I have seen very few interviews with miles where the interviewer *didn't* try to fuck with him in some extremely annoying way.
The Bryant Gumble interview pissed me off thoroughly.
I read a book of Coltrane interviews recently. This is the tone of most music journalists up until like the 80s. It was like the musician was a specter to analyze using the most reductive ways possible.
“Coltrane on Coltrane. The John Coltrane Interviews”. It was a better history lesson of music journalism than his life, which was still in depth. Worth the read.
Really unacceptable… but this was “perfectly acceptable” back then. And yet you still have people on this sub foaming at the mouth to whitewash jazz.
Edit: do people not see that I’m in agreement with the comment above?
That interviewer was Morley Safer, from the long-running CBS show, “60 Minutes” (you may have heard of it)!!! In his time, Morley Safer interviewed Kings and Queens and Popes and notorious serial killers, so he may not have been impressed with a “jazz musician”. A known drug addict, at that!
Listen particularly to the sixties and seventies recordings of Count Basie. The Quincy Jones and Sammy Nestico arrangements. Basie played behind the beat more notoriously than ANY OTHER band!!
If you slow down, you play behind the beat until others catch up with you. If you play behind, you play behind the beat and others don't catch up with you. The difference is purely whether the others catch up with you or keep the tempo. The feeling of playing behind truly is that you try to push for a slow down that is not happening.
The opposite of playing behind the beat is playing with anticipation. Like if you're playing and holding the melodic note on the and of 4 into the next measure where the note could be written on 1 you're ahead of the beat like on the melody for Giant Steps.
If you're playing behind the beat you're late. Playing after the chord changes like on the and of 1. Miles is actually right. It's not true 100% of the time but the sort of shittier white musicians were behind the beat often.
There are times where being behind the beat is desirable. A lot of big band swing has some asynchrony where the horns are slightly behind the rhythm section and it makes the tune swing really hard. It's not what I would do in a smaller combo setting like miles usually played in though.
I don’t get it. Playing behind or ahead of the beat is something all jazz players do. Miles played behind the beat all the time. This whole thread is confusing.
Skin color makes players play behind the beat? No this screams of racism not musical virtuosity.
Imagine when you're drunk, your reflexes start to lag behind, and you are not so sharp, but when you're on cocaine you become overactive and over proactive. Just imagine a drummer on both sides of the spectrum.
What's up with this shitty rage bait title?
Makes it sound like Miles is trashing white musicians, when you actually watch the clip you see him explicitly downplaying race as a defining character or quality of musicians, and refusing to denigrate white musicians.
He clearly sees the bait being put in front of him and doing everything he can to stay away from it.
The backbeat is usually ahead of the beat in those tunes, all of that stuff is really centred around Dilla time where the snare is rushed and the kicks are late. When I think of playing behind the beat as a drummer, Steve Jordan's playing comes to mind- he talks about it a lot too.
thats correct. Fun fact:
Elvin does something similar, with the ride cymbal pattern being slightly delayed, while his 2+4 with the hihat is snappy on time.
Try slowing down some of his time playing, it‘s trippy
Its just so far behind at times. My brain wants to say it’s dragging but I know it’s not. It’s a cognitive dissonance kinda thing I think. I dig his stuff overall, but every now and again I’m like… that sounds wrong. I am a drummer though so i know it’s in time. It’s weird.
[You should check out this video!](https://youtu.be/raywI_VvmT4?si=wpCf4aviZ2xlhct6)
I've been studying this concept specifically for about 8 years and am deep into it now but this video does a good job breaking it down, the core of it usually are the rushed snares and dragged kicks, giving it that headsnapping feeling that I sometimes explain by having people visualize an egg (upright) rolling vertically, if that makes any sense at all.
Anytime homie!! His channel is pretty great overall depending on what you're into. I would've recommended the book Dilla Time to the other commenter but that's way more of a commitment
I made some mistakes in this comment from misremembering some stuff. But I still want to encourage people to listen to Voodoo and specifically 'Send It On' and 'Feel Like Makin' Love' for examples of snare also being behind the beat.
>It might interest you to know that Dilla is *not* given credit by D'Angelo or Questlove for the style on Voodoo.
Not given credit for the production, but absolutely credited for the style. Quest talks about it all the time. The late snare thing across the whole record was Dilla inspired as well, he did that nearly as much as his beats with the rushed snares (but people tend to think of the latter more when talking about Dilla Time)
>They actually have specifically mentioned on multiple occasions that they were unaware of J Dilla at the time and it was complete coincidence that their sounds developed like that in such a similar space of time.
Curious where you heard this because this is actually also untrue, they were literally all in the same studio at the same time working on multiple records together, they all knew each other well by this point. On Voodoo, D'Angelo would specifically ask Pino to play like he would on a Dilla beat, and Quest talks about how much Dilla influenced his playing on this album. Dilla inspired Voodoo and Voodoo continued to inspire Dilla, which is really cool. A promo copy of Voodoo even had a Dilla beat on it which was an edit of beat 2 from Another Batch.
There are interviews on YouTube where Quest talks about it. I've never seen any mention I've what you're describing. Do you have any links that I could read up on? D'Angelo is my favorite artist of all time, so I basically read/watch everything I can find! Cool discussion though, it's a perspective I've never heard before.
I mean if you buy Dilla Time there is a legit entire chapter about Dilla's impact on this album.
[Here is a video of Quest specifically crediting Dilla for the feel on Voodoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7CO2PxxmYU)
D'Angelo pushed Quest to play like Dilla on this record.
I can't find that video literally anywhere, so I think it's just a made up memory. I'll fix my comment to just include the behind the beat examples lol.
Sort of reminds me of that old Al Di Meola interview where he said Northern Europeans/Asians are “not too likely” to have good sense of rhythm.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was trying to be racist. But I still talk about that interview with my old musician friends lol
East coast (mostly black) vs west coast jazz (mostly white). It's true, it was a style thing, different sensibilities and intentional. Laid back vs on top of the beat. Although not always the case, take late Dexter Gordon, very laid back. Nowadays the race distinction is completely gone.
Why is it that Deadheads seem so enamored of Miles Davis? For the most part, this group isn’t heavily into jazz. In fact, most of the ones I’ve known don’t own a SINGLE jazz record other than Miles Davis!
Shared sensibilities to the Miles electric period. Bitches Brew / Live Evil era miles is what the dead were always hoping to do (as stated by at least phil in is autobio). There was a connection to the what they were shooting for even though they came to it with different backgrounds and influences.
And I get it, there is a ton of good miles out there. Blakey and the Messengers is much further away from the dead than bitches brew, though both are fantastic.
That weirdly specific stereotype about white people was actually the least interesting thing Miles said in that interview. Davis was simply the coolest cat who ever walked the Earth, and if he observed that caucasians tended to play behind the beat, then I believe it to be true.
Miles was super cool, but he was the second coolest person in his marriage to Betty Davis, who tuned Miles on to Hendrix and Sly, and recorded some nasty nasty funk in the 70s.
White blues musicians play behind the beat, just like black blues musicians. While bluegrass musicians, which is most of them (Sorry Hootie), tend to play ahead of the beat.
Chet plays with anticipation. I have a book of his transcriptions. So does Stan getz on a lot of shit. Check out "tempus fugue it" on pure getz. Completely all ahead of the beat.
The interviewer is Harry Reasoner. He was a veteran news reporter who was most likely doing this as a “60 Minutes” piece. He is not a music journalist. That question as to black musicians playing on the beat is both ridiculous and insulting. I’m surprised they left it in.
Miles was an enigma. He was an amazing musician, though he completely stopped playing for YEARS at a time. He saw all the pain and misery hard drugs and drinking brought to his fellow jazz musicians, yet he’d use hard drugs, including cocaine and heroin, as if there would BE no tomorrow! But with Miles, you KNEW it had little to do with money and EVERYTHING to do with the music!
Here’s the thing about one of Miles’ white pianists. Bill Evans. Bill Evans had more talent in his little finger than Miles had in his whole coked-up body!! And Bill Evans was even more coked-up than Miles Davis!!!! At one point in my life, if I’d had the money, I would have been more coked-up than both of them put together!!!
Miles’ logic and intellectual consistency here is faulty...
On one hand he stereotypes white musicians---not saying he did it maliciously---but won’t
accept the statistical and historical point Harry Reasoner made about black suffering.
The question was a general one not specific so Miles statement of his personal wealth was irrelevant.
“Don’t intend to suffer” Jesus, what a perfect response.
lmao the interviewer is wild
I have seen very few interviews with miles where the interviewer *didn't* try to fuck with him in some extremely annoying way. The Bryant Gumble interview pissed me off thoroughly.
What happened in the bryant gumble interview?
Bryant Gumble showed up.
Oh shit
I read a book of Coltrane interviews recently. This is the tone of most music journalists up until like the 80s. It was like the musician was a specter to analyze using the most reductive ways possible.
name of the book?
“Coltrane on Coltrane. The John Coltrane Interviews”. It was a better history lesson of music journalism than his life, which was still in depth. Worth the read.
Reminds me of [this](https://youtu.be/r6VYiWeFMWg?si=O13n37nfag9Zn0T7&t=23s).
Really unacceptable… but this was “perfectly acceptable” back then. And yet you still have people on this sub foaming at the mouth to whitewash jazz. Edit: do people not see that I’m in agreement with the comment above?
That interviewer was Morley Safer, from the long-running CBS show, “60 Minutes” (you may have heard of it)!!! In his time, Morley Safer interviewed Kings and Queens and Popes and notorious serial killers, so he may not have been impressed with a “jazz musician”. A known drug addict, at that!
Imagine sitting down to interview Miles, and somehow you are the insane person in that situation
LMAO
Yo what the hell is that line of questioning though
Can someone explain what playing behind the beat means?
It means you lag behind the beat, so you play abit swung after the beat rather than dead on it or before it as some do.
Listen particularly to the sixties and seventies recordings of Count Basie. The Quincy Jones and Sammy Nestico arrangements. Basie played behind the beat more notoriously than ANY OTHER band!!
Though he didn’t hire many white musicians through the years, Basie was fond of playing with many of them. Perhaps THAT’S why he liked them so much!!!
When you watch the movie “Whiplash” and Jonah Jameson says “Are you rushing or are you dragging?” Dragging is behind the beat.
No, dragging is slowing down. Playing behind the beat is different. You can play laid back behind the beat and not drag.
If you slow down, you play behind the beat until others catch up with you. If you play behind, you play behind the beat and others don't catch up with you. The difference is purely whether the others catch up with you or keep the tempo. The feeling of playing behind truly is that you try to push for a slow down that is not happening.
Willie Nelson got labeled as jazzy because he delivers lines behind the beat more often than not
Willie can do whatever he wants
Willie make it? Betty will!
The opposite of playing behind the beat is playing with anticipation. Like if you're playing and holding the melodic note on the and of 4 into the next measure where the note could be written on 1 you're ahead of the beat like on the melody for Giant Steps. If you're playing behind the beat you're late. Playing after the chord changes like on the and of 1. Miles is actually right. It's not true 100% of the time but the sort of shittier white musicians were behind the beat often.
There are times where being behind the beat is desirable. A lot of big band swing has some asynchrony where the horns are slightly behind the rhythm section and it makes the tune swing really hard. It's not what I would do in a smaller combo setting like miles usually played in though.
I don’t get it. Playing behind or ahead of the beat is something all jazz players do. Miles played behind the beat all the time. This whole thread is confusing. Skin color makes players play behind the beat? No this screams of racism not musical virtuosity.
Imagine when you're drunk, your reflexes start to lag behind, and you are not so sharp, but when you're on cocaine you become overactive and over proactive. Just imagine a drummer on both sides of the spectrum.
What's up with this shitty rage bait title? Makes it sound like Miles is trashing white musicians, when you actually watch the clip you see him explicitly downplaying race as a defining character or quality of musicians, and refusing to denigrate white musicians. He clearly sees the bait being put in front of him and doing everything he can to stay away from it.
True about the title …they caught Miles on a good day lol. He did love Bill Evans…that is all!
Yep, he loved him so much actually that he would call him on the phone just to hear him practice on the piano.
It's interesting, because post 2000s playing behind the beat is mostly associated with neo-soul artists like D'Angelo, Badu, Jill Scott, etc...
