Magnetic

Horns, piano, guitar, and drums are some of the instruments you will hear on the new album Magnetic by Terence Blanchard. How these instruments are being played is what makes this album a true jazz album. At least, what I think of as being real jazz. With the different sounds, mainly though the trumpet and saxophone, give the album its jazz sound. Well, maybe it's the sound, the formatting of the songs, and how the instruments are being played that make it be jazz. Magnetic is the album that I would want to listen to when I want to read or write because it has a thoughtful sound as well as a creative one that kind of feels like it would possibly help with my own thoughts and creativeness.

While listening to this album I had to first get over the fact that there's no vocals on any of the tracks. At first I really didn't like it that much because I was waiting for someone to start singing but no one ever did. Once I listened to Magnetic again with the knowledge that I wasn't going to hear any vocals I was about to focus more on the sounds that where being created for my listening pleasure. Which is what the sounds did, give me a pleasure to listen to. There's a playful sound being used in the way the instruments are played but not a childish. Terence Blanchard plays with a joy of the music he's creating and this pleasure is what gives the songs the playfulness. The songs have quick tempos but the songs don't rush as they are being played. At times the songs have some pauses in them that I wasn't too thrilled with because it felt like it slowed down the feel of the song.

With most of the songs, I wanted to snap my fingers and I even caught myself closing my eyes as I just sat there listening to the music. This is what jazz is to me, snapping fingers and closed eyes as the music washes over me. I'm no expert, not even a good novice, when it comes to knowledge of jazz music so I have to go on what I know, the emotions that the songs pull out of me. In this case it had me in the moment of the song, focused on the sounds that I was hearing, and I enjoyed that. It sounds like that Terence Blanchard wanted to try different ways to play the songs and instruments in the songs. This is what I liked about the songs, they were different, as much so as jazz can be when it's being dominated by the horns, but I liked it. Before I realized it the whole album had played, an hour had passed, and I was starting the album over again for another round of listening.