I saw Arturo Sandoval play at the Blue Note on Friday. It was great, of course. I first heard him play in high school when I bought his album Hot House.
As I was listening, I started thinking about what goes on in your head when you improvise jazz. I think it helps to separate things into two categories: playing well technically (high notes, fast difficult patterns, etc.), and playing well emotionally (having a good gut feeling for what sounds good when). In other words, knowing how to play and knowing what to play. These two components trade control back and forth throughout a solo; one part chooses which pattern to play next, the other part executes it, the first part chooses another pattern, the other part executes it...
Some improvisers are good at one but not the other. For example, some are very proficient at playing difficult material, like high notes and fast, intricate syncopated sequences. But they don't have any clear direction to their solos (i.e. they're not good at choosing patterns). Others lack technical skill (i.e. they haven't mastered a lot of patterns), but they choose sounds in a way that produces an interesting overall message. They play with soul. I like to think of these two types of skill as Classical and Romantic Quality, as defined by Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (I also think these two categories can be mapped roughly onto the brain's cognitive/analytical processes and its emotional/limbic processes, respectively.)
The best imrovisers are good at both kinds of Quality. Their brains have large libraries filled with high-quality patterns (Classical), and they have amazing selection mechanisms (Romantic). Their solos have relevant messages, and they're constructed out of masterful building blocks.
I haven't played jazz for a little while (about a year and a half), but I'd like to play again. I stopped playing because grad school got busy, mainly, but I also became frustrated with how I was playing. One thing was that I didn't like how I sounded in recordings. Something just wasn't right. Kind of like how most people don't like to hear their own voice. Another thing was that I wasn't really advancing as an improviser. I think it was because I was too focused on achieving Classical Quality. I would always practice with the goal of mastering some new pattern in all twelve keys, for example. I was never able to focus on learning to fashion the overall structure of a solo into anything meaningful. Then when it came time to play a solo with a group, I would go on autopilot, randomly jumping from one well-learned pattern to the next. My solos lacked direction.
I think what led to this problem was how, in most school bands I played in, the kids that could play the highest/fastest solos got the most respect (usually from their peers, not necessarily from the directors). So people that wanted to be noticed (myself included) would practice playing high notes and flashy passages. The Classical Quality of musical performance alone was usually equated with proficiency. Of course, it's hard to practice (and harder to teach) the Romantic Quality of jazz improvisation, especially in isolation. It's best to get real experience with a group that's not totally focused on the attention-getting parts of soloing.
Pirsig's division of idealogies into Classical and Romantic appears to be a good one. It appears to encompass a wide range to situations, including jazz improvisation. (I think that this division can be tied somewhat directly to the structure and function of our brains. I'm interested to find out if this is true.) Some improvisers choose to focus on developing one are more than the other (sometimes to the point of producing totally unbalanced solos), but the best soloists are good at both.
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