Unveiling the Soul of Music - Is It All About Technique?

How many times have you heard the saying “It’s all about technique”?

I have heard this quote many times along the way, and so it got me thinking about a reply. We can all appreciate a fast, accurate set of fingers whipping up and down scales and arpeggios. We can all appreciate some good right hand technique too – for super-fast plectrum work, way-out tapping, and finger/thumb separation.

“It’s all about technique” is a very popular saying. However, there is a whole lot more to creating music, and in particular, the spontaneous creativity required for jazz and blues, than technique alone.

The most important point is that the creative jazz/blues musician has something musical to say. Hopefully what they have to say can reach out and touch the feelings of the audience.

Moreover, the development of an individual’s creative musicality will often depend on having a compelling reason for self-expression. For some it may be the love of a fellow being, for others - a deep passion for creative rhythm and harmony. For many, self expression can be a practical vehicle for healing troubles, past and present.

Much can be accomplished via the learning of known, common techniques developed by known musicians. When a technique helps any musician express a particular musical nuance, which in turn draws forth an emotional response from the player and/or the audience, then that technique is most certainly a valid and worthwhile one.

So it follows that any typical repertoire of techniques may draw forth a response from an audience. The techniques with the most overall value are the ones that create an emotional response. So, just as speed can create a response, so can slowness and space, along with a myriad of musical movements, tonalities and timbres, and such technique repertoire should only be restricted by the imagination of the performer.

Along with the imagination of the performer to create new and wonderful sound scapes, the time spent learning other techniques, and the direction of those studies should be balanced so that an overall desirable outcome is achieved.

It is entirely up to the student whether they want to learn how certain sound scapes have been made via known techniques, as this will facilitate creating their own. However, if too much focus is put on ensuring the copying of others is accurate, the reasons for it may be lost, and along with it the musical understanding of, and the musically creative use of these skills.

So it stands to reason that the most important question to pose regarding any technique or even any particular musical passage, is not necessarily how it was created but why. What, in his or her mind, was the performer expressing, feeling, or attempting to get across to the audience??

With very few exceptions indeed, the value of a technique itself is minimal when one looks to understanding its’ usefulness. Once the understanding has been achieved, the performer is then able to generalise, elaborate, develop, and personalise a given technique or passage.

If the performer does this with musical expression as the primary goal, then a clear definition between musician and technician becomes evident. Ultimately, I believe that musical expression is by far the most important element of performance, and any use of technique is merely a tool to achieve this.

So, in returning to the original statement/question; “It’s all about technique – Or is it?”
My answer is,
“actually it’s all about musical expression, and technique is any individual’s tool to help it along”.