Quick burst

After playing my weekend gig at Brown Sugar By The Sea in Newburyport this weekend, I made a huge connection to something that I had read in Miles' Book. Last week I spent a lot of time studying Miles' playing and noticed just how much space he incorporated into his improvisation. This is something very prominent in the playing of a lot of the musicians from Miles' era. After reading a lot on what society for musicians was like at this time, I can see why. All these guys did was play music together. They played enough that it became their second form of communication. When human beings talk, unless you are a chatterbox, we tend to put space into our phrases. Miles seems to incorporate this heavily into his improvisation. I tried doing this at my gig this weekend and found it to be an extremely useful tool. Instead of thinking about playing jazz lines, I tried to voice my improvisation to be as if I was talking. This approach forced my playing to be really melodic and have a lot more creativity.
A great example of miles using space would be this recording -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0xkMxT6KGo

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