I love and consume music; it is a sustenance, it is a guide, it feeds me and it sustains me, I play it and it plays me, I am a musician too. Just in the last week it dawned on me I am like a musical magpie. For all the copious amounts of music I consume and as much as I love vast quantities of it for so many different reasons, I am also prone to focusing in or being attracted by the ‘big shiny bits that are really really fantastic’ . . . to me.
Someone suggested I write about these moments and so this blog starts. The beginning is bound to be convoluted so bear with me while I get sorted out. I have to introduce a few historical facts to set the scene and as a disclaimer I must add that all opinions are valid at the moment I write or remember them and that I will be happily distracted by anything that attracts my ears and my thoughts along the way, so there may occasional incomplete thoughts and feelings. I encourage my own contradictions, confutations, contraventions, disputes and inconsistencies. Because music is like that. We are passengers to our own emotional journey and if we are to be honest, then we must accept the wide range of change experienced every day. In my world that can be pursued hotly by a musical soundtrack that can often stem from very strange places and have a surprising amount of influence.
I think I must also say there is no agenda here. This is a purely an indulgence to pursue the moments of musical magic and mayhem that have made footprints on my mind. This has contributed to the development of me as a musician and contributes to (because it happens to me every day) to the choices and decisions I make as a performing and composing musician.
A little bit about me: My name is Tom Lyne and I am a professional jazz bassist living near Edinburgh, Scotland. I’ve been a working bassist since high school (1982-ish) in Edmonton Canada and have been in music since the age of 3.
Nurture: What we know comes out as what we are. Which is a little like, you are what you eat. And that is possibly rooted in, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And if that last one is not right, then it should connect because there is nothing better than music that makes my insides writhe and wriggle, and that is what I aim to do with the music I make.
TL