Master Class: Jazz In Relation To Martial Arts
A master of one pursuit can often tread gracefully in many more paths. When you train, you are working on improving a specific subject or skill. Make no mistake however! This specificity can lead to a much broader range of mastery.
When you are on the cusp of mastery, you are truly studying universal principles of human expressions and capabilities.
No matter the pursuit, mastery requires dedicated time, creative thought, and passion. Nowhere else can these attributes be as easily seen than Jazz music and its musicians. Here are a few quotes often attributed to famed music masters alongside personal commentary on how they can relate to your training.
Meditate on these words and think about how you can assimilate them into your own path towards mastery.
Miles Davis
“Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”
In the beginning, your training follows a structure. You rehearse individual basics and combinations and then your training evolves into freestyle expression–perhaps performance, perhaps fighting. Either way, it is an individualized articulation of your spirit, physical training, and mental disposition. Imitation paves the road to proper innovation.
“It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.”
Spoiler alert: you’re a human being. Human beings make mistakes. Your training is partly for prevention of problems (violence based or health based) and partly for damage control once things go awry. You aren’t always going to move the perfect way or say the best thing, you have to be able to adapt and thrive with your instinctual actions.
“Always listen for what you can leave out.”
You and your art are akin to a sculpture in the middle of creation. After you have collected your material (in your case, your beginner curriculum), it is essentially a process of refinement and improved efficiency. Remove excess tension, wasted motion, and limiting thoughts. Once you have done this, mastery is much closer.
“Music is the framework around the silence.”
Similar to the above note, bear in mind that less is often more. Silence often gets demonized or mischaracterized and many people prefer to stay busy even if it is to the detriment of actual progress. A master recognizes the strength of the passive and receptive moment though. Simply imagine your favorite song, jazz or otherwise, with all of the notes crammed together–it would sound horrific! Space between beats matter, time between action is important. Silence is golden.
“Anybody can play. The note is only 20%. The attitude of the motherf***r who plays it is 80 percent.”
‘Nuff said!
Art Blakey
“You can’t separate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t separate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church”
MMA is not at odds with tradition. Likewise, tradition ought not be seen as peer pressure from the dead. Art is found in expression and expressions come from the people in a culture as they continue to grow. If you look at videos such as THIS, you can see the evolution of traditional arts into modern times, sport and otherwise. Respect your past and also do not leash your future.
“A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.”
A style is just a name, nothing more. If you open your eyes and peer into the commonalities different systems have, your knowledge and perspective will expand greatly. This is true for jazz and this is true for martial arts.
Duke Ellington
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
It isn’t uncommon for martial arts training to be related to speech and conversation (for example, your basics are your alphabet, they are the fundamentals that give rise to combinations or words). Bear in mind that speaking is only roughly half of a conversation, the other half is listening. If you just want to talk endlessly, start a podcast. If you just want to punch and kick, get a punching bag. Understand that conversing and fighting requires more intelligence and perception however. You must first be receptive in order to react.
You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
It is easy to become style biased, especially if you train in the same system. When we see another martial artist training, be it in the same system or in another, strive to look at them with open eyes and freedom from preconceived opinions. You are an adult; you understand that different doesn’t automatically mean wrong and similar doesn’t automatically mean right.
Simplicity is a most complex form
Polish your fundamentals to the point that they are your best weapons. You don’t need many trained tactics or options, you need a few movements or actions that are extremely effective. To truly refine your abilities and maximize your martial arts potential, self study is also necessary. Martial Journal contributor Andrea Harkins recently shared her top five tips on this very subject!
There is no art without intention.
The difference between distracted and focused is vast. Keep your gaze directed, your mind focused, and your movements unstoppable. This is all the more true when trying to feint an opponent. Everything we do is beyond physical, it is mental as well.
Charlie Parker
“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art”
I’ll let you meditate on this. Comment below how you interpret this quote. Let’s have a conversation in the comments section!
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My instructor often relates our training to grammar. Subject,object and predicate, use of commas, semicolons and exclamation Mark’s. It helps to understand the rhythm of the form.
Sounds like you have an excellent instructor! If you understand rhythm, you understand much of fighting and life 🙂
Absolutely love it! Great piece. If you’re interested, here’s one I wrote ages ago along similar lines 🙂
https://combatartsinstitute.com.au/perth-martial-arts-blog/ron-amram-blog/item/102-play-music-to-learn-how-to-fight-or-vice-versa
Heck yeah! Glad you enjoyed the article and thanks for sharing your article as well! There is much wisdom in what you’ve written, especially the mention of having “total control over your feel of time”.
In jazz and other improvisational styles you often have to solo or play improvised parts over a fixed set of “chord changes” . Chords are groups of notes played simultaneously ( happy , sad, tense sounding etc ), and chord changes are simply different chords strung together , usually with some underlying musical logic. Each chord has particular note sequences you can play over it (called scales) , just like how each moment in a fight opens up particular options based on the situation. You make up what you’re playing on the fly by making combinations of notes and rhythms based on a a musical vocabulary you develop , similar to how you might string together Boxing combinations based on your boxing “vocabulary” or the situation presented.
Training in Improvising over musical sequences, requires a lot of preparation and putting yourself in different musical scenarios, identifying patterns and pathways to navigate and thinking several steps ahead sometimes till you can play freely and “Flow”. It Also involves so called “muscle memory”
Training in martial arts , requires you to be able to “improvise” in several different situations , requiring you to put yourself in different combat scenarios, identifying patterns, pathways and openings and thinking ahead. also involves muscle memory.
TLDR Practicing Chords, chord changes, scales etc – are like Boxing combinations, situational drills, sequences etc that you practice , initially under controlled circumstances and then more freely without restraint.
I hope I made sense! It’s something I’ve noticed since I started training mma, having been a life long musician.
That’s an excellent observation! Sounds like you are making important connections in your training, keep it up!