Previously unheard recordings of John Coltrane, captured by Frank Tiberi

Previously unheard recordings of John Coltrane, captured by Frank Tiberi jazzwise.com

Related: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/col...

108 points•gregsadetsky•5 days ago•42 comments•

#x2f #john #recordings #coltrane #previously #frank #captured #unheard

42 comments

2b3a513 days ago

The tape recorder's manual is available with circuit diagrams [1] and more pictures [2]. I'm not seeing an hf bias oscillator in the circuit unless the manufacturers are being clever. It was half track mono with two speeds, 3.5 ips and 1.875 ips.

Someone did a lot of work to restore these recordings!

[1] https://manualmachine.com/concertone/tr100/8544644-schematic...

[2] https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/transicord_tr_100.html

bsteinbach3 days ago

Indeed, no hf oscillator, instead it looks like it uses DC bias via R12. It's also neat to see all the circuitry re-used identically for amplifying the tape in playback, or amplifying the microphone input to record to tape. Was that a standard and obvious plan for the engineers of the time?

I'm also curious if R22, the thermistor, would have been just for thermal protection, or if it was actually used to set the operating point for the output transistors in normal operation? Would it have switched on loud and angry before the transistors warmed up and the bias point cooled down, the opposite of a tube amp?

dn35003 days ago

I am not familiar with this machine but I owned several other Japanese miniature tape recorders in the 1960s. These germanium transistors are very temperature sensitive, and the thermistor was almost certainly there to compensate for this and keep the bias point steady in normal operation as the temperature varied. And yes a single amplifier was used in all these machines.

gregsadetsky3 days ago

Could you explain more? I could ask an LLM but I find it friendlier to ask you, ha! If you don't mind of course.

What does a bias oscillator do that would help, and is the ips speed slow ie it's a low "resolution" (so to speak) analog recording?

JKCalhoun3 days ago

Inches per second… the larger number is of course better, as higher frequencies require a higher tape speed to faithfully capture. Higher-end reel to reel recorders could do 7.5 i.p.s. and 15… to give you an idea what high end would look like.

Anyway, rather than call it "low resolution", loss of high-frequencies (low pass) is closer to the mark.

Slow_Hand3 days ago

Career musician here. My dirty secret is that Coltrane doesn’t resonate with me at all. Not one iota; despite me being a huge jazz fan.

For my taste, his harmonic language tips over the threshold where it goes from being viscerally enjoyable to a more heady, academic exercise. It all feels like a blur to me. Maximal in it’s vocabulary, and yet flat in it’s overall effect. It’s often so dense that it ends up feeling “same-y” and grey to me. Like Schoenberg’s serial music.

Maybe my impression here comes from the fact that by the time I began listening to him in the mid 2000’s an entire school of derivative jazz players had long since developed upon and retroactively made his innovations feel far more common (to no fault of his own). It’s that flavor of jazz where you get the impression that the players are enjoying this way more than the audience. It’s not for me.

seabre2 days ago

His Ballads album is probably one of the best albums ever made by anybody. It got dunked on by critics originally because they thought he was ditching his sheets of sound stuff from Giant Steps for more commercial appeal.

If you don't own it you should. Preferably the deluxe edition with his Greensleeves takes.

As far as his sheets of sound stuff, I think Sun Ship is ridiculously underrated and is a bridge between his classic quartet and Pharoah Sanders/free jazz era stuff. Really really good if you've never listened to it.

globnomulous3 days ago

If the does nothing for you or feels like an inaccessible academic exercise, your ear must be very, very different from mine: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=saN1BwlxJxA

belZaah3 days ago

Same. It’s a tiring exercise keeping up with what is going on in Giant Steps. I marvel at the intricacies I can’t mostly even begin to understand but it doesn’t speak to me musically the way eg Watercolors or Kind of Blue or Take Five does.

shermantanktop3 days ago

Agree. There’s a Berklee player stereotype and later Coltrane is like that. It’s all about his drive to do his thing, in his own special way, nothing to do with his audience, and only a little about the other players.

madaxe_again3 days ago

Not a career musician - just a musician, pianist.

I love Coltrane - I find the complexity lyrical, like Art Tatum or Django Reinhardt in their respective disciplines - or if you throw back, Liszt, Chopin, the other bloody show-offs who could sing with an instrument. I dunno. It talks to me, but I guess at the end of the day it’s all just taste.

na10263 days ago

I'm not a saxophonist but I believe that a lot of Coltrane's rapid scale traversal approach comes from transcribing or appropriating Art Tatum pieces for the saxophone.

diego_moita3 days ago

John Coltrane has a special meaning in jazz for me.

I don't see any other musician creating harmonies as rich as him. Yes, not even Miles Davis, Bill Evans or Tom Jobim (other jazz musicians that I like a lot).

It is surprising how fresh and accessible his music remains today. He never became a top hit, but also never stopped being relevant.

breezybottom3 days ago

When you say accessible I guess you're excluding his free jazz period. And "rich" harmonies doesn't really mean anything. If you're saying that he stacks more extensions than Bill Evans, that seems hard to quantify.

viccis3 days ago

>And "rich" harmonies doesn't really mean anything.

I can't even begin to comprehend how you can't understand that someone can write harmonically rich music.

dbalatero3 days ago

I picked a hell of a day to stop impulse shopping.

rdiddly3 days ago

I like the little interjections from what I assume is Tiberi, just enjoying the hell out of it.

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