On Playing Badly

I’ve said before that I think musical competence is a really important aspect of our work as music therapists. Clients often need to feel that we can support them, that we have the musical resources to do what’s needed. This might be to do with playing in the right key for the client’s voice, being able to lay down a solid groove on a drum, or just demonstrating general musical competence to reassure them that we know what we’re doing. It’s also an important part of our identity as music therapists, that we are also musicians. This can sometimes be a source of anxiety as we also all have our musical weaknesses, uncomfortable areas we’d rather not have exposed. For me it’s singing. This is awkward as there’s really no getting away from the need to use your singing voice at times, especially working with children. And don’t give me that stuff about how ‘everyone can sing’ and ‘it’s just about confidence’ and all that. In fact working with young children in music therapy has helped my confidence in singing, but I wouldn’t buy the album of me performing the ‘Great American Songbook’. I can use my voice in sessions to some effect, when needed, and sometimes I even sing in tune. However, it’s not my thing. Saxophone is my thing, and to a lesser extent piano, but I don’t spend all my time in music therapy sessions playing these two instruments. Sometimes I use guitar, sometimes bass, sometimes drums, hand percussion, and so on. Also, clients will ask me to do other things I can’t do very well, like beatbox, or play a particular song that I don’t know, by an artist I’ve only vaguely heard of (the generation gap isn’t getting any smaller). Then what?

Sarah Brand was quoted in Musician magazine recently as saying that “I wouldn’t say you have to be a great musician [to be a music therapist] but you have to be good”. This is an interesting statement because it begs several questions, among which, ‘What is a good, or great, musician?’ After all, you don’t have to be a ‘great musician’ to be a musician, so what’s contained in this assertion, because I think it means something interesting? Perhaps she was talking about technical capability, or versatility. Perhaps what she meant was that you don’t have to be able to play to a ‘professional standard’, which might mean that while you can play well enough, the phone’s not ringing with highly paid gigs and sessions. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of musicians who have made a lot of money without being necessarily ‘great’, while there are also music therapists who undoubtedly are excellent musicians.

Being a musician, a good or great one, is such a multi-faceted thing. It’s not just about technical ability, as we all know. It’s also about tone, sensitivity, feel, timing, a sense of drama, so many things. