I’ve worked with my vocal group, The Prince Consort, for over a decade and I’ve learned a few things about the secret world of the piano accompanist.

Tom Service wrote an excellent piece in the Guardian on this topic a few weeks ago, and as a piano accompanist myself - or collaborative pianist as they are known in the US - it was great to read an article from our perspective.

MP3s first began to appear on the internet in 1994. They were at that point a kind of geek-oriented novelty. When the first widely-used audio player came online—-Winamp, in 1997—-the popularity of the format grew.

When Napster was launched in 1999, well, we all know what happened after that. MP3s flooded the internet, thanks (uh oh) to a user’s newfound ability to turn physical CDs into electronic files.

Back in the middle of the 20th century, plenty of perfectly reasonable people were convinced of not just the possibility but the inevitability of flying cars. Surely we would be zipping around in them by the 1980s, never mind by the oh-so-futuristic year of 2000

Music is not like water…but it sure is starting to remind me of a flying car.

I’ve been having some jazz piano lessons recently in preparation for a project I’m working on in 2013 with The Prince Consort and British jazz pianist Jason Rebello…

When I had my first session, I was quite obsessed with which notes I should play on which chords and how I could create melodic figures out of nowhere. But one of the main things that Jason talked about was jazz ‘feel’, and he said that this is often the crucial element missing from many…

The new Linn website is all about music and the emotions it inspires and reflects.

As it developed, it was great fun for us to remember the music that defined the key events and emotions in each of our lives, and also surprising to discover many similarities and overlaps between these times when music made the difference.

Moving from the personal to the public, some mixtapes are meant to broadcast, not serenade. Most people have a friend or workmate who is always trying to get them to listen to “this great new band”. The original Social Network app, a good mixtape can build more bridges than the Roman army. It also covers the whole gamut of self-promotion, from ‘I know my music’ to ‘look how cool I am’, however much you admit it to yourself…

A few weeks ago there was an article in The New Yorker about the French pianist Hélène Grimaud. In the interview she talks about how she practises in her head away from the piano, and that for a recent recording she had to play the pieces through just a few times at the instrument, and she was ready to go. The journalist, evidently dazzled by this, reported that her preparation for the recording session ‘only took about twenty minutes’ with Grimaud leaving for dinner saying nonchalantly, ‘Let’s keep it fresh for tomorrow.’

Hands up if you’ve ever made or received a mixtape. Keep your hand up if it was for/from someone you fancied. Keep it up if it worked.

If you’ve still got your hand up (figuratively, at least) then I guarantee that you’ll be able to name at least one song from that mixtape, if not the entire tracklisting.

One Friday evening in my early teens I sat with my family watching The Rock and Roll Years, a BBC television series that presented archive news footage from a given year, backed by a soundtrack of the biggest hits of the time.

That week’s year was 1966, and underneath a montage of 1966’s highest profile deaths was a song of ethereal perfection…

The summer preceding the September 1991 release of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’, I was one of the lucky people to receive an advance cassette of the album.

At the time, I was producing a radio show called Music View that was syndicated on 200 college radio stations across the USA. I had previously been the Program Director at one of the biggest college…