It’s always a pleasure to hear my dad Craig, a 6-string electric bassist, talk about what actually is going on between musicians in a Jazz set. He’d often tell me stories like how "The audience liked the set, but the saxophone player really took it over and didn’t give anyone else a chance to play, the piano player and I kept on looking at each other.” Or “We weren’t just playing a song, we were having a conversation with each other.” It’s interesting to hear about how improvisational music is sort of like it’s own language, and it makes total sense. What interests me even more though as a structural engineer, is a Jazz musicians’ ability to listen, respond, and adapt to complex changes all in real-time.
Without doubt Jazz is one of the freest forms of music, and making mistakes can be made intentional, sometimes even making the set better. I think that what people may not realize though, is that Jazz is not pure chaos, but does actually follow rules that change based on the situation. My dad would often tell me about how Jazz musicians develop and circle back to what they call “Motives” - or a short phrase that gets repeated that is essentially the “core idea” or “theme” of the tune. It helps anchor the musicians and the audience so it’s not just a crazy diverging dialogue. Interestingly Motives are different than Choruses - they actually develop and get twisted and pulled on by the different soloists as the tune progresses.
In the A/E industry I like to think of collaboration as a series of solos that lead to discovering an optimal solution, thinking of project completion as the final version of the Motive. And with soloing it usually works best when everyone is listening to each other in the set, and giving each other a chance to contribute. Interestingly with improvisation, it’s really more about the discovery of ideas rather than coming to the set with something you intend to play in your solo regardless, just because it fits the key or scale of the song. What are some of the things that can help soloing? Typically a soloist starts by responding to what was immediately said, then they might go back to the Motive, sometimes that’s breaking off a small fragment of the Motive to then develop into a new idea, and other times it’s simply a rephrase just in a different context in a different part of the scale. The distortion of the Motive helps signal to other musicians “here’s where I’m going next with this”. From there it’s important to leave where you left off with room for the next player to do the same.
How can we learn from Jazz improvisation to help our project coordination? It can come down perhaps to a few key ideas: active listening to allow solutions to emerge rather than converging and repeating on what’s already been said, and leaving space for new ideas. When it comes to “mistakes” there are no mistakes in collaboration, they just fuel new ideas that can ultimately lead to a better overall solution. What else can we learn from Jazz musicians for solving problems in the A/E industry?
