Jason Lyon Music

Author: Jason

  • Less is More – Mixing Jazz

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    Jason
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    Been busy working on a little mixing duty recently and thought I’d share a few observations about recording and mixing jazz. The usuals apply – use the best and most appropriate mics you can; get your gain staging right so your waveforms don’t look like trembly bits of string; aim for as much separation as…

  • Priceless and Free

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    Jason
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    So Ornette Coleman has finished his Chronology. Rather than doing a standard obit, I think it would be more interesting to chat about what he did, which was and remains the subject of much confusion. WARNING: May contain unsubstantiated personal opinions. His approach has come to be known as “free jazz”, but that’s not really…

  • So What Intro

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    Jason
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    The Miles album Kind of Blue really was one of a kind. A fascinating, confident adventure that came back with the treasure in abundance – and the whole story is documented really well in a book by Ashley Khan (see here). (Khan has also written an excellent book dealing with A Love Supreme.) Of the tunes from this…

  • Jazz Robots

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    Jason
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    JAZZ LANGUAGE WARNING… No comment necessary, really! I think we originally owe these to a guy called Joe Hundertmark, but others have since taken the ball and run with it. There are quite a few of them up – just follow the links, man. I’m hip…

  • Artistic Differences

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    In a light-hearted mood, and just couldn’t resist this vid from Stevie Riks. He does others too, including a mean Lennon and McCartney, but I reckon his Ringo needs work. “Thomas the Tank Engine rolled into the charts with a dopey song about an octopus, because you could get away with anything in the age…

  • Everyone’s a Critic…

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    Jason
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    Jazz musicians will possibly know Nicolas Slonimsky for his Thesaurus of Scale Patterns. Famously, Coltrane practised out of it and I come across musicians today who still explore it. Just the other day, I was chatting to a saxophonist about Tcherepnin’s nine-note scale (the interval pattern is half, whole, half, three times over, and it’s…

  • Lies, Damn Lies & Marketing Episode V: Biohazard!

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    Jason
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    Dealing with reviewers can be a trying business. The late Douglas Adams surely knew this. In Hitch Hiker, the researcher despatched to Earth knows so little about the place that he chooses the name of a car “to blend in”. Then, having “painstakingly” investigated the planet, he eventually files an update to the Guide, changing the entry from…

  • I Could Read a Book

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    Jason
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    Heard occasionally on the bandstand: “Oh come on guys, surely you don’t have to read THAT one?” Well, in theory we should all know just about every tune by memory. But this isn’t the ’50s and not even the busiest musicians gig every night anymore – and even when they do, it’s not always jazz…

  • This is Just a Four-Note Solo…

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    Jason
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    …built upon the same four notes, Other notes are bound to follow but not far from those four notes, Now the new notes are the consequence of the ones we’ve just been through, And you get more structure in your solo using just those few. There’s so many people who can play and play and play,…

  • The Jazz Waltzer

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    Jason
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    Nope. It’s not about the age-old argument about swing feel in 3/4 or 6/8. (Incidentally, Oscar Peterson once said he didn’t care about the distinction – he reckoned jazz musicians interweave the two all the time.) It’s a reference to a childhood memory. In my youth, long before the multi-million Disney extravaganzas, there used to…