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    Lyle Mays 1980 Keyboard Magazine

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    462 views5 pages

    Lyle Mays 1980 Keyboard Magazine

    Uploaded by

    Phasma3027
    Lyle Mays 1980 Keyboard Magazine

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 5
    LYLE MAYS By Michael Davis LEAST of slr jazz uta Pa Metheny ales his aby 10 choose compatible sidemen. The Kegs payer nthe Pat Maher Gr, tye Mass. perfect example, Not only theyre to hes fe blending of elcric puter and acoustic Pano arte bass fhe quartet’ isin fre Son, ba he as succently ne twine hs wring abit with Pat’ 3s wel The mo sare composing credits on hal the tunes on The Pat Metheny Group (ECM, Wi) ad at he on ht bm ‘Anercan Garage (ECM, 158 When asked to describe the band’s rosie, iyle replied, "Well, we've a Jazz Group — want that in big eters Were not 2 foson group; there® one ting leat Stand, ts the fon label. At these tne ste completely cut aro any se thing an go nywhere There a certain tunes where we stick to structures that have Morked These things have evolied over the space of two year and were not about to hang tem forthesake ot eng eratves Within those structures, anything can hep There are ao a ew pont in the set where we have no klea whats going to happen” he continues "We pst of Pa and he can point anything fom a tock sed roll medley toa Steve Rekh pece To pure avantgarde space think our hoa se cu nn sve whatever the product ofthe four of us Pat Lyle, bast Mark Egan, and dunever Dan Gated sce our ous ‘one ofthe few groups who have remained Bestive and optimistic n te 7 Tages think we've gotten decadent or diesurset We jt pay the mucha comes pata, 10, pen the freedom, Manfred he” producer at ECM] has gen ore fe undths nthe musicthatwevecomerncah Ns pure onldence thatthe Buh ts Hard work ha abo been factor in thee success. With the band onthe feadsa ne, othe tie therehasntbeenmachsoenie sie projects Pat and tye did marae Squeeze na wor backing Joni Micha une and he are onthe esos from hose dats whichwasrecenty ean, IShadowa And Light, Aaya, BE OMe eae also did some synthesizer overdahse ome, an upcoming ECM albums bree Steve allow bused onthe poate Seren ned onthe poems cha When asked about his musical backe B contoroen MY KEDOARDOCIONER 99 _— round, Mays lists Bill Evans, and Igor Stravinsky as early influences and acknowledges Keith jarrett, Eberhard Weber, $teve Reich, and the Dixie Dregs as ome of ites But he admits that he ‘much jazz these days, pre wsicand new wave rock and Frank Zappa, “Clasical musi,” he expl tomate Musi.” he explains, “appeals been ects realy inteligent muse Is bo lover the years; itsstood the sometime the whole ciche.Butfadere, "composers that Mahler, Bartok, based what they did and came up withthe ‘tended the waditon =” Stravinsky, Prokofiey envhat ane fine sera Serta te Rdiemecndag germs seamed for live music. 7 le onstage or too grand’. ha rss {00 many ey ‘conception you forget that there are live Personalities and quirks, What to hear when they come to hea they want you to bare your sou oe peop peop pause ire your soul is bound up in alot of eet Bear and supercomplex arrange eves me fa someting ge Like the kind of music he he ut roots are uncomplicated and une He was born in rural Wisconsin a the country ith its 500 inhabitants, a5 15 The Mays family had an old upl that had been handed down ft the nearest town, mie, no om 6 ee ation to generation, and Lyle played Maj ‘music on it. He basically aught ‘make music on the keyboard — ‘out of piano lessons to play i baseball like just about every! recalls — and when he went i per wie ose es i Summer camp asa rumpeter feat man year of high school, he dose of jazz Lyles musical eyes were OPe ra bp new Soundh. He began buyin) first records were by Bill van8 Peterson — and writing big bot his own. By the time of his hil ‘raduation, Mays had his hearts a so wh ing North Texas State Univers, which i favous for big band jz progam, but Mien the schoel revacied te seholaship ther he sed fora small state colege n Waar took couple year thee to convince Lyle hat ths wasnt what he reall wanted, we dropped ot hit the oud as Bel oeie voreccs. oe ore wana ockand rol show ban nd finaly n 17a. as crept a North Tos Ste, Seyi! hereby, vas vinualy rang the az depart came down iva realy song bey olmusicand Tad lot of cnet ae wes io nak ‘music that sounded good.” The culmination Gihsefonswastab SINTSU LD Band Bor $A38 Nor Toas Sion Denton, HEA, featuring astdert lg band oratized, con ducted, and rehearsed by