I thought it might be interesting to see what the members think of some of these ideas in an article I wrote about 10 years ago which appeared in DownBeat:

THE VITAL CONNECTION BETWEEN VERBAL AND MUSICAL COMMUNICATION

The voice is the mother of all music and the mother of all instruments.

We know jazz is a unique form of music. But why? When asked this question, most people will respond that it's the presence of improvisation that sets jazz apart. But this is in no way true- improvisation exists in blues, rock, country, folk, African music, Indian music- in virtually all musics of the world. In fact, the presence of improv is the rule, rather than the exception. The desire to improvise, to express oneself and say something new and original, is a very human need, and crosses all cultural and national boundaries.

Although improv is in no way unique to jazz, by virtue of both it's tradition of transcendental soloists, each with an entirely unique and personal voice- from Louis Armstrong to Coleman Hawkins, to Lester Young and Charlie Parker and John Coltrane as well as it's virtuoso tradition- in evidence from it's earliest days- jazz is the ne plus ultra for the improviser.

The heart and soul of jazz repertoire consists of the American Songbook- tunes composed largely for Broadway shows and movies by such names as Gershwin, Berlin, Hammerstein, Rodgers, Hart, Porter, Arlen, Kern, Mercer, Loesser, and others. Each of those songs represents a unique harmonic challenge. But in addition to this inexhaustible source of repertoire, there are so many others; for example the original compositions of jazz musicians themselves and the compositions of the great jazz composers (Ellington, Monk, Dameron, etc). In fact, jazz players have always been in voracious pursuit of new material to serve as a basis for improvisation. When Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd and others first brought the Latin music of South America to the attention of the jazz world, it was viewed as an exciting, cutting edge development but nowadays jazz musicians don't think twice about performing whatever material they connect with- whether it be from India, Africa, or the worlds of classical music, pop or rock.

It takes years of hard work and an ever increasing mastery of our instruments to develop the ability to improvise. From learning scales- the building blocks of melody, then intervals- where we develop an understanding of the relationship between the notes of the scale, to learning about harmony and the connection between melody and harmony- arpeggios, variations, to embellishing existing melodies, inventing simple melodies at first and gradually progressing over time. If one is really fortunate, one's lucky enough to find a teacher early on who stresses not only what to play but- maybe even more importantly- how to play the things one plays- with mastery, sound, control and legato (more on legato later).

After having dedicated years of time and energy to learning how to improvise, what has one finally attained? Nothing. This may sound harsh, but the goal in playing jazz is not to become an improviser. Improvisation- the ability to create melody (or rhythm) over harmony is a craft and as such is something any teacher can instruct anyone to do- in the sense of playing notes which are correct in terms of diatonic harmony- in the first five minutes of a first lesson.

The ultimate goal in jazz, the prize we should be keeping our eyes on both as musicians as well as teachers, is developing our unique voices, our own very individual and personal way of playing and expressing ourselves.

No, improvisation is not the goal- it's a craft: a means to get to where we want to be- which is to express ourselves in a unique and personal way, enabling us to move from the level of craft to that of artist, an owner of a unique musical voice. The question is: how can we make this leap from improviser to artist?

When we listen to the music of the greatest improvisers in jazz history- a jazz genealogy already alluded to above- we're immediately struck by how personal is the playing of each. And from our study of jazz history, we're aware of how vastly each one influenced the players who followed, as well as the direction of jazz itself. We can hear all this, we know all this. But the question is- why? What was it about the playing of each of these giants that made his music so personal and enabled him to communicate on such a deep level?

My idea is that each of these greats possessed an instinctive understanding of the connection between speech- verbal communication- and music- non-verbal communication- and had an innate ability to use the dynamics of speech (explanation to follow) in his music.

Our understanding of the very human trait of verbal communication is profound. We can identify the voice of a friend with whom we haven't spoken in years in seconds, we pick up subtle nuance subconsciously, we hear voices and are learning to grasp their subtleties even before we're actually born, from the time we're in the womb. Most amazing is that of the billions of persons on the planet, each possesses a unique speaking voice of his own.

How is it possible then that among the multitudes of musicians over the course of jazz history there have been so relatively few who developed their own voice?

The dynamics of the voice are relatively few. But before explaining the dynamics themselves, let's back up and first define what a dynamic is. Simply put, a dynamic is a range; hot and cold (dynamics of temperature), fast and slow (dynamics of speed), loud and soft (dynamics of volume). So, what about the dynamics as they specifically apply to the voice? Yes, there's loud and soft. But if you were to read this piece (or anything else) aloud, you'll notice more.

Direction of lines- Every sentence we speak ends in an inflection, it either rises or falls in pitch- or can finish in basically the same range as it began. In speaking, we vary and balance the inflection naturally. No one would end everything he says with a rise in pitch at the end- or with a descent in pitch. Yet when we apply this concept to music- the direction of the lines we play- we find few instrumentalists have any awareness of or control over the direction of the lines they play, a dynamic which is one of the ways by which each of us defines our own means of communicating verbally.

