My first AI comment?

Fairly often, I receive blog comments that are just advertisements, that have nothing to do with the article that is supposedly being commented on. The sender is just looking for clicks to their product or service. It only takes me one click to delete them. 

Yesterday, I got an interesting one. It's a review of my post on the Origins of Choro Form, about as favorable, glowing, and complimentary as a comment could be. The comment included two links to a relatively new service that is aimed at musical artists.

The style and tone of the writing seemed a little "off" to me, so I ran the text through a few free AI detectors.

First, let me say that the originator of the post should understand that I won't publish comments that have advertisements, no matter how complimentary the content is, whether AI or human. Apologies if my suspicions are wrong, and the text was actually written by a human. And thanks for the compliments, regardless!

Anyway, here is the very complimentary comment, followed by the results from seven AI detectors:

The exploration of choro's structural origins and its possible correlations with other music forms like ragtime provides a fascinating glimpse into the intricate world of musical evolution and cross-cultural influences. Your article does an excellent job of delving into these complex topics, offering a clear, well-researched perspective that invites both newcomers and seasoned aficionados of choro to think deeper about the genre.

Your methodical approach, starting with questioning a claim and following through with expert verification and further research, enhances the credibility and educational value of your post. The clarification from Jovino Santos Neto about the rondo form's influence in early choro composition, and its syncopation of popular European dances of the time, adds a rich layer of understanding to how choro might have stylistically evolved to incorporate these elements.

Furthermore, the comparison with ragtime and the detailed analysis of structural similarities point to a fascinating parallel development in musical forms that transcended geographic and cultural boundaries. The notion that both choro and ragtime independently mirrored European dance forms yet developed unique identities is intriguing and speaks volumes about the adaptive and transformative power of music.

Your discussion also opens up broader questions about the influence of musical forms on each other, especially in the context of the later influence of jazz on choro. It prompts a reflection on how music continually evolves through both internal innovations and external influences, leading to new musical expressions that retain echoes of their past.

Overall, your article is not only informative but also thought-provoking, encouraging readers to appreciate the depth and complexity of musical genres like choro. It serves as a reminder of the endless possibilities that music holds as a form of cultural expression and historical documentation.

Without mentioning the specific free AI detectors, here are the seven results:

1. "Reads like AI" - flagged the first paragraph in particular.
2. "100% of your text is AI-generated."
3. "18.97% GPT," first paragraph is "most likely generated by AI."
4. "18% AI/GTP generated, human written 81%.
5. "0% likelihood of complete AI content."
6. "100% chance that your text is generated by AI."
7. "78% of text is likely AI generated, 22% human written." Flagged paragraphs 2-5 as likely AI.

As you can see, the results are all over the place. I guess AI detection is not an exact science.

These free detectors seem to be mostly about persuading people to sign up for services that promise to rewrite your text in a way that will fool AI detectors into thinking the author is human. Thank goodness I'm not a professor who has to grade term papers. With in-person music lessons, you can't use AI to fake proficiency, or to mask lack of practice.

Addendum: A few hours after I put up this post, I got another chatbot comment, on a different blog post. This one came with a link to someplace selling nutrition supplements. The soulless style looks awfully familiar. Welcome to the future.

The "Chain of Dominants" Progression adds a captivating layer of tension and resolution to music, keeping listeners engaged and eager for more harmonic surprises.

Tadd Dameron and “Cream Oil Charlie”

I’ve been checking some of Tadd Dameron’s compositions. The definitive biography Dameronia lists “Cream Oil Charlie” as one of them, composed by Tadd in 1946.

If you’re old enough to have been around in the 1950s or 1960s, you’ll remember the “Wildroot Cream-Oil” jingle. Here it is, as sung by Nat Cole:

So Dameron wrote this? Really? That was quite a surprise to me. TV viewers in the 1950s and 1960s were bombarded with this jingle. Reading this attribution reminded of when I learned that “Down by the Station (Early in the Morning)” was composed and copyrighted by Slim Gaillard.