Mays, who also co-produced the album. The LP was also pevPated fora Crary award heist Fensciog tobe 3a honcre. Mi ies work tracted the nonce of Woody seman and rey sey ang Mayrarcepted he veteranbandlesde"s nvr talon to in his famoun Thundering Herd After seven or eight months, though, the Young keybosrdat called it quit had had Ill of bg bands etre ths" he explains jazz keyboardist & COMPOSER With the par metHENy GROUp “and this job was just not good timing. Itwas like being on a minor league baseball team, We travelled in a bus and played the same tes that those teams playin Abo, Fveseen people get typecast as big band players. Nobody wants to work with them in any cother kind of music. 1 dida't want that to happen to me.” Eventually Mays moved to New York, where he landed a job with R&B singer ‘Marlena Shaw. One night just before a con- cert, Shaw fired her guitarist, and when young Pat Metheny showed up to say hello tole, whom he had met at the Wichita Jazz Festival in 1975, he was hired on the spot as his replacement. The two friends worked together behind the singer for two or three weeks; that'll the time ittook for Metheny 10 talk Mays into moving up to Boston, recording one album, Watercolors [ECM, 1057] with him and two other musicians, and joining the band he plays keyboards with Tt was the beginning of a fruitful partner- ship, but we wondered ifthe two individu- ally-minded musicians played together as smoothly in the beginning as they do now. There was only one way to find out DIP, YOU AND PAT ply together as smoothly in the beginning 3s you do now? {think so, even though atone time! think Pat didn't ike playing with piano players; 1 know I didn't like playing with guitar players. just though that guitar players would get in my way and that piano players get in the way (of guitar payers. But think that both Patand T were so aware ofthe potential problems of those two instruments playing together in a jazz context that we just looked for solutions, and from the fist time we played together, i Worked. We have asimilarharmonic concep- tion and we were into ways of blending the ‘wo instruments to get other textures. His Whole concept from the start was to use Teoustic piano with his sound, which even then was unlike any other guitar player's “That was fine wth me; | was geting tired of Rhodes. won't play one now. thate‘em. Pat Saw the potential problems of electric guitar land Rhodes having certain midrange freqen- Ges that cash, twas abo his ides to get an Oberheim; | just showed up at rehearsal and there was this huge thing siting onthe piano. Vd never played a synthesizer belore so 1 jumped right into the Four-Voice, sink or ‘Swim. S0 Fm into synthesizers by circum stance. Was the equipment you had when you started the group pretty much the same 25 teed No, ve expanded quite bit What had at the beginning wasn acount pln Oberbeim Fouroice and an auth the bars taken of anda submarine detector int 3 pcp That was fel mes pai through ths Atousie 150 utara att tad rm my rock and rol ays than ty setup. | sounded awh but as what me fad’ Since then Te added a touoke Yamaha intuments that realy happy with, About si rahe afer we began eee ing wert outwith te tenon of boring the chespes organ cout idan pe organ, I our ths ie Yamaha V2 dat ‘Sure great, had ths ile box wih that sulted ese Ae afer hat ge this CP elecronc pano. By te isnt ‘much ofan insert, bu played incom ration with the acusic piano, cn peta wronderul sound tat ey makes Trent Bot few more atohaps, ed ust rcerty fot a Prophet-5. I'm now using a Tangent $F hare miner, wide worst ad Trotureas ores meres Tet essa ee ee thine called Mark Proce 30 te prety truch evoved ino a state-of-the at se eral Al the money we've mace from the rou, which hasnt Boon that moc as Foon dearecled backs pape ad all the money Pats mode Fas pone io sent ang» rate, yo ¢ sound gptem, Were now carying | fgand plano on the rod wih tsa ane vig Slenway, $50.0 numer Forme its he best pano ever, caring one wih bce! When did you sar doing hat? Janeth toae We ao hove a computer ined Lexicon cigal reve for out sound = tem: can simulate any concert hall oF chamber. We're also carrying a different ‘model cigar stem tor the mono Sone cn ear hs eso ono good Most up these speak Sind hoe reingieoiandte reat ‘ino But weve sou freak: we're realy into sound quality. There are maybe seven ‘ga deny onstage dng our sesandve mimeal er ne Bo you have any efecs ono ones the things sud rea cheesy tome io ial dceysbecause! think her erance te sound er an Changing ue them the same way Paes Sempod ‘there's