by Scott Houston
Most people think of skydivers and bungee jumpers as “daredevils” with no fear. To my utter amazement, a majority of people learning to play piano see those who learn to improvise in that same light.
Life is risky—end of story. The only way to avoid risk is to stay in bed 24/7, and even then you risk your house collapsing on top of you. Risk is a reality that we all share. You simply can’t escape some level of risk.
You may consider yourself risk averse, yet it’s likely you get in a car and drive every day. Ooh! That’s a very risky endeavor, you insane thrill-seeker. Ever eat salad without personally washing all the greens first? Whoa! Have you seen what E. coli can do to you? You must really like to live life on the edge!
My point is that risk is around us all the time in varying degrees. You can’t fear risk. You need to embrace risk as part of living fully. Of course, to be rational, one needs to weigh the risk with the potential reward. The problem is that, as humans, we don’t always do that very well.
Look at the statistics, and you’ll find flying in an airliner to be exponentially safer than getting in your car and driving to the corner store. Yet many people still have an irrational fear of flying but will drive in a car all day long. You get the picture.
Here’s why I mention fear of risk: I am in a rare and fortunate position to have a wonderful “living laboratory” comprised of tens of thousands of piano players learning to play from lead sheets for recreational enjoyment. I have recently come to the realization that fear of risk is one of the main impediments to people breaking free from sheet music and starting down the path towards improvisation.
This exact same fear of risk is what keeps great classical notation readers written, I can’t play it.” It’s the old, “I’d love to play for you, but I didn’t bring my music” syndrome, which is familiar to way too many of us.
So what’s the big risk? The risk of playing wrong notes and sounding bad, that’s what. Are you kidding me? Playing a “wrong” note? Sounding bad? Who cares?
The last time I played something “less than harmonic” (ok, just plain awful) my heart continued to beat, the sun continued to shine, my hair continued to thin, and my dog Nick continued to snore. Basically, the universe chugged right along with nary a quiver. Interestingly, one thing did change: My playing got a little better.
You see, the wonderful consequence of playing “less than optimal sounding” notes is that you are training yourself and your ear to know what does not sound good, which gets you closer to knowing what does sound good. It’s that trial by error, or “fail early, fail often” experience that is the secret to learning to improvise and being comfortable playing without reading notation verbatim. It’s ironic, but, without experiencing “wrong” notes, you’ll never get to the
“right” notes.
So I encourage you to work on a mind shift: Instead of thinking of wrong notes, think of them as notes that you now know are not a good choice for that moment. You have to weed through the bad ones to find the good ones!
Maybe these quotes from some musical giants will help soothe your psyche:
“There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.” —Thelonious Monk
“There’s no such thing as a wrong note.” —Art Tatum
“It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note—it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.”
—Miles Davis
Being afraid to risk sounding less than perfect is totally irrational. Yet, that silly fear is keeping many aspiring musicians from earning a life changing reward. That is—acquiring the skill set to be able to play not from what someone else has already written on a piece of sheet music, but rather, to play from your heart extemporaneously.
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” —Joe Pierce
Now go play some wrong notes, would you please!
