What Jazz Taught Me About Making Mistakes

Jazz and Making Mistakes

If you’ve played jazz for any length of time, sooner or later you’re going to play a note that makes you think:

Well… that wasn’t it.

Not a subtle little maybe-not-my-best-note kind of thing.

I mean a note that lands in the room, looks around, and seems just as surprised to be there as you are.

And here’s the problem.

You can’t take it back.

There’s no undo button.

The drummer is still playing. The bass player has moved on. The next chord is already coming.

So you have a choice.

You can spend the next few seconds thinking about the note you just played.

Or you can play the next one.

Jazz has taught me a lot about that.

Yep. That Note Happened.

There’s something very immediate about improvising.

You don’t get to hide from what just happened.

You played the note.

Everybody heard it.

You heard it.

The note itself probably heard it.

Okay.

There it is.

And oddly enough, that can become a kind of presence.

Not some mystical state where everything suddenly glows and you hear celestial bells.

Just:

Yep. That happened.

There’s actually something freeing about that.

Because most of our suffering around mistakes seems to arrive a few seconds later, when the mind gets involved.

Why did I play that?

I should know better.

That sounded terrible.

Maybe I should sell the guitar and take up gardening.

The note itself lasted maybe half a second.

The story we create around it can go on for hours.

It’s Probably Not the End of Your Career

The next thing jazz teaches you is acceptance.

Not approval.

Acceptance.

There’s a difference.

I don’t have to pretend the note was brilliant.

Maybe it really was a bad note.

Maybe the piano player looked over at me like I had just driven through his living room.

Fine.

But it happened.

And now it’s part of the solo.

The interesting thing is that one note rarely defines the whole thing.

You keep playing.

Maybe the next line works.

Maybe you repeat the strange note and suddenly it sounds intentional.

That’s an old jazz trick, by the way.

If you make a mistake, play it again.

Now it’s a motif.

You’re welcome.

But seriously, there’s something in that.

We’re so quick to take one moment and turn it into a verdict.

A bad note becomes:

I’m playing terribly.

A bad photograph becomes:

I’ve lost it.

A bad day becomes:

Everything is going wrong.

Maybe not.

Maybe one thing happened.

That’s all.

Okay. Next Line.

This may be my favorite part.

Letting go.

You played the note.

You heard it.

You accepted that it happened.

And now?

Next line.

There’s something almost joyful about this when you really get into improvising.

Sometimes you hit a note that surprises you so much you actually laugh.

I’ve done that.

You’re playing, something comes flying out of the guitar that you absolutely did not order, and you just grin.

Not because it was perfect.

Because you’re right there.

Right in the middle of it.

The whole thing is alive.

And man, you love being in that moment.

Maybe that’s what letting go looks like sometimes.

Not sitting perfectly still on a mountain somewhere.

Maybe it’s playing a clunker, smiling, and staying in the music.

Because the tune is still moving.

The drummer is still there.

The next chord is coming.

And if you’re busy arguing with the note you played ten seconds ago, you’re going to miss the one that’s happening now.

I suspect life works like that too.

We all play notes we wish we hadn’t played.

We say things.

We make decisions.

We miss opportunities.

We get things wrong.

And sometimes the most useful thing we can do is simply recognize:

Yep. That happened.

It doesn’t have to become a judgment about who we are.

And it doesn’t have to become the end of the song.

Maybe jazz has been teaching me this all along.

The note happened.

The tune kept moving.

And somehow, so did I.