Woodshed

MASTER CLASS

BY KENNY WERNER

Zen and the Art of Jazz: Part 2

And in the Beginning, God Created Ego!

OR SO IT SEEMS

Actually, most people start with a natural attraction towards music they
love or identify with. There are no doubts, only joy. Young people take up an
instrument and, if not corrupted by the desires of their parents, immediately head towards self-expressionthat is, the music and words they need to
play, sing and feel. At this point, music serves as an outlet, an escape or even
a saving grace. The problem starts when they begin to call themselves musicians. Now, this is what they do, what they are; this is their identity.
Therein lies the spiritual dilemma, because we are certainly more than
this. Perhaps fear is introduced for the first time and grafted onto the urge
to make music. Once we go to music school, we have put all our eggs in one
basket. Progressively fear, low self-esteem and feelings of self-worth claim a
greater market share of our awareness. The simple connection we once felt
heart, soul and mind seems somehow less valid.
We start to measure our value as human beings
by how well we playnot just how well we play
in general, but how well we played that day. Our
level of self-esteem becomes as volatile as the stock
market. More and more, we succumb to a contracted view of ourselves and music. We become
more preoccupied, not with the joy of making
music but with how well we play.
Broadly identified, it is our ego that causes us
to measure our value. We have the need to be
thought of as highly valued by others. We want to
know that we havent made the wrong choice, that
we excel at something. We dont want our lives
to be wasted, to have lived for no purpose or for
a failed cause. The need to distinguish oneself in
any given area is a demand that manifests in the
conscious mind, which we generally call the home
address of the ego. Beyond the conscious mind lies
a deeper, more vast space that transcends the feeling of separateness. In that region, we are all one.
Ones joy and success is all of our joy and success.
If only it were that way on earthone mans victory would be cause for collective celebration. (Oh,
well.) The common example of someone with an ego is one who defines himself as more valuable than his peers. But ego is just self-absorption, constant
preoccupation with the question How am I doing? Whether one values
ones self negatively or positively, that is still ego.
Ego creates fear. We fear the future or regret the past. Fear mutes us or
makes us doubt our most intuitive ideas. How does this concept manifest in
the world of musicians? For most, the pressure put upon themselves to excel
is the sabotaging force that dooms them. For a few, it is a driving force, but for
many it is the ruination of their dreams.
Ego ruins practicing. It takes us out of the moment and causes us to practice one thing while worrying about getting to the next thing. We hurry
through our studies because we want to be great players by yesterday. It is a
trap because as we skim through our studies, we dont absorb anything; we
dont own anything. Therefore, we never hear the fruits of those practices.
When we are introduced to new ideas, scales or rhythms and we dont hear
them manifest in our playing, that leads to the suspicion that were not very
talented. Now the ego has us by the throat. Our impatience leads us to move
too quickly from one idea to the next, never really focusing on anything. We
are lost and drowning in a sea of possibilities.
The fact is that the skill of jazz is being able to play intelligent language in
real time. What the jazz player in particular must realize is that even though

he knows about a given thing or has studied it, nothing can manifest in his
soloing in real time unless it is learned on such a deep level that it has become
muscle memory. Like walking, or using a fork, or speaking in ones native
tongue, those concepts must be so deeply owned that they surface in streams
of consciousness, mindlessly, without effort. Thats true whether it relates to
knowing the software youre using or being creative in the business of music.
The knowledge one acquires must be at an instinctive level. For performance,
it is necessary to practice something beyond being able to play it right. For
it to be accessible while playing, it has to play itself. The patience it takes to
absorb new information in that depth is humbling. One must find the humility to practice like a monk absorbs his scriptures. Humility emerges with the
submergence of ego.
I start off many of my clinics by saying, Think about a time when it was
really important to play well. How did you
play? As the students nervously look around
at each other, one will bravely say, Lousy.
Then I say, Now think of a time when it
didnt matter. You were just messing around
with your friends, or you had a few beers, or
for you older musicians, you were playing a
wedding and no one was listening. How did
you play then? Their faces brighten as they
say, Better. Then I say, Great. Now that Ive
pointed that out to you, the clinic could be
over, right? You just learned the most important lesson of your life. All this time youve
been thinking that if you just tried harder,
cared more or punished yourself a bit more
severely, it would drive you to play better. But
now, by your own experience, you have just
realized it is the opposite. Now that youve
realized it, youre never going to care anymore, right? At that point, there is nervous
laughter, because even though they know it
makes them play worse, they wont be able to
resist caring by about the fifth bar. They cant
help it. Theyre programmed to care and to
obsess. Now theyll need to deprogram and reprogram.
There is another situation where the student wants to play better but
instead plays worse: the jury. Yes, the jury, a term used around the world
to describe a students final exam at their instrument. How did we get that
word? Jury has always implied to me the possibility of being found guilty of
something. Ive been on a one-man quest as a visitor to many universities to
change the name. Why not call it an end-of-semester celebration? Instead of
a row of teachers sitting at an extended table with clipboards (or, these days,
iPads) looking like a tribunal, they should be dressed in Hawaiian shirts.
There should be a little minibar with a grass roof. The teachers are all drinking mai tai cocktails, pia coladas, whatever. Theyre talking and laughing
and they barely notice that youve entered the room. One of them says, Hey,
come in and play a tune for us! Then they go back to their drinking and
laughing, but secretly theyre listening. On the piano, theres a brandy snifter
for tips. If they really like your performance, they put a twenty in the snifter.
If they think its good, maybe a ten or a five. If its barely acceptable, they put
in a one dollar bill. And if they stiff you, well, you have your grade right there.
Sometimes you hear other players, and they play better than you. Maybe
they are younger than you. Maybe they had some particularly impressive
acrobatics to display, and you lose sense of what you should be working on
and try to do what they did. When that happens, we often lose sight of the

