In my last post, I talked about the widespread problem of overplaying in jazz and suggested some tips for things to do in practice to help us play less but say more. If you didn’t see that article, you can check it out here.
As I mentioned in that post, overplaying has a lot to do with the way we practice when we're trying to remove any musical constraints caused by technical limitations. However, I’m also convinced that a large part of the problem is to do with psychological factors – perhaps most notably our egos.
There is an innate desire to impress when jazz musicians get together. The first question good players ask about another musician is ‘can he play?’ If you’re playing with musicians for the first time, you want to let them know that you can play, that you know what you’re doing. This often results in overplaying as you try to prove your worth and ability to the rest of the band.
Jam sessions are another minefield if you’re trying to avoid overplaying. They may have a long and noble tradition in the history of jazz, but they’re always full of players who are trying to impress each other as well as the audience. It’s inevitable that overplaying happens when the primary goal of the soloist is to showcase how good he is.
Even if you’re playing with a regular band, the need to impress, to prove your musical worth is never very far away. Have you ever had to take a solo after another player has really torn it up with a lot of high/fast/loud, technically amazing passages?
This is the situation that spawned cutting contests and though they’re unfashionable these days, cutting contests played a hugely important part in the development of jazz improvisation by making players focus on technical mastery and developing new vocabulary.
Many innovations in the music arose from players looking for new sounds to help them ‘cut’ other musicians and these contests no doubt contributed to the standards of technical excellence that modern jazz musicians must reach if they want to be taken seriously.
(Incidentally, the history of classical music contains many examples of similar contests and virtuosos like Pagannini and Liszt were probably involved in as many cutting contests as Oscar Peterson and Louis Armstrong. It’s no surprise that technical excellence is also mandatory in classical music.)
If you have ever followed a particularly brilliant solo, how did that make you feel? Didn’t you feel under pressure to match, or even top the brilliant pyrotechnics your colleague produced? Even if you decided you weren’t going to try and beat them at their own game, you probably played something obviously and deliberately simple to impress upon the listeners that you weren’t trying to compete. Either way, it is highly likely that your ego was dictating what you played - not than your musical mind.
This is the heart of the problem. Whenever ego is involved, we inevitably make poor musical decisions. We play too many notes, or too fast, or too loud, or too high; dynamic contrast is forgotten and it doesn’t normally result in us producing great art.
It’s a personal contention of mine that a lot of jazz can be pretty boring. For every truly great album in the history of jazz, there are probably 30 that are dull as ditchwater. I put this down a combination of the uniquely prolific output of the average jazz musician (nobody can be brilliant all the time) coupled with a slew of technical excellence that often belies the fact that there isn’t a lot of music being made.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting for a moment that the simple and spacious solo is by definition more musically interesting than the complicated and technically demanding one. I’m just pointing out that ego and the need to impress can play a big factor in musical decisions – usually to the detriment of the music.
Our goal as musicians should be to play music for the sake of the music itself, and to make musical decisions with no other considerations. Our ultimate aim should be to produce a performance totally unfettered by technical deficiencies or our own egotistical needs and sensibilities. It’s likely we may never get there, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do all we can in pursuit of that ambition.
The next post will focus on overcoming the psychological factors I’ve mentioned here and look for ways to free us from our egos and allow us to concentrate on making music. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.