Duration of tones- When we speak, we use a range of syllable durations, balancing sounds which are held longer with those that are shorter in duration. Each of us does this naturally and in a unique way, to fail to do so results in what most people would refer to as speaking in a monotone (droning on?). In music, the parallel would be limiting oneself to eighth notes. A musical monotone of a sort, this approach doesn't sound natural- particularly when compared to an instrumentalist who makes thorough use of the dynamic range of note durations- balancing sixteenth notes against passages of notes of longer duration (quarter notes, half notes, whole notes) for example.

Use of space- This is the most philosophical of the dynamics, but also the most basic. If I deliver a speech over the course of an hour or so and then conclude by saying something like, "Thanks for coming today. If there's just one thing I'd like you to take away from today's speech it's this:"…..Pause……Before continuing, you will have the attention of everyone in the room. Why? Space creates a vacuum, and when there is space, the listener wants to hear what follows. It's the same way in speech as in music, although in music, the implications of leaving space are even more formidable than with speech, demonstrating mastery, control, confidence, and communicating on a deep level. Using space gives rise to another indispensable and very much "verbal" facet of musical self expression- phrasing.

When we consider the voice, the three above-named dynamics are pretty much the sum total of everything we have at our disposal to distinguish our voices. Just three. (There's additionally the timbre, or tone quality and range of our voices; both of which are very much manifestations of physical reality, our bodies, our size- perhaps the equivalent of an instrument such as a guitar where, even though each one sounds like a guitar, every guitar sounds very much different. It's not for nothing that singers refer to their voices as their "instrument".) And every person everywhere in the world uses just these few dynamics to arrive at his own unique and personal voice.

There are other dynamics we can use to enhance our playing and become more expressive players. Here are a few which come to mind: We can play lines of a basically diatonic nature and then balance them- contrast them- with material from a blues scale- and then, perhaps, resolve that blues scale material back into the diatonic framework. We can achieve essentially the same end by playing material that falls completely "outside" diatonic framework and then bring it back "in". We can use tensions and resolve them.

Translating the dynamics of the voice to one's instrument results in the development of a personal and unique musical voice.

A few more thoughts...

In the most simple sense, legato means smooth. But the implications of legato go way beyond that and again speak to the connection between our voices and the music we play. Frequently, a new student will play for me and I'll hear whatever it is he's playing come out as disjointed, slightly on the staccato side. But when I have that student sing whatever it is that he's just played, it comes out smooth, and every note is given it's full value. Remember, it all comes from the voice. When we describe a particular musician's playing as being "musical", it means that it sounds like he's singing- and this means legato and a clear connection to the voice. Whenever we're working on a passage that doesn't seem to be coming out exactly right, there's a reliable way of finding out exactly how it should sound- sing it! Everything we play should sound like we're singing it- that's music!

Let's think about solos. How does the concept of a vocally inspired system of improv inform our appreciation of what comprises a good solo? Where do we get our ideas? How do we know what to play?

Everybody wants to play lots of "stuff"- vocabulary- and to have command of a wide range of material both harmonically and melodically. To achieve this, transcribing is a good start. But virtually all my students ask me how to play new ideas rather than endlessly repeating what comes easily, what they have under their fingers, licks or ideas they've committed to memory. Again the answer comes from the voice.

When I was at Berklee many years ago, I had a friend who'd fallen in love with Clifford Brown's playing. He'd say, "Clifford's telling a story", or "Clifford's really saying it" (both speech-related metaphors, by the way). But I couldn't hear any story- what I heard was beautiful, soulful, emotionally charged trumpet playing, but at that point the story telling was beyond me.

Years later I came to understand that telling a story musically is like telling a story verbally. Think of a book. We can think of a book as being roughly equivalent to a CD (although when it comes to books, chapters are most times- although not always- more closely interconnected than in the case of the tracks of a recording). A book is divided into chapters (equivalent of songs?), each one with a title. Chapters are constructed of paragraphs, each of which starting with a sentence stating the paragraph's subject. The sentences which follow serve to develop the subject. When the subject is fully developed, it's time for a new paragraph in which the subject sentence of that paragraph is again developed.

In improvising, we aspire to do the same. Rather than throwing out vocabulary and "stuff", we play ideas and then develop those ideas until we feel we're ready to move on to the next idea- which we then develop as well. This is what makes strong solos and great playing, where there's a logical unfolding of ideas- this is telling a story musically.

Finally, think about this: Many times it doesn't matter what we play! What's more important is what we do with the things we play! Developing ideas is about starting someplace and taking your musical ideas somewhere else, it's about logic, making sense, and telling a story.