But upon reading more carefully, it turns out that Tadd did not write the famous jingle. The piece that Tadd copyrighted as “Cream Oil Charlie” was a bebop melody played over "Perdido" changes. He wrote it for Woody Herman in 1946, when Wildroot Cream-Oil was a sponsor of Woody’s radio show. Tadd’s tune was never actually used, because Woody changed sponsors. It was later recorded by Babs Gonzales in 1947, with the title “Dob Bla Bli.” Here are two versions - the Babs recording, and a recent one from Paul Combs, the author of Dameronia:

Bars 3-4 of "Do Bla Bli" include the same bop lick as bars 7-8 of Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody'n You." The Dizzy tune was written in 1942; it was either a tribute to Woody Herman, or was commissioned by Woody. Tadd and Dizzy were good friends; it’s probably not a coincidence that Tadd wrote that quote into the song. BTW, a similar lick shows up in Dizzy’s “Groovin’ High.”

According to Combs' book, there are copyright deposits at the Library of Congress for both "Cream Oil Charlie" and "Do Bla Bli"; they apparently differ in the bridge. Gonzales' recording does not use either of the copyrighted bridges, but rather leaves the “I Got Rhythm” bridge open for improvisation (as in some other bop tunes.) 

On the level of extreme trivia, I noticed that the label on the Gonzales record spells the first syllable "Dob," while Combs in his book spells it "Do." I'm guessing that Combs spells it that way because that's how it appears in the copyright.

I don’t know who actually could take credit for the famous Wildroot jingle (if "credit" is the right word), but that melody didn’t take much work. It’s the same melody as “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” which is also the melody of The Eyes of Texas are Upon You.

The Wikipedia entry for I’ve Been Working on the Railroad has some notes about the origins of the song.  It can be traced back to at least 1894. The main melody resembles a melody in Franz Suppe’s “Poet and Peasant Overture” (1846). The part that goes, “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah” is also very close melodically to “Goodnight Ladies” (1847).

As for Slim Gaillard's Down by the Station, the melody is pretty much the same as “Alouette,” as well as “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” According to both Wikipedia and this writeup, the lyrics appeared in a children's magazine in 1931. Slim did, however, register the copyright. Here’s Slim’s 1947 recording. It's cute. I guess the intro is original; not sure if that part was in the copyright.

Tunes published in 1928 will be entering public domain in 2024

 As of January 1, 2024, U.S. copyright will expire for works published in 1928, including the following songs:

Back in Your Own Backyard (Jolson, Rose, Dreyer)

Basin Street Blues (Williams)
The Big Rock Candy Mountain (trad., copyright 1928 by McClintock)
Crazy Rhythm (Caesar, Meyer, Kahn)

Hooray for Captain Spaulding (Kalmar) (Groucho Marx theme song)

How Long, How Long Blues (Carr)

I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby (Fields, McHugh)

I Must Have that Man (Fields, McHugh) 

I Wanna Be Loved By You (Stothart, Ruby, Kalmar) 

I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You) (Ahlert, Turk)

If I Had You (Campbell, Connelly, Shapiro)

It's Tight Like That (Whittaker, Dorsey)

Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love (Porter)

Love Me or Leave Me (Kahn, Donaldson)

Lover, Come Back to Me (Romberg, Hammerstein)

Mack the Knife (Weill, Brecht) (music and original German lyrics are PD in 2024, English translations are still under copyright)

Makin' Whoopee (Kahn, Donaldson)

The Mooche (Ellington, Mills)

Pirate Jenny (Weill, Brecht)

Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (Romberg, Hammerstein)

Sweet Lorraine (Burwell, Parish)

Sweet Sue, Just You (Young, Harris)

West End Blues (Oliver, Williams)

What Keeps Mankind Alive? (Weill, Brecht)

When You're Smiling (Shay, Fisher, Goodwin)

You Took Advantage of Me (Rodgers, Hart)

This list includes mostly jazz-oriented and jazz-adjacent songs, and was selected from lists found on Wikipedia and on Jazzstandards.com. Some dates were uncertain; in those cases I went by the copyright dates on images of the original sheet music. Please let me know of any errors.

Further detail on most of these songs is available on Wikipedia.