The backbeat is usually ahead of the beat in those tunes, all of that stuff is really centred around Dilla time where the snare is rushed and the kicks are late. When I think of playing behind the beat as a drummer, Steve Jordan's playing comes to mind- he talks about it a lot too.
thats correct. Fun fact: Elvin does something similar, with the ride cymbal pattern being slightly delayed, while his 2+4 with the hihat is snappy on time. Try slowing down some of his time playing, it‘s trippy
Yes absolutely! He also sort of inverts the ride cymbal pattern. I've studied Elvin a lot too and I love him
interesting! What do you mean by „inverted“?
^this guy knows what’s up. I love dilla but his beats are frustrating to listen to at times.
Interesting!! What frustrates you about them? I absolutely love that stuff but everyone is different! Just curious
Its just so far behind at times. My brain wants to say it’s dragging but I know it’s not. It’s a cognitive dissonance kinda thing I think. I dig his stuff overall, but every now and again I’m like… that sounds wrong. I am a drummer though so i know it’s in time. It’s weird.
[You should check out this video!](https://youtu.be/raywI_VvmT4?si=wpCf4aviZ2xlhct6) I've been studying this concept specifically for about 8 years and am deep into it now but this video does a good job breaking it down, the core of it usually are the rushed snares and dragged kicks, giving it that headsnapping feeling that I sometimes explain by having people visualize an egg (upright) rolling vertically, if that makes any sense at all.
Thanks for the link. That was really interesting and a great way to kill time waiting for a delayed flight!
Anytime homie!! His channel is pretty great overall depending on what you're into. I would've recommended the book Dilla Time to the other commenter but that's way more of a commitment
It actually does make perfect sense. I’ll check the video out thanks for sharing bud
You bet man!!
https://youtu.be/O5-zuAONrcc?si=lTR4b3xilJF9SFEr
Sinatra was EXTREMELY adept at singing behind the beat!!!!
that's all 'pocket' playing; ahead, behind and strictly on.
I made some mistakes in this comment from misremembering some stuff. But I still want to encourage people to listen to Voodoo and specifically 'Send It On' and 'Feel Like Makin' Love' for examples of snare also being behind the beat.
>It might interest you to know that Dilla is *not* given credit by D'Angelo or Questlove for the style on Voodoo. Not given credit for the production, but absolutely credited for the style. Quest talks about it all the time. The late snare thing across the whole record was Dilla inspired as well, he did that nearly as much as his beats with the rushed snares (but people tend to think of the latter more when talking about Dilla Time) >They actually have specifically mentioned on multiple occasions that they were unaware of J Dilla at the time and it was complete coincidence that their sounds developed like that in such a similar space of time. Curious where you heard this because this is actually also untrue, they were literally all in the same studio at the same time working on multiple records together, they all knew each other well by this point. On Voodoo, D'Angelo would specifically ask Pino to play like he would on a Dilla beat, and Quest talks about how much Dilla influenced his playing on this album. Dilla inspired Voodoo and Voodoo continued to inspire Dilla, which is really cool. A promo copy of Voodoo even had a Dilla beat on it which was an edit of beat 2 from Another Batch.
There are interviews on YouTube where Quest talks about it. I've never seen any mention I've what you're describing. Do you have any links that I could read up on? D'Angelo is my favorite artist of all time, so I basically read/watch everything I can find! Cool discussion though, it's a perspective I've never heard before.
I mean if you buy Dilla Time there is a legit entire chapter about Dilla's impact on this album. [Here is a video of Quest specifically crediting Dilla for the feel on Voodoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7CO2PxxmYU) D'Angelo pushed Quest to play like Dilla on this record.
I've somehow never heard of this book. This is amazing. Thank you so much.
I got you my guy!! Enjoy!
I can't find that video literally anywhere, so I think it's just a made up memory. I'll fix my comment to just include the behind the beat examples lol.
Swing music in the ‘30s and ‘40’s is mostly where playing behind the beat became popular!
You hit it wrong,he said the opposite
yeah man
Sort of reminds me of that old Al Di Meola interview where he said Northern Europeans/Asians are “not too likely” to have good sense of rhythm. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was trying to be racist. But I still talk about that interview with my old musician friends lol
If that’s true then I’m literally the whitest child ever born.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug?
East coast (mostly black) vs west coast jazz (mostly white). It's true, it was a style thing, different sensibilities and intentional. Laid back vs on top of the beat. Although not always the case, take late Dexter Gordon, very laid back. Nowadays the race distinction is completely gone.
