazz musicians have been tenor saxophonists; these include Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter. The work of younger players such as Michael Brecker and Chris Potter has been an important influence in more recent jazz; the tenor saxophone is one of a family of fourteen instruments designed and constructed in 1846 by Adolphe Sax, a Belgian-born instrument maker and clarinetist. Based on an amalgam of ideas drawn from the clarinet, flute and ophicleide, the saxophone was intended to form a tonal link between the woodwinds and brass instruments found in military bands, an area that Sax considered sorely lacking.
Sax's patent, granted on 28 June 1846, divided the family into two groups of seven instruments, each ranging from alto down to contrabass. One family, pitched alternatively in B♭ and E♭, was designed to integrate with the other instruments common in military bands; the tenor saxophone, pitched in B♭, is the fourth member of this family. The tenor saxophone, like all saxophones, consists of an conical tube of thin brass, a type of metal; the wider end of the tube is flared to form a bell, while the narrower end is connected to a single reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. At intervals down the bore are placed between 23 tone holes. There are two small speaker holes which, when opened, disrupt the lower harmonics of the instrument and cause it to overblow into an upper register; the pads are controlled by pressing a number of keys with the fingers of the left and right hands. The original design of tenor saxophone had a separate octave key for each speaker hole, in the manner of the bassoon.
Although a handful of novelty tenors have been constructed'straight', like the smaller members of the saxophone family, the unwieldy length of the straight configuration means that all tenor saxophones feature a'U-bend' above the third-lowest tone hole, characteristic of the saxophone family. The tenor saxophone is curved at the top, above the highest tone-hole but below the highest speaker hole. While the alto is bent only through 80–90° to make the mouthpiece fit more in the mouth, the tenor is bent a little more in this section, incorporating a slight S-bend; the mouthpiece of the tenor saxophone is similar to that of the clarinet, an wedge-shaped tube, open along one face and covered in use by a thin strip of material prepared from the stem of the giant cane known as a reed. The reed is shaved to come to an thin point, is clamped over the mouthpiece by the use of a ligature; when air is blown through the mouthpiece, the reed vibrates and generates the acoustic resonances required to produce a sound from the instrument.
The mouthpiece is the area of the saxophone with the greatest flexibility in shape and style, so the timbre of the instrument is determined by the dimensions of its mouthpiece. The design of the mouthpiece and reed play a big role in. Classical mouthpieces help produce a warmer and rounder tone, while jazz mouthpieces help produce a brighter and edgier tone. Materials used in mouthpiece construction include plastic and various metals e.g. bronze and stainless steel. The mouthpiece of the tenor saxophone is proportionally larger than that of the alto, necessitating a larger reed; the increased stiffness of the reed and the greater airflow required to establish resonance in the larger body means the tenor sax requires greater lung power but a looser embouchure than the higher-pitched member
National Recording Registry
The National Recording Registry is a list of sound recordings that "are culturally or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." The registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, which created the National Recording Preservation Board, whose members are appointed by the Librarian of Congress. The recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry form a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress; the legislative intent of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 was to develop a national program to guard America's sound recording heritage. The Act resulted in the formations of the National Recording Registry, The National Recording Preservation Board and a fund-raising foundation to aid their efforts; the act established the Registry for the purpose of maintaining and preserving sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally or aesthetically significant.
Beginning in 2002, the National Recording Preservation Board began selecting nominated recordings each year to be preserved. The first four yearly lists each included 50 selections. However, since 2006, 25 recordings have been selected annually. Thus, a total of 525 recordings have been preserved in the Registry as of 2018; each calendar year, public nominations are accepted for inclusion in that year's list of selections to be announced the following spring. Nominations are made in the following categories: Each yearly list has included a few recordings that have been selected for inclusion in the holdings of the National Archives' audiovisual collection; those recordings on the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry that are of a political nature will tend to overlap with the audiovisual collection of the National Archives. The list shows overlapping items and whether the National Archives has an original or a copy of the recording; the criteria for selection are as follows: Recordings selected for the National Recording Registry are those that are culturally or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.
For the purposes of recording selection, "sound recordings" are defined as works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sound component of a moving image work, unless it is available as an autonomous sound recording or is the only extant component of the work. Recordings may be a single group of related items. Recordings will not be considered for inclusion into the National Recording Registry if no copy of the recording exists. No recording should be denied inclusion into the National Recording Registry because that recording has been preserved. No recording is eligible for inclusion into the National Recording Registry until ten years after the recording's creation. On January 27, 2003, the following 50 selections were announced by the National Recording Preservation Board. In March 2004, the following 50 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board. In April 2005, the following 50 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board.
In April 2006, the following 50 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board. On March 6, 2007, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board. On May 14, 2008, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board. On June 10, 2009, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board. On June 23, 2010, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board. On April 6, 2011, the following 25 selections were announced. On May 23, 2012, the following 25 selections were made by the National Recording Preservation Board. On March 21, 2013, the following 25 selections were announced. On April 2, 2014, the following 25 selections were announced. On March 25, 2015, the following 25 selections were announced. On March 23, 2016, the following 25 selections were announced. On March 29, 2017, the following 25 selections were announced. On March 21, 2018, the following 25 selections were announced.
On March 20, 2019, the following 25 selections were announced As of 2018, the oldest recording on the list is Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville's Phonautograms which date back to the 1850s. The most recent is The Blueprint by Jay-Z released in 2001. Selections vary in duration. Both the early Edison recordings and the instrumental "Rumble" by Link Wray, as well as "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets clock in at under three minutes. Meanwhile, Georg Solti's recording of Wagner's complete Ring Cycle is 15 hours in duration and Alexander Scourby's recitation of the King James Bible is over 80 hours in length. Stevie Wonder: Lift Every Voice and Sing and Songs in the Key of Life John Coltrane: Giant Steps and A Love Supreme Scott Joplin: Ragtime piano rolls and Treemonisha Orson Welles: War of the Worlds and The Fall of the City Curtis Mayfield: People Get Ready and Super Fly Louis Armstrong: Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, Canal Street Blues and Mack The Knife Joe Falcon: Allons à Lafayette and Anthology of American Folk Music Paul Robeson: Show Boat and Othello Bing Crosby: Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? and White Christmas Miles Davis: Ko-Ko and Kind of Blue Paul Simon: Sounds of Silence and Gracela
Rudy Van Gelder
Rudolph Van Gelder was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Regarded as the most important recording engineer of jazz by some observers, Van Gelder recorded several thousand jazz sessions, including many recognized as classics, in a career which spanned more than half a century, he recorded many important figures in the genre, including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, Grant Green as well as many others. He worked with many record companies but was most associated with Blue Note Records; the New York Times wrote his work included "acknowledged classics like Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Davis's Walkin', Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus, Horace Silver's Song for My Father." Van Gelder was born in New Jersey. His parents, Louis Van Gelder and the former Sarah Cohen, ran a women’s clothing store in Passaic, his interest in microphones and electronics can be traced to a youthful enthusiasm for amateur radio.
He was a longtime jazz fan. His uncle, for whom Rudy was named, had been the drummer for Ted Lewis's band in the mid-1930s. Van Gelder took lessons on the trumpet.. Up until the late 1950s, Van Gelder trained as an optometrist at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry, in Philadelphia, because he did not think he could earn a living as a recording engineer. From 1943, after graduating, Van Gelder had an optometry practice in New Jersey. In the evenings after work, Van Gelder recorded local musicians who wanted 78-rpm recordings of their work, he became a full-time recording engineer in 1959. From 1946, Van Gelder recorded in his parents' house in Hackensack, New Jersey, in which a control room was built adjacent to the living room, which served as the musicians' performing area; the dry acoustics of this working space were responsible for Van Gelder's inimitable recording aesthetic."When I first started, I was interested in improving the quality of the playback equipment I had," Van Gelder commented in 2005.
I always assumed. So that's. I acquired everything I could to play back audio: speakers, amplifiers". One of Van Gelder's friends, the baritone saxophonist Gil Mellé, introduced him to Alfred Lion, a producer for Blue Note Records, in 1953. In the 1950s, Van Gelder performed mastering for the classical label Vox Records, he became a full-time recording engineer in 1959. In the summer of 1959, he moved the Van Gelder Studio to a larger purpose-built facility in Englewood Cliffs, a few miles southeast of the original location. An obituarist in the London Daily Telegraph wrote of "Van Gelder's extreme fastidiousness" as an engineer, his insistence on "no food or drink in the studio, on no account was anyone to touch a microphone, he himself always wore gloves when handling equipment". Though his output slowed, Van Gelder remained active as a recording engineer into the new century. In the late 1990s he worked as a recording engineer for some of the songs featured on the soundtrack to the TV Show Cowboy Bebop.
