Jason Lyon Music

Tag: jazz

  • Funky Chunks & Clunky Chunks

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    …and dominantsy divey… Right, I was beer-deep in a chat with a musician the other day who was a bit down about the results he was getting out of 7b9 chords. They sometimes just sounded – well, tame, he felt. Aha. Need to restore some mojo here. So what was going on? The 7b9 dominant…

  • Pal Tony

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    Jason
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    Did a great gig with our friend Tony Kofi last week. Hell of a player, and a lovely guy. He brought along a stack of really interesting tunes and called a few of them in an ad hoc order as the mood and need for contrast seemed to dictate to him. It was only as…

  • What an Amateur!

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    Recently had a chat with a singer acquaintance to arrange an upcoming thing, which had to be cut short because… she had to go and serve someone who’d just come into the shop. I should add that she’s one of the finest singers I know and works the best gigs in town. But she feels…

  • Don’t Blame It on the Sunshine…

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    Jason
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    Well, just about every musician I speak to seems to be in the doldrums at the moment. We’ve all had them. Those gigs when you wind up playing to the barman and a confused duck that’s waddled in by mistake. Then comes the time-honoured excuses game – political bargaining with the venue management. Oh, and by the…

  • Tooning Note (and Laser Elephants)

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    Jason
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    Tooning note… ah, the classic Aebersold call to arms… Actually the Aebersold playalongs are very good and I wish they’d been around when I was starting out. But this post isn’t about that – yet again, I’ve opted for a cheap gag headline. This one’s a tip for singers (and accompanists). In this day and…

  • The Universal Mind of Bill Evans

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    Jon Brantingham has just put a very good essay up at The Art of Composition. It’s an appraisal of an extended interview with Bill Evans, conducted by his brother Harry in 1966. The “Universal Mind” thing may sound a bit hippyish, but it just refers to the notion that there is a part of all of us,…

  • Don’t Shoot Yourself, You’re the Pianist

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    Jason
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    Somebody got me Ronnie Scott’s Some of My Best Friends Are Blues for Christmas. It’s a fun little read, and there are bound to be some anecdotes that will be new to you, even if you think you know all there is to know about that long-ago scene. (Incidentally, the shabby downstairs hangout used to be…

  • Hark All the Herald Things You Are

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    Jason
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    Christmas is upon us. Festive thingies to you all, and may you realise that something you’ve always wanted is something you already have. In what is starting to become a welcome little tradition of our own, we have the fabulous singer Anita Wardell with us again for our yuletide special on 21st December at Brasserie…

  • Smoke Gets in Your Ears

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    Jason
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    or Being Yourself Interesting experience recently. I spent a fair bit of time working on live sound and recording for a band with another pianist (a really very good one), then went straight out to do a gig of my own… Well I rather struggled to click somehow. It was only halfway through the gig…

  • Dominant Ice Cream

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    Jason
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    I’ve been asked to post something about how jazz musicians play fast and loose with V chords when comping. And boy, do they. Well, I’ll start by observing that the chord alterations we’ll look at are also used in contexts where they don’t resolve down a fifth (or a semitone in a tritone substitution situation).…