Ego ruins practicing. It

takes us out of the moment
and causes us to practice
one thing while worrying
about getting to the next
thing. We hurry through
our studies because we
want to be great players
by yesterday. It is a trap
because as we skim
through our studies, we
dont absorb anything, dont
own anything.

104 DOWNBEAT MARCH 2015

Woodshed

MASTER CLASS

BY KENNY WERNER

things we need to practice and reach far beyond

what were capable of at that moment. Its like
the old fable about the dog who has a bone in his
mouth. He looks in the pond and sees a dog with
a bone in his mouth, and he drops his bone and
jumps into the water after the other dogs bone.
In other words, he drops something to chase after
nothing. These are just some of the ways the mind,
or the ego, can have its way with us.
Ego and fear also ruin our performance. We
judge what were playing while were playing it.
That kills the groove. We might be playing a nice

solosimple, balanced, within our abilitiesand

a little voice whispers in our ear, Its not burning enough! or, Its not swinging enough! or,
Its not creative enough! Whatever the little
judge in our head is saying, it makes us abandon
what we know to chase after nothing. We might
respond well for about four bars, and then its like
the Titanic: Downward the solo goes. We overplay, start to bang or, god forbid, lose the time.
Of course, this exposes that we did not have a
good enough grasp of time or form. That exposes the fact that our foundation is thin, or non-

existent. Many rush through too much material and play what Bill Evans called approximate.
There is no clarity because our impatience has us
wanting to be better players by yesterday. Without
patience, one just skims the surface and therefore
never hears the fruits of his practice. A restless
mind has us practicing when we should be playing and playing when we should be practicing.
Were constantly trying to answer the question,
How do I sound? Ten minutes later, How do I
sound now? and so on. Some players are defeated before they even start because that little devil is
saying, Im not worthy. Those other guys are real
musicians with the entitlement to express themselves. Not me. The bottom rung of this spiral is
contracting what I call MSD, or Music School
Disease. MSD works on the brain like this: After
being overwhelmed with too much material and
having too little time to absorb it before the introduction of more material, the student becomes so
used to not finding the stuff he has been exposed
to that if he plays something that goes free and
easy and that he understands well, he immediately concludes that it must be the wrong shit.
The mind is prone to habitual thinking. There
is a sanskrit word for it: samskaras. Mental pathways have been dug out day after day by fears,
expectations, jealousies, resentments and low
self-esteem. Some of us suffer mildly; many of us
suffer badly. It inhibits or even sabotages everything we do: relationships, career opportunities or
simply the next solo.
The job of clearing all this away may lie outside of music, though mental work, psychiatry,
psychology, bodywork, yoga, tai chi, conscious
movement, spiritual work, meditation, chanting,
praying or any form of surrendering the ego. The
good news is that change is possible. The bad news
is its a bitch to do.
Havent you had that moment, that sense that
the music was just happeningthen its gone
in a flash? Those moments are so important that
you actually remember where you were and what
gig it was. Those are the precious moments we
live for. We must learn to expand those moments.
That can be taught and practiced. We contemplate those experiences without expecting them,
and make ourselves available for more of those
moments. We learn to go past the conscious mind
and enter the space beyond the mind. In that
space, we may hear every sound as the most beautiful sound weve ever heard. That is the musicians version of enlightenment.
How do we practice making diamonds out of
coal? How do we extract the pearl from the oyster
shell?That is the subject of the next article.
DB
Kenny Werner is a world-class pianist, composer, educator and
author whose prolific output continues to impact audiences
and musicians around the world. His groundbreaking 1996
publication Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician
Within is a guide to distill the emotional, spiritual and
psychological aspects of an artists life. One of the most widely
read books on music and improvisation, it is required reading
at many universities and conservatories. Werner was recently
named Artistic Director of The Performance Wellness Institute
at Berklee College of Music. His new CD Coalition (Half Note)
features Miguel Zenn, Lionel Loueke, Benjamin Koppel and
Ferenc Nemeth. Visit Werner online at kennywerner.com.

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