To play or not to play?

“Music is the silence between the notes.” — Claude Debussy

“It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” — Miles Davis

The piano solo by Bill Evans on “Flamenco Sketches” (Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, 1959) is one of my favorite moments in jazz. Evans etches just eight notes to start his solo — each shimmering in vast, sparse space. You can almost hear in his playing the sound a drop of water makes as it creates concentric ripples across the surface of a lake.

Evans uses pauses like a paint brush and the effect is magical. (Listen to the complete track here, or jump to the piano solo at the 5:50 mark.)

Playing music is an endless series of decisions:
Which note to play next?
How to play that note?
Which combination of notes? A chord?
Behind the beat or right on it?
How loud or soft?
What emotion am I transmitting?
How does the sound fit into the context of the song?

Musical people process decisions like these in milliseconds. Hundreds of decisions per song. Thousands per hour. Millions per month.

Over time (and with lots of practice) we improve the speed and quality of our decisions about what to play. It’s a challenge to learn scales and chords and to blend them into good songs. We spend a fair amount of time learning this stuff. There’s no music without sound (unless you’re into John Cage).

Not playing is also a decision — a skill and an art — that we can also practice with intention. There is so much musical power in laying out — in painting space…with nothing. It’s also a challenge to learn how not to play. Less time practicing this stuff. There’s no music without the spaces between the notes.

How do you practice the art of not playing?
How do you use pauses in your composition and playing?
What are some of your favorite songs that feature dramatic pauses and space?