Note that for the Kurt Weill songs from “Threepenny Opera,” English translations were made after 1928, and those lyrics are still under copyright. The music and original German lyrics are PD in 2024.

In classical music, notable pieces entering public domain are Bartok's String Quartet #4, Gershwin's An American in Paris, Ravel's Bolero, and Villa Lobos' Chôros No. 11, Chôros #12, and Quinteto (em forma de chôros).

For more popular, jazz, and classical pieces entering the public domain, see the Wikipedia article 1928 in Music.

United States copyright law is quite restrictive as compared to many other countries. According to the provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka "Mickey Mouse Protection Act"), works published or registered before 1978 remain under copyright for 95 years.

With the passage of the 1998 law, the cutoff date for works entering the public domain became 1922, with any works published in 1923 or later remaining under copyright. Beginning in 2019, however, the clock began running again, with each new year bringing one more year of songs and other works into the public domain. Over the next 20 years or so, most "Golden Age" jazz standards will lose copyright protection.

Many other countries have shorter terms of copyright; one common formula is the life of the author plus fifty years (see this table). For example, in Canada you can record pieces written by Wes Montgomery (d. 1968) John Coltrane (d. 1967), Igor Stravinsky (d. 1971), Louis Armstrong (d. 1971). Lee Morgan (d. 1972), or Kenny Dorham (d. 1972).

1n 1924, Mickey Mouse will be entering the public domain. Below is an excerpt from last year's post on copyright expiration, regarding the Mickey question:

However, if you are thinking of utilizing Mickey's image in 2024, you should consider that copyright will only expire on images from cartoons released in 1928, such as Steamboat Willie. In those early images, Micky had a somewhat different visage, with a longer, rat-like nose. He did not not yet have his white gloves or red shorts; they came later. If you want to use the white gloves or red shorts, you will have to wait a few more years.

Here's an interesting article on the subject, with an image of Mickey as submitted for copyright in 1929. It looks to me as though Mickey's nose had been altered a little by then, closer to its current look. He has his white gloves, too. The image is in black and white, so I don’t know about the red shorts. 

By the way, Minnie Mouse also appears in the 1928 cartoons, though I don't think she is credited by name.

In addition to copyrighting Mickey, The Walt Disney Company has also registered him as a trademark. US trademarks can be renewed every 10 years, potentially going on forever. Disney has a strong case for Mickey as a trademark, but less so for many of their other characters, who will be falling out of copyright in the next few years. Here is an article from the Western New England Law Review that covers in depth the legal standing of Mickey and other Disney characters.

More links:

2022 NYT article on Mickey copyright

Copyright Law of the United States (Wikipedia)

A Complete History of Rico Reeds - dissertation by Neal Postma

 Every now and then I run across some really interesting information on the "Sax on the Web” forum. A recent thread led me to to a dissertation by Neal Postma, A Complete History of Rico Reeds.

The paper certainly lives up to its title. The story begins in 1928, and the dissertation follows the development of the company up to its purchase by J. D'Addario & Co. in 2004. Chapters cover the inception of the company, leadership and reed designers, reeds, accessories (including Gregory and Gale mouthpieces), cane cultivation, marketing strategies, and the acquisition by D'Addario. 

It's a great read (pun intended). Here are a few nuggets of information that came up:

1) Rico "Orange Box" reeds (formerly brown box, and before that branded as Roy J. Maier) are exactly the same reed as La Voz. There is no quality difference, and no difference in the cut. It's been this way since La Voz was introduced in 1948, and it's still that way:

The La Voz Corporation was set up as a means to appear not to have a complete monopoly on the reed market. They also tried to lure customers that were not happy with Rico reeds. The company produced a reed with the name La Voz, but it was the same exact reed as a Rico Orange Box. Rico color sorted the cane for La Voz reeds, but they did not playtest it. The only other difference between these two reeds was the strength grading. Roy J. Maier (and Rico Orange box) used strengths 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, and 5, a total of nine strengths. La Voz strengths are soft, medium-soft, medium, medium-hard, and hard, a total of five. The reed’s design is the same…The company first introduced this reed in 1948 after only ten years of production of reeds under the Roy J. Maier branding. It was not widely known at the time that Rico even made La Voz reeds, much less that they were the same exact reeds as the Roy J. Maier cuts. In addition to wanting a different reed on the market, Rico introduced this reed under a different company name that went as far as to have a separate PO Box so as to avoid the appearance of having a monopoly on the American reed market. Marketing practices led the public to believe that the La Voz Corporation was an entirely different manufacturer. 

