The underlying purpose of our podcast, Music Life and Times, is to discuss the life lessons that music teaches you and one of those is cooperation, and maybe to take it a step further, collaboration.
When you’re playing by yourself you’re pretty much responsible for everything. It’s not just rendering the bass parts and the rhythms and the melodies and all, but all the ideas, all the inspiration for what you’re doing is from you or your inner sources. But when you play with other musicians it’s like having a having a great conversation.
And just like conversation, the songs you play come out differently each time you play, especially in jazz as everybody, like in a conversation, is improvising expressing ideas or thoughts as they come to mine. While playing together they’re also playing as themselves, so it’s natural that every time you play a certain song with different musicians, its going to come out different, and in jazz because everyone is improvising, it’s going to come out different even with the same musicians each time you’re together collaborating on that tune.
My podcast partner Kevin Bales explains how Duke Ellington wrote the parts for each person in the band that they liked to do and were good at. So each player felt like they owned their parts and they were important to the band. It’s that kind of collaboration that works to create better outcomes.
It’s something young musicians can learn along the way that makes them better musicians, that is, listening to others as they play to be able to collaborate more successfully. And as a life lesson, it’s a solid. The better collaborators we are, the more successful our lives, business and personal as well musical.