Your "To-Buy" list...

About half of those are available for the equivalent of $0.25/tune or less, full ownership, on www.eMusic.com

The typical deal is 50 tunes free when you sign up. Trick: If you start to sign up, get all the way to end, then bail, they'll send you a "beg" offering 100 tunes free when you sign up.

It's a great service. Well worth yer $10/month.

 

Yeah, but this is an mp3 site, right? I use an mp3 player, it's great for headphones while travelling and in the car etc. Certainly the quality is as good as using the radio or a cassette etc. but if you want to hear the beautiful recording of PC's bass like PCocobass was talking about with the Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, once in a while you have to throw the CD on a decent stereo. Now, of course, with the MP3 you can still hear what they play and everything, but for that listening experience (and I'm still just a fan at heart...) you really should buy the CDs which I understand are available very cheaply now. It's just my opinion, and it could be a different situation for someone else, I just thought I'd mention it.

If you want to get into some Bird, check out http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr/ Phil Schapp's "Bird Flight" is a show where they just play everything he ever recorded, over and over. With interviews, commentary and historical information. The show is on at 8:20-9:30am, which might not be convenient, but I'm sure a young fella like you could find a way to "time shift" it. KCR has a ton of other good stuff too. I'm listening to Cachao right now (on "The Mambo Machine").

Last, Aaron, I saw somewhere that you know Greg Runions. Many years ago, when I was just a kid, I did some playing with him. I doubt he'd remember me, but say hi if you think of it. I'll have to try to catch up with him sometime when I'm in the neighborhood.

Brent

 

Well, that's why I put the caveats. There is definitely a time when the volume of music you listen to is more important than the fidelity of the recordings. I think Sam's suggestion was a great one, aimed at helping in your exact situation. I guess I just feel that I'd rather pay for the disc and then put it in my player myself, since as storage space becomes bigger and bigger, I may one day decide to re-encode to better quality. I really think of mp3s as a "temporary" format, and wonder about spending a lot of money on them. But actually looking at it, I guess it's really pretty cheap. So as long as we go into it knowing what we're getting, I guess that's ok.

Brent

 

So on Sam's suggestion I took the plunge tonight. Well worth the trial at least. Within 2 hours, I already blew my trial 50 dl's and loaded up on Hampton Hawes (w/ Red Mitchell), Red Mitchell, Miles, Red Garland, and smatterings of Benny Golson, Bird, and some other stuff.

The selection is so-so, but I would still keep the membership just to pay for albums that I wouldn't spend the serious bux and effort to get. For instance, I wouldn't go searching for Coltrane in the record bins cuz that's not what I'm researching now, but I'd definitely DL it from eMusic. Or since I'm not a huge Miles fan, this is a good source for me to get that stuff. This is still cheaper than if I were to go buy them used. Also, the MP3's are recorded at a higher bitrate, so the quaility isn't bad at all. I'm happy wit it.

Thanks Sam!!!!

Now for that 100 dl's.... hehehehe.....

 

Hey Brent-

You're 100% right. I've noticed a big difference with the mp3's I've downloaded and the "real" thing. This can become a problem too if you do a lot of transcribing. On that record I mentioned, you can hear every inflection from PC's bass. It would be a breeze to write it all down (which I intend on doing!) But sometimes I have trouble transcribing stuff from my iPod, especially if it's older recordings. I guess it also depends on how much compression you use, but I just have iTunes set to default, so maybe I should change that.

 

What Miles stuff do you currently listen to? Maybe you're in the wrong decade.