Nicholas Payton wrote in 2011 that “jazz isn’t cool anymore” but in 1985, Chick Corea addressed a group of Berklee students saying quite the opposite. This is not to say we 100 percent disagree with Payton’s hot take, but the late and prolific Corea had some simple words of wisdom for musicians interested in being a part of an ensemble.
It may come as a surprise, but The Christian Science Monitor documented Corea’s appearance in a two-hour Q&A session at Berklee College of Music in 1985, “where the pianist and jazz fusion keyboard master had students pick up [a] typed handout above at the door.”
Corea’s typed list of wisdom reads like a blue print or a recipe for the best ways in which to collaborate within a musical ensemble. As Open Culture previously stated, his primary metaphor is architectural—performance, he says, is about creating spaces and tastefully filling them. The list is as follows:
- Play only what you hear.
- If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.
- Don’t let your fingers and limbs just wander—place these intentionally.
- Don’t improvise on endlessly—play something with intention, develop it or not, but then end off, take a break.
- Leave space—create space—intentionally create places where you don’t play.
- Make your sound blend. Listen to your sound and adjust it to the rest of the band and the room.
- If you play more than one instrument at a time—like a drum kit or multiple keyboards—make sure that they are balanced with one another.
- Don’t make any of your music mechanically or just through patterns of habit. Create each sound, phrase, and piece with choice—deliberately.
- Guide your choice of what to play by what you like—not by what someone else will think.
- Use contrast and balance the elements: high/low, fast/slow, loud/soft, tense/relaxed, dense/sparse.
- Play to make the other musicians sound good. Play things that will make the overall music sound good.
- Play with a relaxed body. Always release whatever tension you create.
- Create space—begin, develop, and end phrases with intention.
- Never beat or pound your instrument—play it easily and gracefully.
- Create space—then place something in it.
- Use mimicry sparsely—mostly create phrases that contrast with and develop the phrases of the other players.
