I’m going to take a couple of weeks off so here’s an extra long post to get you through those hard times! This one will resonate most strongly with artists in general and musicians in particular. If you don’t identify as such, I hope you’ll still find it of interest. See you in January and happy new year!
How much musical skill is needed to release emotional energy through improvisation? How much do skill gaps inhibit our ability to “let it all out?”
The answers to these questions are probably pretty subjective but in general I think that to express at least something through an instrument requires minimal skill, especially if we’re uninhibited by self-awareness. And yet with practice we can “say” much more (and with more nuance) and have it “make more sense” to other listeners.
I think where it’s a little fuzzy is the “letting it all out” part. If a beginner and an advanced pianist are in the same mood, can the beginner with their limited skill set express this mood more “successfully” than the advanced pianist?
My gut and experience tell me that while there is probably a gap between the two players’ abilities to express their mood and feel good about it, that gap is probably somewhat smaller than the gap in their skill levels.1 Partially because there’s a difference between being able to feel good playing (easier) and have it sound good to a larger number of people (harder). But also because it’s possible to close the gap further by structuring our playing around our skill level for “better results.”
I think this is a hopeful outlook for the “I wish I'd stuck with piano lessons when I was younger” people.
Good news for “I wish I’d never quit piano” people
Of course if the reason you wish you’d stuck with piano is to impress other people with your virtuosity, well then you should have kept practicing. But if you’re looking for the satisfaction and emotional release that can come with musical expression, then work with what you’ve got, embrace the constraints, and find ways to close the gap between your skill limitations and the heavy emotional stuff you want to say with your music.
(This recording of Hymn to Freedom from Oscar Peterson brings me to tears and I wish I could express myself so deeply through music. Is it possible to find that expressiveness with the skills I already have?)
It could be that you aren’t a self-conscious person and you have little regard for the mistakes in your playing when you’re just trying to blow off some steam by jamming. And that’s a great thing. It’s good to just wail on an instrument even if it means running up against the limitations of our skill sets.
But if you want more options for expressing nuance and emotion in your playing and you need it to come out a certain way, there are ways to get more mileage out of limited skills.
Motifs
For example, as the late Baltimore jazz pianist Bob Fields emphasized during my lessons with him, the use of musical motifs can be key in expressing more when improvising and having it sound better too. Motifs are usually repeated musical phrases or rhythms. For an example, listen to the section between 1:33 and 1:53 in today’s piece, “Can’t Get Higher.”2
Imagine there’s a pole, a flagpole or whatever. And you grab on with one hand and start spinning around the pole, hanging outwards in a centrifugal force sort of way. “Wheeeee!” It feels good and you’re spinning around and the spinning is like your musical improvisation, free and fun. The pole is the restraint you use, for example a motif, holding you up. Without the pole, you just fall down. Your playing — your improvising — needs at least occasional support structures. Motifs provide a huge amount of support but not in a limiting way. Paradoxically they somehow let you feel freer and make the playing more fun.
Restraint
“Can’t Get Higher” refers to several self-restraints or constraints. I wanted to record something soulfully expressive, yet somehow still calm and quiet so there's that self-imposed limitation on volume and dynamics.
Separately from this recording, I also played around with it in a less restrained way, really jamming hard and not thinking. I made many mistakes and my playing felt a bit like rambling conversation. It felt productive and it felt good. But it didn’t feel as good as what I was able to say in the recorded version because. With the latter I felt a more focused sense of purpose. It felt like I was getting the message out of myself (and to myself as my first listener), perhaps especially in that section from 1:33 to 1:53.
I was limited by the 37-key range of my travel keyboard as compared with the 88 on a standard acoustic. It would've been nice to hit higher notes sometimes in this piece especially but this was also a cool experiment in expressing more within just three octaves. The 37-key thing can be freeing in the sense of staying focused with a given range. But it can also be frustrating when I want a wider range of notes available and have a sense of when and how to use them.
Those last few words are important I think. The line between feeling better about having fewer choices and feeling constrained by fewer choices probably has a lot to do with skill level. If I know how or when it might sound good to use the keys at the upper or lower ends of the keyboard, then it’s no longer inhibiting or overwhelming to have all of those choices. For a beginner, all of these choices might cause mayhem.
That being said, artists of all kinds, including (especially) highly practiced and skilled ones refer to the paradox in their being a sort of freeing effect within limitations. Part of this certainly comes from the relief of having fewer decisions to make. I'm not much of a painter but I know it can be overwhelming to look at a bunch of paint tubes and wonder where to begin. But what if I limited myself to one shade of yellow and orange? I would be free to get going and explore within that limited palette as opposed to feeling inhibited by the confusion in a multitude of choices.
The restraint through volume and dynamic control and motifs I mentioned above had a decidedly similar freeing effect. I never had to wonder how much “higher” (or “where”) to go in this sense.
We are constrained to some extent by our skill limitations. For example I feel I’m a pretty good player and probably getting better, but I’d like to be able to do and say more (to get higher) when I improvise on a blues or jazz theme, or the gospel thing I’ve tried to get going today. As such I have ideas and feelings about certain things I’d like to say but have difficulty doing so.
Here again restraints are freeing. If I don’t have to cover so much territory in my playing (whether this refers to keyboard range, volume, dynamics, proficiency with scales, etc), then I’m more comfortable exploring within a smaller area.
Restraint takes skill as well. I recall Bob Fields playing for me several recordings by some highly regarded jazz pianists, which he just couldn’t get into. It was because the artist was kind of “all over the place.” Skilled for sure, saying a lot maybe, but not making so much sense.
It can be really hard to come up with “things to say” on the fly when improvising. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with coming up with some simple motifs in advance. Even the best improvisors like John Coltrane call back to things they might have been doing earlier while practicing, in another session, etc. Our musical invention can’t just come out of thin air.
Lastly, I just want to emphasize that none of this talk about “restraint” in music should suggest that someone learning an instrument should hold back from just jamming freely and making those mistakes. It feels good and it’s also a way to understand our limitations a little better. And restraint shouldn’t replace practice. I need to get back to those jazz scales.
There have been plenty of studies on music and conveying emotions, and I read literally none of them to inform this post. But I Googled to make sure that there are indeed many studies out there. That way I could confidently say that I’m not the best person to be writing about this. I am a musician and educator though (and I hope a decent communicator) so I’m going to finish my thoughts.
Many other examples of motifs can be heard in the Karnataka Improvisation post from a few weeks ago, starting in the second minute.
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