I’ve been watching old John Wayne movies lately. I guess that’s redundant. Anyway, whether he’s the benevolent property owner of McLintock! or the cold-blooded cattle driver of Red River, he’s always uniquely John Wayne. It’s a consistency that made him and kept him the biggest movie star of his era.
It might seem contradictory to jazz where improvisation is the underlying principle, but even in playing a song differently from night to night there is a consistency in that determination to improvise, to play fresh ideas, to avoid the easy way out of playing something memorized.
It is important to employ consistency in any career, but it is especially valuable in a profession where you are, in the business sense, a sole proprietor, self-employed, where you are typically working in different locations and often with different musicians from night to night. Consistency shows up in our practice habits, perhaps designating a time each morning to spend on our instrument working on problem areas or areas where we are trying to improve. It is also a characteristic of how we play, as we develop and refine our “sound,” our voice, what makes each of us who we are as a player, what distinguishes us.
It’s a characteristic common among great jazz musicians: a distinct sound and identity amidst and overriding the improvisation. You know who they are by how they play or sing. And far from being repetitive or boring, it’s what draws their audiences back to them again and again.