For the past couple of years I have been trying to learn the basics of jazz guitar, and providing part of the rhythm section of our local 16-piece dance orchestra. Not only has this provided me with the novel experience of wearing a white tuxedo — as far from my self-image as I could ever imagine being — but it has also given me plenty of experience of dissonance. Of course in jazz, dissonance, an auditory sensation experienced as a state of unresolved tension or suspense, is half the point, and a multitude of strange chords — diminished, augmented, suspended and extensions thereof — has evolved to meet it. In the old dance standards that we play the dissonances are usually resolved by a comforting, good old-fashioned major triad, but more modern jazz seems to thrive on dissonances left unresolved.
Back in the day job, I am finding myself increasingly uncomfortable with …