(tesar) very, very early days, some phonograph recordings were cut right to wax.d stand in the room, and the cutting lathe would cut the original master right into wax, which, by the way, had to be very soft, so it had to be very hot. so a lot of the old-time musicians will tell stories about the early days of recording like almost stripping down in their underwear and going in this room and recording for three minutes. it's 130 degrees in this little room because it's got to be hot enough for the wax to be soft enough for the lathe to cut it, and everything was done live right there. [jazzy keyboard music] certainly, things are pretty easy. we've got air-conditioned studios now, and this instrument doesn't even need a microphone. the sound is coming out of a wire and going directly to the tape recorder. (bill tesar) with the advent of multi-track recording, you can actually record yourself several times on one piece of tape without erasing what you've already done. each person is recording on a different line on that tape. so the tape recorder is recording me on

(tesar) we have so much room for improvisational expression that we need something as a band to keep us together, and it is the form itself. a song that we play, "the comet" is what we call an a-a-b-a form. the a-a-b-a song form is very typical for many, many popular compositions. if you were to follow a piece of sheet music and look at the way it was constructed, you would see we'd play an a section which is eight bars, another a section which is eight bars, we play a bridge which would be a different section, and then we go back, and we play another a section. now, if you listen to the melody, it's going to be stated in the 32-bar context. [plays sample] same thing. [plays sample] bridge. [plays sample] back to the top. [plays sample] end of 32 bars. and then, those same 32 measures of music or the structure that we're playing in, goes around and around and around, and the musicians improvise on that form. and when we improvise, we're improvising on that same form. a lot of people ask the question, "how do you know what to play "when you're done playing the melody? how do you all k