Creative progress is so much less quantifiable than technical progress. Technique is both necessary and measurable.

The traditional dichotomy is Creative vs. Technical. (As the professor in the back of the room at one of my workshops put it: “Shouldn’t they have to master their scales and arpeggios before they get to experiment with improvisation?”)

Ask yourself this: What would you pray for as the highest goal in your professional and creative life? How will you get it? What would you do if you got it?

How are you working on it? What are you searching for and what are you trying to say? Technique should serve that. The biggest issue is perhaps how to connect with the feeling of expression in musical ideas. What are you trying to say? How can you say it better? What music do you love and how is it expressed there?

Deep meaning resides in the simplest things. Billie Holiday and Lester Young were among the most expressive team in music. And yet they are also one of the simplest and most direct; not a lot of flashy, showy playing.

What are the specifics of creative practice? Trying to break music down to the most basic elements. For example: Who will you play with? Write and practice for them.

There is a ritual element to practicing. Not necessarily a mystic ritual, just a repetitive one. Still searching myself, all I can say is that this is what I think today.

Within the repetition the practice can be new every time. Every moment is an opportunity for discovery.

Lester Young: “Every musician should be a stylist. I played like Trumbauer when I was starting out. But then there’s a time when you have to go out for yourself and tell your story. Your influence has already told his.”

Joe: Don’t you think this implies a little bit more something than what you’re talking about. Not that I disagree with your thinking. The approach to being a musician you recommend is spot on as far as it goes. I just think there’s another layer of thought process on top of it. How else would you interpret what Lester is saying?

I’m sure all of us have seen people in life that strive to be different just for the sake of being different, and I ask how is that being true to yourself? I think that if you, as a musician, constantly work hard, practice, and strive to create music that’s true to yourself, then you’ve already found “your own voice,” without the life-long process of “trying” to be different.

The reason that Armstrong was such an innovator was because he was so much more advanced on the trumpet,and improvising than anything seen in New Orleans or Chicago at the time. Also, his voice reflected that of the way African’s sang, it wasn’t something just completely new. I don’t buy into the conscious effort of “finding one’s voice” for the sake of being different. I think being different comes from honesty.