From 1999, he remastered the analog Blue Note recordings he made several decades earlier into 24-bit digital recordings in its RVG Edition series. He was positive about the switch from analog to digital technology, he told Audio magazine in 1995: The biggest distorter is the LP itself. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going and I'm glad to see the LP go; as far as I'm concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way, it was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium. Van Gelder continued to reside in Englewood Cliffsuntil his death on August 25, 2016. Van Gelder was secretive about his recording methods, leaving fans and critics to speculate about his techniques, he would go as far as to move microphones.
His recording techniques are admired by his fans for their transparency and presence. Richard Cook called Van Gelder's characteristic method of recording and mixing the piano "as distinctive as the pianists' playing" itself. Blue Note president and producer Alfred Lion criticized Van Gelder for what Lion felt was his occasional overuse of reverb, would jokingly refer to this trait as a "Rudy special" on tape boxes. Despite his prominence in recording jazz, some artists avoided Van Gelder's studio; the bassist and composer Charles Mingus refused to record with him. Taking Leonard Feather's "blindfold test" in 1960, he said that Van Gelder "tries to change people’s tones. I've seen. That's. Within a few years Van Gelder was in demand by many other independent labels based around New York City, such as Prestige Records. Bob Weinstock, owner of Prestige, recalled in 1999, "Rudy was much an asset, his rates were fair and he didn’t waste time. When you arrived at his studio he was prepared, his equipment was always ahead of its time and he was a genius when it came to recording".
According to a JazzTimes article in August 2016, "jazz lore has formed the brands into a yin and yang of sorts: The Blue Note albums involved more original music, with rehearsal and the s
Randy Weston
Randolph Edward "Randy" Weston was an American jazz pianist and composer whose creativity was inspired by his ancestral African connection. Weston's piano style owed much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, whom he cited in a 2018 video as among pianists he counted as influences, as well as Count Basie, Nat King Cole and Earl Hines. Beginning in the 1950s, Weston worked with trombonist and arranger Melba Liston. Described as "America's African Musical Ambassador", he said: "What I do I do because it's about teaching and informing everyone about our most natural cultural phenomenon. It's about Africa and her music." Randolph Edward Weston was born on April 6, 1926 to Vivian and Frank Weston and was raised in Brooklyn, New York, where his father owned a restaurant. His mother was from Virginia and his father was of Jamaican-Panamanian descent, a staunch Garveyite, who passed self-reliant values to his son. Weston took dance lessons, he graduated from Boys High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he had been sent by his father because of the school's reputation for high standards.
Weston took piano lessons from someone known as Professor Atwell who, unlike his former piano teacher Mrs Lucy Chapman, allowed him to play songs outside the classical music repertoire. Drafted into the U. S. Army during World War II, Weston served three years from 1944, reaching the rank of staff sergeant, was stationed for a year in Okinawa, Japan. On his return to Brooklyn he ran his father's restaurant, frequented by many jazz musicians. Among Weston's piano heroes were Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, his cousin Wynton Kelly, but it was Thelonious Monk who made the biggest impact, as Weston described in a 2003 interview: "When I first heard Monk, I heard Monk with Coleman Hawkins; when I heard Monk play, his sound, his direction, I just fell in love with it. I spent about three years just hanging out with Monk. I would pick him up in the car and bring him to Brooklyn and he was a great master because, for me, he put the magic back into the music." In the late 1940s Weston began performing with Bullmoose Jackson, Frank Culley and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson.
In 1951, retreating from the atmosphere of drug use common on the New York jazz scene, Weston moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. There at the Music Inn, a venue where jazz historian Marshall Stearns taught, Weston first learned about the African roots of jazz, he would return in subsequent summers to perform at the Music Inn, where he wrote his composition "Berkshire Blues", interacting with artists and intellectuals such as Geoffrey Holder, Babatunde Olatunji, Langston Hughes and Willis James, about which experience Weston said: "I got a lot of my inspiration for African music by being at Music Inn.... They were all explaining the African-American experience in a global perspective, unusual at the time."Weston worked with Kenny Dorham in 1953 and in 1954 with Cecil Payne, before forming his own trio and quartet and releasing his debut recording as a leader in 1954, Cole Porter in a Modern Mood. He was voted New Star Pianist in Down Beat magazine's International Critics' Poll of 1955.