Neal Postma got this information from from Jess Gonzales, Materials Manager at D'Addario, in 2017. Although D'Addario may have replaced and upgraded their reedmaking machinery since then, the same information about Rico vs. La Voz reeds was cited in a 2022 podcast by Wally Wallace, quoting Andrea Harrell, the present D'Addario Woodwinds Product Manager, in a recent conversation (Wallace's reed discussion starts at about 15:05).

The Rico Co. presented La Voz as a superior reed to Rico, but that was strictly a marketing ploy - and apparently still is.

2) Rico Royal (now just called "Royal") is just a regular Rico reed that has had the bark partially filed off, in a "French cut." 

3) In past years, the same basic Rico reed has been branded as "Roy J. Maier," "Conn Diamond Cut," and a number of other names. "Plasticover" is the same reed with a partial plastic coating.

However, Mitchell Lurie reeds (another Rico product) are a different design. "Select Jazz" reeds are a different design also, and they are made with better cane. 

4) Although this info did not come from the dissertation, Wally Wallace also quotes Andrea Harrell saying that D'Addario sources its cane in both France and Argentina, but intermingles the stock. Thus, a purchaser would not know which was the source of the cane. Perhaps for most purchasers, it doesn't matter.

5) Strength is measured with a machine that tests for flex ("resistance"). I recalled reading somewhere that some manufacturer supposedly used a machine that assigned strength by putting a light behind the reed to check the density. Apparently this was incorrect. 

Googling this question, I came across this post on the Clarinet BBoard:

About 15 years ago, one of the Van Dorens was in Montreal and gave a reed presentation. He explained that there is no difference in *thickness* between a 2 1/2 strength reed and a 5 strength reed (a fact one can confirm by measuring the reed on a micrometer like a Perfectareed). He explained that the phenomenon that determines a reed's strength is the cane's density. He described the density gauge Vandoren uses. If you look at the butt of a Vandoren or Rico reed you will see a horizontal band of "teeth marks". These are marks left by a spring gauge that presses into the butt of the reed, measuring the cane's density. The resulting density measurement determines the number strength the reed is assigned.

The point about all reeds of a given design having the same thickness is correct, but the last part of this post seems to be incorrect, or at least unclear. The spring gauge may hold the butt end of the reed, leaving a mark, but the reed is checked for flex the same way as Rico/D'Addario has for many decades, as shown in this video from Vandoren (animation shows a flex test at 2:14). “Density” may not be exactly the right word to use here, although density does relate to flex.

This is probably a good place to quote the (maybe apocryphal) story about the time that clarinetist Stanley Drucker visited the Vandoren factory, and asked Bernard Vandoren if he could be introduced to "the guy who puts the one good reed in every box."

6) Beginning on p.80 of the dissertation, Postma describes recent scientific studies of cane playability. One 1998 study in Australia seems to have influenced management at D'Addario:

All of the characteristics correlated to strong performance had something in common: they were all related to the vascular bundles in the inner cortex. In short, the performance of a reed is determined by a high percentage of fiber and a low percentage xylem and phloem. Xylem is a tissue found in plants that water and dissolved minerals will travel through to disperse it throughout the plant. Phloem is a similar tissue found in plants that food and nutrients travel through as they are dispersed throughout the plant.

While Rico did not commission this study, it was reviewed by Bill Carpenter and those who were running the plantations at the time. This is a relatively new study, and cane cultivation practices are still being developed. Rico/D’Addario holds propriety over techniques used on their plantations to increase the fiber percentage and lower xylem and phloem percentages in their reeds, and they do not wish to disclose any trade secrets.

The clear implication here is that D'Addario may be able to improve cane quality as time goes on. 

For a clearer look at reed anatomy, including vascular bundles, xylem, and phloem, check out this previous post.

