Thelonius Monk

[djangokeli]

This is just MONSTROUSLY good! Thanks for posting.

[notaperson2012]

The human race does something amazing. This is perfection. Its like no one was playing jazz piano before Thelonius. Sorry Jelly.

[donnythejazz]

I'm sorry I didn't click the blue number. I'm afraid I took your comment literally. I'm obviously not 'hip' enough. But I did post the track which has something going for me.

[k0bayashi]

why monk is so sick: 3:05

[donnythejazz]

Sorry but what the hell does this fatuous comment mean?

[k0bayashi]

Translations for the fatuously deficient: He plays with his elbow at 3:05. That's sick, meaning: I admire his style. Did you even click the blue numbers?

[SuperBlackMoth]

@donnythejazz he meant sick as in 'awesome' basically

[treeskier170]

Without a doubt Monk is one of the greatest musicians of all time. He's just too damn good.

[dirkykins]

Isn't the tenor player Charlie Rouse? He was great in or out of tune!

[oylerck]

Eh, Whatever, maybe he had an ear infection... maybe he just wasn't trained pitch-wise that well, maybe he was pissed at monk? It's jazz whatever

[keyzcity]

@oylerck I think Charlie purposely plays sharp.

[dimusical]

Great video, but boy is that sax player out of tune :-)

[valvetrom]

Saxes are easy to tune. only one problem with all windinstruments: the player can have a different impression than someone further away. someone should have told him to tune down somewhat. you can see Miles sometimes with a finger in his ear to get a better pitch.Charly Parker liked to be sharp a little.

To be too flat sounds awful.

[aritadj]

animalllllllllllllll

[widowmakor]

yeah, the old films have a separate sound reel. Over time these can get warped. BUT, don't forget, Monk was off his rocker and loved the 'weird stuff'. So either way, enjoy...

[allgold]

definitivamente muy buen video

[dgrjazz]

It's out of tune and there is no excuse. Saxes are hard to play in tune but this is pretty bad.  The condition of the tape would not make just one instrument be out of tune.

[skullketon]

It's extremely quite, but other than that it sounds fine to me; not flat at all. *shrugs*

[jackchampagne]

It sounds severely sharp to me. Does degraded tape make upper register music sound weird? I never heard of that but maybe so. I saw another clip of the same song different time and it sounded less sharp. Does bad intonation mean that he didn't tune his sax properly?

I'm not sure how that works. Thanks for your comment!

[jackchampagne]

I love Thelonious Monk but am kind of freaked out that the saxophone is so sharp. Didn't he tune? Can you tune a sax? Or maybe the piano is flat. I love this song too.

[Lacivicus]

it could be tape degradation. Usually the audio track goes long before the video. If you will notice, the higher register stuff across the whole clip goes slightly flat. The saxophone is the instrument that goes up there the most. Of course, he could just have bad intonation. Knowing Monk, that was probably not the case though, he was rather fanatical about stuff like that.