Several fine albums followed, with the best being Little Niles near the end of that decade, dedicated to his children Niles and Pamela, with all the tunes being written in 3/4 time. Melba Liston, as well as playing trombone on the record, provided excellent arrangements for a sextet playing several of Weston's best compositions: the title track, "Earth Birth", "Babe's Blues", "Pam's Waltz", others. In the 1960s, Weston's music prominently incorporated African elements, as shown on the large-scale suite Uhuru Afrika and Highlife, the latter recorded in 1963, two years after Weston traveled for the first time to Africa, as part of a U. S. cultural exchange programme to Lagos, Nigeria. On both these albums he teamed up with the arranger Melba Liston. Uhuru Afrika, or Freedom Africa, is considered a historic landmark album that celebrates several new African countries obtaining their Independence. In addition, during these years his band featured the tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin. Weston covered the Nigerian Bobby Benson's piece "Niger Mambo", which included Caribbean and jazz elements within a Highlife style, has recorded this number many times throughout his career.
In 1967 Weston traveled throughout Africa with a U. S. cultural delegation. The last stop of the tour was Morocco, where he decided to settle, running his African Rhythms Club in Tangier for five years, from 1967 to 1972, he said in a 2015 interview: "We had everything in there from Chicago blues singers to singers from the Congo.... The whole idea was to trace African people wherever we are and what we do with music."In 1972 he produced Blue Moses for the CTI Records, a best-selling record on which he plays electric keyboard. As he explained in a July 2018 interview, "We were still living in Tangier, so my son and I came from Tangier to do the recording, but when I got there, Creed Taylor said his formula is electric piano. I was not happy with that. People loved it." In the summer of 1975, he played at the Festival of Tabarka in Tunisia, North Africa, accompanied by his son Azzedin Weston on percussion, with other notable acts including Dizzy Gillespie. For a long stretch Weston recorded infrequently on smaller record labels.
He made a two-CD recording The Spirits of Our Ancestors (recorded 1991, released
Record producer
A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performer's music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has varying roles during the recording process, they may gather musical ideas for the project, collaborate with the artists to select cover tunes or original songs by the artist/group, work with artists and help them to improve their songs, lyrics or arrangements. A producer may also: Select session musicians to play rhythm section accompaniment parts or solos Co-write Propose changes to the song arrangements Coach the singers and musicians in the studioThe producer supervises the entire process from preproduction, through to the sound recording and mixing stages, and, in some cases, all the way to the audio mastering stage; the producer may perform these roles themselves, or help select the engineer, provide suggestions to the engineer. The producer may pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record label's budget.
A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording and production of a band or performer's music. A producer has many roles that may include, but are not limited to, gathering ideas for the project, composing the music for the project, selecting songs or session musicians, proposing changes to the song arrangements, coaching the artist and musicians in the studio, controlling the recording sessions, supervising the entire process through audio mixing and, in some cases, to the audio mastering stage. Producers often take on a wider entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules and negotiations. Writer Chris Deville explains it, "Sometimes a producer functions like a creative consultant — someone who helps a band achieve a certain aesthetic, or who comes up with the perfect violin part to complement the vocal melody, or who insists that a chorus should be a bridge. Other times a producer will build a complete piece of music from the ground up and present the finished product to a vocalist, like Metro Boomin supplying Future with readymade beats or Jack Antonoff letting Taylor Swift add lyrics and melody to an otherwise-finished “Out Of The Woods.”The artist of an album may not be a record producer or music producer for his/her album.
While both contribute creatively, the official credit of "record producer" may depend on the record contract. Christina Aguilera, for example, did not receive record producer credits until many albums into her career. In the 2010s, the producer role is sometimes divided among up to three different individuals: executive producer, vocal producer and music producer. An executive producer oversees project finances, a vocal producers oversees the vocal production, a music producer oversees the creative process of recording and mixings; the music producer is often a competent arranger, musician or songwriter who can bring fresh ideas to a project. As well as making any songwriting and arrangement adjustments, the producer selects and/or collaborates with the mixing engineer, who takes the raw recorded tracks and edits and modifies them with hardware and software tools to create a stereo or surround sound "mix" of all the individual voices sounds and instruments, in turn given further adjustment by a mastering engineer for the various distribution media.
The producer oversees the recording engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as "the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record", like a director would a movie. Indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation is music director; the music producer's job is to create and mold a piece of music. The scope of responsibility may be one or two songs or an artist's entire album – in which case the producer will develop an overall vision for the album and how the various songs may interrelate. At the beginning of record industry, the producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live; the immediate predecessors to record producers were the artists and repertoire executives of the late 1920s and 1930s who oversaw the "pop" product and led session orchestras. That was the case of Ben Selvin at Columbia Records, Nathaniel Shilkret at Victor Records and Bob Haring at Brunswick Records.
