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3 Goals of the Jazz Musician

Sunday, 27 February 2005

Blue's Jazz Diary

I've been thinking a lot about what is required to become a "successful" improvising musician. As I see it, there are (at least) three things a person must do.

1) Put jazz music in your head.

If you don't listen to jazz on a daily basis, how can you expect to play it well? Let's say you are learning another language -- Spanish. If you rarely hear Spanish, how could you expect to speak it well, with correct grammar and accent? If you rarely listen to jazz, how can you expect to play it with a jazz sound, harmony, rhythm and melody?

Listening to jazz puts jazz ideas in your head, whether you realize it or not at the time.

Another way to put jazz in your head is to play exercises over and over again -- scales, chords, arpeggios, melodies, rhythms, and transcribed solos.

If you play these things over and over again -- if you internalize them, you will begin to hear similar ideas coming out in your own improvisations. Again, you won't be cognizant of hit happening, but one day you will listen to yourself improvising and you will surprise yourself.

The danger is relying on patterns like a crutch, which happens when you are not following step number 2.

2) Listen to the music in your mind.

You have put all these musical ideas in there, now listen to them.

The best way I can describe how this should work is to first describe how it should not work.

Music should come from your mind (you, your personality, emotions, and personal experience). It should not come from your hands.

When we practice exercises over and over again, the muscles in our hands (arms or embouchure), come to remember those patterns. Dance instructors call it "muscle memory." When you learn to dance, you learn steps and patterns, then practice them over and again until your body can dance without your mind having to calculate each step. But this is still the beginner's stage. It may be dancing, but it's not dancing to the music.

The same thing happens to musicians. Play arpeggios over and over and you'll be able to do them without thinking. But arpeggios (and other exercises) are not music.

Far too many musicians, especially guitarists, are guilty of this, including many of the so-called "Guitar Gods" who are fawned over for their agility and speed. Playing fast is one thing. Playing musically is quite another, and it's much more satisfying for both the musician and the listener.

Therefore, listen to the music inside you!

3) Translate the music in your mind through your instrument

Now that you have put the music inside your head and you have learned to listen to that music, the final step is to learn how to translate that music that's inside you through your instrument. If anyone has yet figured out a way to explain how to do this, please e-mail me :)

The ability to play with no hesitation, the music that flows from your mind is where the real inspiration happens. Listen to Oscar Peterson CDs and you'll hear his grumbly voice singing along to what he's playing -- in real time. What he's singing is the music in his mind, and what he's playing on the piano, is the direct and immediate translation of that.

Try singing the music in your head and playing it at the same time. If you sing it, this will force you to play the music in your head, and prevent you from resorting to the licks and tricks that your hands want to play (because their muscle memory knows how).

As I wrote in Jazz Is Life, "Jazz expresses the true nature of the artist. It is what he feels now... now... and now..."

It is the immediacy of improvisation that makes it so fascinating. Whatever happened the musician on that day will be heard in his music, whether he intends it to or not. If he lost his car keys that morning, spilled coffee on his tie, and forgot his umbrella, I guarantee that you will hear a hint of frustration in his playing. If he has fallen in love, won the lottery, or drank too much whiskey, I guarantee you will hear that as well.

The goal of an improvising musician, as I see it, is to be able to speak through your instrument and tell your audience exactly what it is you feel. Unlike English, music is a vague language. There are no words with specific meanings, but there are rhythms, harmonies, disonances, melodies and tempos that express feelings in such a way that anyone, from any part of the world, can understand. That is one powerful language.