My Music Life and Times podcast partner, Kevin Bales, says:
“It’s funny how much of what we do musically is not about being perfect and this is not even a jazz genre issue. I love the stories about accomplished classical pianists who will play a wrong note, then repeat the phrase with the correct note in a way that almost sounds like it was written that way.
“Part of what they’re doing is hiding mistakes or making the mistakes musical. When I’m teaching an ensemble of young musicians how to deal with what they think are mistakes, I’ll whisper in someone’s ear while the band is playing to play something wrong or different and then the others have to adapt to it. The idea is for them to learn to work together, to work through problems together.
“When I’m on stage with great musicians, things go wrong all the time. Sometimes with those mistakes, some of the most rewarding music comes out of them. I remember when I was in college, we had a guest artist who I admired so much, Branford Marsalis, and I was asked to play piano for the master class and of course I’m terrified. Here’s one of my idols and I’ve got a little piano solo, and I built a little phrase and went to hit this low note and I missed it by a half-step. It was at the crucial moment of the solo and I played it very loud and with confidence. But it was exactly the worst note and inside I just panicked. But I stayed on the note and played a bunch of other stuff then fixed it. I was terribly embarrassed. But the only compliment Branford ever gave me was he pointed out to the class what a great risk taker I was and he loved how I had played this surprising note instead of the obvious one.
“But what made that note sound good wasn’t just me, but how the band cooperated with it.
“I particularly like to collect albums by famous musicians where they make mistakes and hearing how they work together to fix them. These are mostly live recordings where you can hear how they help each other when something goes awry and fix it. The best musicians will release that instead of something more correct because it’s so alive, the sound of cooperation.”