a real similarity in the sound ofthe elec Keyboards and syiheszen hd Pats gutars The syrthese> sound ike pts and one thea octoser wenconempoeany KEBOAR ‘LYLE MAYS vay lke a gutar, but thesoand conception § the same in that Pat and | want the insta tens sound lr an cher ate han faving thir bc sounder. Obes ithe symthesizt for me because the bac sounisolatandich andl. couple the digtal delays, it’ js ths huge, warm Sound. Vm notinto any gimmicky synthesizer effects; m justintotslushorcestal pad se volume: pedal on everything because You have t ply wih expression Bu ou Side ofthe litle imitation tese box on the ‘organ, I dont use effects A few years ago, amplifying an a Piano in an electric group was very afc That's becauxe mostsound men ae ido and most pianos sound bad. Kent Nebergall 5 doing our lve sound for us: hes this hot LA. studio engineer who's doing the gig with Us because he likes our music He's 80 the BUY who engineered American Garage, $0 ur sound hasbeen realy good How do you mike your pano onstage? Ie tredall the pickups, and cat stand them ese ose any sort of pickup. So we're using two mikes, about a fa vay from the tings as we can getaway wth We don't stick ‘em down inthe holes, which abo the wrong thingto do. We havetocover the piano to avoid leskage fom the drums that we can lve with, sothat'sa compromise wwe have to make. Another mistake people fake that they don tputthe pano treh reverb, which is sily because t sound So 20d when you do. You hear a plano in’e oncert hall and is got tons St revere because ofall the natural ever bul acer, tically ito the halls. That's the ways pans should sound, not murfied and dr? ang lanky. $0 we dont mike too close foe hammers, we Send it through the cag ‘ever and it jst gets areal neurlsanea think Wwe get one of the bes ive pong sounds 've come scoss, How do you blend the electric piano wth the acousticr Tony use the electric piano very bie ‘on a couple of tunes for an orchestral jefe, That's like my whole conception of ees: keyboards I think we're one of ie re STOUPS Out here that are really feat 9, #cousic iano na more cleronc sire ienplin ownpars wih bar ent ofthe right Thars wher a ashersulsjust therefor coloration cg ‘identical voicings nthe mil ore igure ball ied cone ete lead voiceonthe cei third hi than the acoustic voice = pln Bay block choc on both natument aS technique We tao ot “Awe e Aimeian Carpe) which Mra, FB hook igus you could eal ate ios Tel Healing” ron Garage st atthe very endfor rea nating rama: don ne an ead ete so i mainly tpporive pt ig drama ned out ofthe wu gal ‘which is much more effective and Organic.’ What your apecach saves, M4 contowroeany KeoHRO-OCTOuER 1p zz irsnan Cast OTE re one: eee anything in the studio that’s impossible to do. live, We do overdubs basically to enhance: rae ood ea ae eee eee a bere cracongme alae ‘ound. ht we the saree How did your writing relationshi; with Pat develop? ef Z Wel Weve jus gotten used to wrt topetheranditseemstobe eater oceans ta, We rely on eachother or and editing. What you hace suggestions when Pat and | write together bined sera! Write together isthe com: ag opie dot ae ess where both of uswere contigs stantly. On other tunes, one of us tap come up with a full-blown secton out cother would fit i into a slot or wre gne thing based on it or triggered by tele Cone phrase that had lain dormant ra months and I took the moti, rently little bit, and we made “Aistream aude “American Garage” was sort ofan R&B that we didn’t know what to do wih Ox day, Danny and | were just screwing wed with ths Tock and rll ine a ‘going to play for Pata a joke andi ut sounding really good. I's al die People ask us about ita lot but thee? pattern, Ff If you're on the road so much you get together to write? ntheroad, wees involved why ing the music that vey seldom ane up, with anything. We usually wie were ofthe road Mgettoapanoael bring a guitar and amp over and el rite. We try to gettogether every tite off and come up with somethPS aag 50 you conceive your mate arrange it, then take t ouronther recording 1s that the general Pat Completely | don't undesing ‘more groups don't do it. By thee | tunes are recorded, we've elit ee Pars that don’t work. Weve eohel sion on the road that'sreallysold Bove, that's our defining some producer's definitive verso™ lot ot eran tac and thle te "he way Wwe dot by fa he a LYLE MAYS arti, ouFcks in xe weren't inte Tit seemed like 8 Pee ccbor7 we were al ito e Herbie front to try £0 good and mak- Sprung on me; {hadnotdea was gon

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