Jason Lyon Music

Author: Jason

  • Da-ba-da-ba-dah…

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    Jason
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    Never mind Baldwin’s superb yanqui lounge creep, I just love the beautifully done, inane, piss-take bossa. “You have my hand… it gives me the blues… in my heart…” Perfect Portubollocks. Also watch Maya Rudolph on shaker (and “da-ba-da-ba-dahs”) at 1:42. She knows the lines that are coming and starts losing it… The timing throughout is…

  • Bebop Part III – Find the Lady

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    Jason
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    I’ve admitted before that I’m not really much of a licker. But there are some gestures that are more than licks, they’re essential idiomatic vocabulary. Thanks to SG for pointing out that I’d missed this one from my bebop posts. Well, it was sort of in there – but I don’t think I highlighted it…

  • Robosalsa!

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    Jason
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    I’ve had an enquiry from PD who enjoyed the article on Hearing the Clave, but isn’t a great music reader so he was asking whether I could give sound examples. Fair enough, I thought, I’ll get to it when I’ve got time… Then I thought, I wonder if someone’s already done an app for this? Well,…

  • Booker’s Blues

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    Jason
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    All of us are always learning (well, hopefully most of us are…), but it’s not big-headed to take pride in what you do. Here’s a little parable (with apologies to Jorge Luis Borges). Imagine you’re walking down an enormous corridor in a library that stretches on and on into the distance. You’re reading the books as you…

  • Skeletal Comping

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    Jason
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    Confession time. I actually enjoy comping more than soloing. It’s like a fascinating, constantly shifting, multi-dimensional puzzle to solve, with no limit to the possible solutions but your own imagination. Co-operating is as important as leading. Playing not just the piano, but playing the music. Here’s something I find interesting. Listen to a recording of…

  • Gareth Lockrane with JLT Review

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    Jason
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    Thanks to Sammy Stein for writing this review/interview. On a corner of a main road in the busy, noisy borough of Kennington, London, sits an unassuming building, easy to walk past but turn in and you find yourself in the place of wonder and magic that is Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec. Downstairs is a bistro restaurant…

  • Little Niles

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    Jason
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    Somebody recently sent me this video clip of the band doing a Randy Weston number last year. It’s a great tune and deserves to be played more often. Tony Kofi (as), Jason Lyon (p), Henry Gilbert (b), Joel Prime (d)

  • With One Foot on the Platform…

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    Jason
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    Well, you’ve got to do something when you’re waiting for a train, right? The piece, incidentally, is Liszt’s El Contrabandista, which makes the Mephisto Waltz look like Für Elise… Bот блестящee представление. Sometimes you get amazing surprises on street pianos (and they don’t always come from passing concert pianists).

  • Beatomania

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    Jason
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    A very good YouTube video resource here. Rick Beato is an Atlanta-based jazz, classical and rock musician turned engineer and producer. He’s just as much at home talking about Allan Holdsworth or Pearl Jam as Stravinsky or Hans Zimmer. He knows his AKG C414 from his Mozart K466. He is currently producing a video series that comprehensively, generously, vigorously and engagingly marches through…

  • How to Rehearse

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    Jason
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    January is a good time for nagging, I find. And often restating the bleeding obvious, even to yourself. The main point about rehearsals is that they should be efficient use of everyone’s time. THE GOOD A good rehearsal involves everyone looking at the charts you’ve brought along, maybe asking a few questions, then running it…