Here's a discussion on SOTW discussing the Rico Orange Box vs. La Voz question. There's certainly a lot of disbelief and denial!

Here's a video from Rico/D'Addario on how reeds are made, including a shot of the strength grading device.

One more - a video from Marca Reeds showing their manufacturing process. No English subtitles, but you can see that it's a smaller operation, and less automated.

Song from the Old Country - Don Pullen, Béla Kéler, and Brahms

Here's the latest installment of tune-detective-I-can't-resist-this-stuff.

One of the members of my jazz combo class suggested that we try playing "Song from the Old Country," a tune written by Don Pullen and played by the Don Pullen-George Adams Quartet. It's a cool piece, with what comes across to me as a Cuban flavor (after the slow intro):

I wondered what "the old country" in the title referred to, exactly. Usually the term is used to mean the European country of one's ancestors, if one is European-American. For this song, it didn't seem to fit. Was Pullen somehow referencing Cuba or Africa? The answer came to me when, out of the blue, I noticed a strong correspondence between the theme of the song and the second theme of Brahms' Hungarian Dance #5 (0:37 in this recording):

The harmony is the same, the melody somewhat parallel, and there's a rhythm break in the 7th measure. Pullen gave us a clue in the title.

Digging a little further, it seems that Brahms did not actually write this theme himself. Wikipedia notes,

In 1850 Brahms met the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi and accompanied him in a number of recitals over the next few years. This was his introduction to "gypsy-style" music such as the csardas, which was later to prove the foundation of his most lucrative and popular compositions, the two sets of Hungarian Dances (published 1869 and 1880).^[3][4]

Only numbers 11, 14 and 16 are entirely original compositions.^{[citation needed]} The better-known Hungarian Dances include Nos. 1 and 5, the latter of which was based on the csárdás "Bártfai emlék" (Memories of Bártfa) by Hungarian composer Béla Kéler, which Brahms mistakenly thought was a traditional folksong.^[5]

The borrowed theme starts at 2:04 -

Anyway, that explains the title of the Pullen tune. The class has had quite a bit of fun with it; the changes are very natural, and easy to jam on. 

Bonanza, My Favorite Martian, Rossini, and Prokofiev

Here's a twofer installment of "Tune Detective!"

My sister Laura was visiting this weekend, and at one point the conversation drifted to TV shows from our childhood. My wife brought up "Bonanza." Remembering the theme song, I first thought of how it evoked thundering horses' hooves, which led me straight to the extremely similar single-note, repeated-rhythm motif in Rossini's "William Tell Overture." I am quite certain that this resemblance is no accident.

The "Bonanza" theme was written by David Rose, who wrote music for movies and television from 1938 until his death in 1990. Here is his IMDB page.

Of course, the "William Tell" theme had already long been used in "Lone Ranger" radio and TV shows.

My sister then mentioned a conversation she had years ago with George Greeley, a somewhat distant relative of ours by marriage, when she lived in Los Angeles. Laura had been introduced to George by our cousin. George had a long career in the Hollywood music business as pianist, composer, conductor, and musical director; his IMDB resumé begins in 1949. His musical career began as an arranger for several prominent pre-WW II big bands. 

Among many other credits, George wrote the theme song for "My Favorite Martian," a TV show that my sister had been a fan of, as a kid. George mentioned to her that in writing the theme, he had been influenced by Prokofiev. When Laura told me that, and played me the "Martian" theme on Youtube, it was pretty clear that George had taken a cue from Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf."

I hadn't known much about George Greeley, but looking at his IMDB bio, he had an incredibly active and productive career: Arranger for Tommy Dorsey, Glen Gray, Abe Lyman, and other big bands; conductor for a World War II Air Force band; then arranger for Hollywood radio shows; staff pianist and orchestrator for Columbia Pictures, where he "would fill out the sketches provided by composers that included Max Steiner...Leonard Bernstein, and Dmitri Tiomkin;" pianist on "hundreds of motion pictures;" his work in movies as composer, conductor, and musical director; and later as concert pianist. His complete IMDB bio is here. I'm honored to be even distantly related, though there is absolutely no genetic connection, and I never met George.