By the end of the 1930s, the first professional recording studios not owned by the major companies were established separating the roles of A&R man and producer, although it wouldn't be until the late 1940s when the term "producer" became used in the industry. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1960s due to technology; the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously. All of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio where the performance was recorded. With multitrack recording, the "bed tracks" (rhythm section accompaniment parts such as the bassline and rhythm guitar could be recorded first, the vocals and solos could be added using as many "takes" as necessary, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. A pop band could record their backing tracks one week, a horn section could be brought in a week to add horn shots and punches, a string section could be brought in a week after that.
Multitrack recording had another pro
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner and poet. Living in Munich during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes with theatre plays, whose themes were influenced by his Marxist thought, he was the main proponent of the genre named epic theatre. During the Nazi period and World War II he lived in exile, first in Scandinavia and in the United States. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator, actress Helene Weigel. Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was born in February 1898 in Augsburg, the son of Berthold Friedrich Brecht and his wife Sophie, née Brezing. Brecht's mother was his father a Roman Catholic; the modest house where he was born is today preserved as a Brecht Museum. His father worked for a paper mill, becoming its managing director in 1914. Due to his mother's influence, Brecht knew the Bible, a familiarity that would have a lifelong effect on his writing.
From her, came the "dangerous image of the self-denying woman" that recurs in his drama. Brecht's home life was comfortably middle class, despite what his occasional attempt to claim peasant origins implied. At school in Augsburg he met Caspar Neher. Neher designed many of the sets for Brecht's dramas and helped to forge the distinctive visual iconography of their epic theatre; when Brecht was 16, the First World War broke out. Enthusiastic, Brecht soon changed his mind on seeing his classmates "swallowed by the army". Brecht was nearly expelled from school in 1915 for writing an essay in response to the line "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" from the Roman poet Horace, calling it Zweckpropaganda and arguing that only an empty-headed person could be persuaded to die for their country, his expulsion was only prevented through the intervention of his religion teacher. On his father's recommendation, Brecht sought a loophole by registering for a medical course at Munich University, where he enrolled in 1917.
There he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher, who inspired in the young Brecht an admiration for the iconoclastic dramatist and cabaret-star Frank Wedekind. From July 1916, Brecht's newspaper articles began appearing under the new name "Bert Brecht". Brecht was drafted into military service in the autumn of 1918, only to be posted back to Augsburg as a medical orderly in a military VD clinic. In July 1919, Brecht and Paula Banholzer had Frank. In 1920 Brecht's mother died; some time in either 1920 or 1921, Brecht took a small part in the political cabaret of the Munich comedian Karl Valentin. Brecht's diaries for the next few years record numerous visits to see Valentin perform. Brecht compared Valentin to Charlie Chaplin, for his "virtually complete rejection of mimicry and cheap psychology". Writing in his Messingkauf Dialogues years Brecht identified Valentin, along with Wedekind and Büchner, as his "chief influences" at that time: But the man he learnt most from was the clown Valentin, who performed in a beer-hall.
He did short sketches in which he played refractory employees, orchestral musicians or photographers, who hated their employers and made them look ridiculous. The employer was played by his partner, Liesl Karlstadt, a popular woman comedian who used to pad herself out and speak in a deep bass voice. Brecht's first full-length play, arose in response to an argument in one of Kutscher's drama seminars, initiating a trend that persisted throughout his career of creative activity, generated by a desire to counter another work. "Anyone can be creative," he quipped, "it's rewriting other people that's a challenge." Brecht completed his second major play, Drums in the Night, in February 1919. Between November 1921 and April 1922 Brecht made acquaintance with many influential people in the Berlin cultural scene. Amongst them was the playwright Arnolt Bronnen with whom he established a joint venture, the Arnolt Bronnen / Bertolt Brecht Company. Brecht changed the spelling of his first name to Bertolt to rhyme with Arnolt.
In 1922 while still living in Munich, Brecht came to the attention of an influential Berlin critic, Herbert Ihering: "At 24 the writer Bert Brecht has changed Germany's literary complexion overnight"—he enthused in his review of Brecht's first play to be produced, Drums in the Night—" has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision. It is a language you can feel on your tongue, in your gums, your ear, your spinal column." In November it was announced that Brecht had been awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize for his first three plays. The citation for the award insisted that: language is vivid without being deliberately poetic, symbolical without being over literary. Brecht is a dramatist; that year he married the Viennese opera-singer Marianne Zoff. Their daughter—Hanne Hiob —was a successful German actress. In 1923, Brecht wrote a scenario for what was to become a short slapstick film
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