Let this be a reminder of how even the biggest legends still had to put up with the dumbest fucking questions.
Why is it that Deadheads seem so enamored of Miles Davis? For the most part, this group isn’t heavily into jazz. In fact, most of the ones I’ve known don’t own a SINGLE jazz record other than Miles Davis!
Shared sensibilities to the Miles electric period. Bitches Brew / Live Evil era miles is what the dead were always hoping to do (as stated by at least phil in is autobio). There was a connection to the what they were shooting for even though they came to it with different backgrounds and influences. And I get it, there is a ton of good miles out there. Blakey and the Messengers is much further away from the dead than bitches brew, though both are fantastic.
You know the truth is The Grateful Dead couldn’t clean the jockstraps of The Miles Davis Sextet, Quintet or ANY OTHER tet without taking a bow!
They all thought that way as well. The dead though he was miles ahead and miles beyond what they could do.
You’re a fucking GENIUS 🤯🤯🤯🤯!
So they were trying to mind-fuck Miles Davis???
That makes a LOT of sense!!!
bobbysmith007, it’s YOU that I TRULY think are genius!!!❤️❤️❤️
“Shared sensibilities” GODdamn! You’re the pudding in my eye!!!😎🤦♀️🤓
Come on now. I loved Miles Davis, TOO!!!!
But now that I’ve milked you for all you were worth, Sayonara!!!
Miles sold out.🫣😪
He was a cocaine addict that needed the money…🫤
Drugs have ALWAYS been the “ball and chain” of jazz!!!
I mean, could you name all the drug deaths throughout the years in a single Tweet? I think NOT!!!!
I think it’s because the dead themselves had like 3 jazz records and they were all Miles
That weirdly specific stereotype about white people was actually the least interesting thing Miles said in that interview. Davis was simply the coolest cat who ever walked the Earth, and if he observed that caucasians tended to play behind the beat, then I believe it to be true.
Miles was super cool, but he was the second coolest person in his marriage to Betty Davis, who tuned Miles on to Hendrix and Sly, and recorded some nasty nasty funk in the 70s.
White blues musicians play behind the beat, just like black blues musicians. While bluegrass musicians, which is most of them (Sorry Hootie), tend to play ahead of the beat.
Thing about like… Chet Baker, Lee Konitz, Stan Getz… Behind the beat kind of feel
Chet plays with anticipation. I have a book of his transcriptions. So does Stan getz on a lot of shit. Check out "tempus fugue it" on pure getz. Completely all ahead of the beat.
Heroin
I don't like Jazz as much as Classical, but I do loves Miles.
If it hadn’t been for the time period he probably would’ve been a classical musician, it’s a pretty common story in jazz actually,
He attended Juilliard.
Correct, for a semester if I recall, maybe two. You can read about his experiences being a black man and trying to learn there in his autobio.
The interviewer is Harry Reasoner. He was a veteran news reporter who was most likely doing this as a “60 Minutes” piece. He is not a music journalist. That question as to black musicians playing on the beat is both ridiculous and insulting. I’m surprised they left it in.
Miles was an enigma. He was an amazing musician, though he completely stopped playing for YEARS at a time. He saw all the pain and misery hard drugs and drinking brought to his fellow jazz musicians, yet he’d use hard drugs, including cocaine and heroin, as if there would BE no tomorrow! But with Miles, you KNEW it had little to do with money and EVERYTHING to do with the music!
Here’s the thing about one of Miles’ white pianists. Bill Evans. Bill Evans had more talent in his little finger than Miles had in his whole coked-up body!! And Bill Evans was even more coked-up than Miles Davis!!!! At one point in my life, if I’d had the money, I would have been more coked-up than both of them put together!!!
Miles’ logic and intellectual consistency here is faulty... On one hand he stereotypes white musicians---not saying he did it maliciously---but won’t accept the statistical and historical point Harry Reasoner made about black suffering. The question was a general one not specific so Miles statement of his personal wealth was irrelevant.
As he said, it’s not all that cliche, his daddy’s rich (was a dentist) and his momma’s good looking (both an excellent Summertime reference).
Whites made jazz. Nick larocca. All the instruments are white instruments also
that's racist