Was it cheating in the early 50s when Lennie Tristano recorded this solo
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B0XXiko6QlUThen he played it back the tape twice as fast and his rhythm section (drums and bass) played along.
What LT got was a super-hyper-articulated solo with nuance that most people aren’t ever going to get. He definitely was recording for commercial purposes (he wanted to sell records like everything else). But he also recorded that way for artistic reasons. To get a sound that you couldn’t get any other way.
Here’s an article about the recording (and others he made in the same way).
https://www.arpjournal.com/asarpwp/...e-of-extended-studio-techniques-in-jazz/The first few paragraphs describe the anger and shock at the time and how Atlantic even issued a disclaimer for records he made after that!
So maybe you gotta ask: Do we listen to music because we like how it sounds? Or do we listen because we’re interested first and foremost in the technical (athletic) ability of the performer?
I’ve had plenty of students who hated the way the piano sounds on the recording because for our (and their) contemporary ears, it sounds like, well, a piano part that’s been sped up! Part of that is entire overtone structure of the piano changes ... Especially, higher partials that you’d want to have in a piano recording are no longer there .... they’ve gone up an octave to where they can’t influence the sound of the piano or what we hear or what could even be recorded back in those days.
If you go over to the world of classical music, some of Elliott Carter’s first string quartets were recorded to click tracks because the tempo changes were too difficult. Now string quartets have no problem with any of that and they dont use click tracks when they record those quartets. But again, was it the sound of the piece Elliott Carter was after or the technical (athletic) ability of the performers?
Everyone can make up their own mind about how they feel or like about this stuff. I’m just pointing out some of the history behind it and some of the reactions. But my own opinion is sound wins and final product is more important than technique. But that’s me and I realise and acknowledge that not everyone feels that way ...