Jan Hammer: The Early Analog Years
Czechoslovakia
I have long been impressed with Jan Hammer’s synthesizer playing, but also his compositions. As mentioned in my previous post regarding Hammer’s DX patches, Jan really burst on the music scene as a member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But he has had a quite long and varied musical life. Perhaps the largest sub-group of his fans originated with Jan’s work on the Miami Vice TV series. And another huge sub-group would have to be those who were exposed to his music through movie soundtracks and TV commercials. Jan has also had numerous collaborations with many well-known musicians, further exposing his unique playing to new listeners. Much has been written about his years recording the music for Miami Vice, beginning around 1984. I myself am partial to his work beginning with his solo career around 1974 and until about 1983. So let’s very briefly review his musical life up until 1983, including his education, his exposure to electric keyboards and then the synthesizer, with which Jan found a very special connection.
Jan performing on Czech television.
The year was 1965.
Jan was born April 17, 1948 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czechia). His mother, Vlasta Průchová, was a famous jazz vocalist and his father, Jan Sr., worked his way through medical school playing vibes and bass. Jan Jr.’s early life was saturated with jazz music, and the house was the scene of many jam sessions with Czech jazz musicians, often including Jan Jr. and his sister Andrea playing piano and drums, and on one occasion, Louis Armstrong. Jan started playing piano at the age of four, eventually taking formal lessons. While in High School, Jan formed a jazz trio with bassist Miroslav Vitous and brother (drummer) Alan Vitous. Jan credits Paul Bley as an important musical influence at this time. Jan then entered the Prague Academy of Musical Arts. Jan won an international music competition in Vienna in 1966, and received a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music in Boston.
Jan’s trio, including bassist Miroslav Vitous, who would later join Weather Report, recorded this record just before fleeing the communist invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Jan’s trio recorded the live album “Maliny Maliny” before his studies were interrupted in 1968 with the Warsaw Pact invasion, and the entire Hammer family moved to the U.S. Jan Jr. remained in the U.S., while the rest of his family eventually moved back to Czechoslovakia, where they encountered much interference with their education and careers.
The United States - and the Mahavishnu Orchestra
Once in the US, Jan studied at Berklee, but his urge to play found him performing anywhere he could, including strip clubs. After he was discovered by Sarah Vaughan’s drummer Gene Perla, he quit Berklee and ended up touring with Vaughan for a year.
Jan moved to NYC and soon was to join the nascent Mahavishnu Orchestra along with John McLaughlin (guitar), Billy Cobham (bass), Jerry Goodman (violin) and Rick Laird (bass). Their first album, “Inner Mounting Flame,” which combines elements from both jazz and rock in a high-energy, virtuoso way, is considered a major musical milestone by musicians the world over. The sheer power and intricacy of the music “left it’s audiences in stunned silence.” (1) According to Jan, he contributed much of the music’s harmonic aspects. On this record, Jan plays a Rhodes electric piano, which was necessary in order to compete with the loudness of Cobham’s drums.
The first album by the Mahavishnu Orchestra was a monumental masterpiece, and is still regarded as a major musical milestone by musicians the world over. 1971.
Birds of Fire is a Jan Hammer favorite among Mahavishnu Orchestra records. 1973.
A transcendent recording, BNAE would be the final album released by the original band (until the Lost Trident Sessions in 1999, 30 years later). 1973.
By the time the second album Birds of Fire was recorded, Jan had already begun playing the Minimoog synthesizer during their live concerts, and it first appeared on record with “Birds of Fire.” He chose the Minimoog because it had left-hand wheels for pitch and modulation, and because it was portable. But it was the pitch bend wheel that really awakened Jan’s inner soloist. “I was searching for an expressive melodic instrument.” “Synthesizers gave me a new lease on musical life. I felt a void in playing the piano. As a solo voice it does not come up to the level of expression that a synthesizer can give you.” “Once you get down to serious business with the synthesizer, you realize that the possibilities are endless. Yet only a few will lend themselves to your music.” (1)
The third and final album, and my favorite of the three, “Between Nothingness and Eternity,” was recorded live in Central Park in NYC. Jan’s synthesizer here shows enormous growth from the earlier records, and all in a very short time span, as he continued to push the boundaries of the instrument.
It’s probably impossible to fully understand how monumental and influential these albums were. Many, many people were positively impressed by the synthesizer as a real, expressive instrument to be played in a world-class, masterful, live setting.
Solo Career
Jan was in the vanguard of live performance synthesizer players, at the very forefront of synthesizer playing.
“Darkness - Earth in Search of a Sun” opened Hammer’s “The First Seven Days” in a way that made an indelible mark on the minds of many a synthesizer player.
After the Orchestra broke up, Jan began to record records as a player on other musician’s albums. He also set up a recording studio at his home in downstate New York and went to work on his first solo record release: “The First Seven Days.” Another historic recording, it is quite unique. It is of a “contemporary classical” style, with minor elements of rock or pop, performed mostly by Jan alone on analog synthesizer and acoustic piano. It is a favorite record of many synthesizer players, and considered by many to be Jan’s masterpiece. The opening piece is unforgettable, with a soaring melodic lead played on the minimoog but with a custom oscillator sync circuit, controlled with a pedal, and fed into a Pignose amplifier to produce warm distortion. A Bode frequency shifter was also used a lot on this record, giving many of the synth tones a deeply acoustic, bell-like resonance and overtones. When people first heard the record they thought this opening lead sound was a guitar (this was the beginning of Jan’s famous “guitar-like” solo sounds). Hammer’s virtuoso pitch-bending does often sound guitar-like, but just as often sounds uniquely Jan Hammer-esque. He uses the pitch wheel set at a very wide interval with no spring return, which takes years of practice to master. He also uses the pitch wheel for vibrato, unlike 90%+ of players who use an LFO to generate vibrato. These are just two of the things that set Hammer apart from other keyboard players. On this lead sound, he also uses a very sudden attack (like a guitar pick) and the legato setting on the minimoog to trigger the attack only after lifting all fingers from the keys. When this record was released, no other musician on the planet had ever played with such subtle virtuosity and sonic power on a synth.
(1) Ernie Rideout “Synth Gods” 2011 BackBeat Books