88 Muses

Jazz Pianists, Harry Likas

Most jazz players don’t stall because they “think too much”—they stall because their thinking isn’t yet fast enough to keep pace with the harmony. When the chords start moving, the brain has to instantly recognize shapes, tendencies, and voice‑leading pathways, and if that recognition isn’t automatic, the player is forced into slow, conscious calculation. The result isn’t overthinking; it’s latency—a delay between hearing the change and knowing what it means under the fingers. Jazz is a real‑time motor skill, and like any motor skill, fluency comes from reducing that delay until the harmony feels as immediate and effortless as spoken language. Players don’t need less thinking; they need thinking that’s so quick and embodied it no longer interrupts the line.

Wes Montgomery never used a pick, only the fleshy part of his right thumb. He never stood up but sat back, holding his guitar at a semi-horizontal angle, 45 degrees from his lap. His solos would swell into octaves and block chords, driven more swiftly and cleanly than most players can articulate single-string notes.In later life one of Wes’ most intriguing quotes was: “You shoulda heard me 20 years ago, when I could really play.” Fans took this with a pinch of salt, yet his remarkable self-deprecation was probably genuine and rooted in the fact that he was an ear player, entirely self-taught and unable to sight-read music. Many great musicians have found it necessary to conceal this fact, because learning by ear instead of learning by eye remains the last taboo.
When asked if he could read, the great pianist Erroll Garner once replied: “Not enough to hurt my playing.” Art Tatum, Monty Alexander and Django Reinhardt (in his way every bit as distinctive a guitarist as Wes) did not read music either. All are or were not only wonderful ear players but also magnificent individualists whose recorded work, unlike that of so many conservatory graduates, can be recognised instantly. Guitarist Martin Taylor, who learned to read only after learning to play, once defined jazz as a process of elimination, involving the acceptance of attractive ideas and the rejection of unattractive ones. “In that sense all jazz musicians are self-taught,” he concluded. “Particularly the best ones.”
-jazzwise

Photo: Jean-Pierre Leloir.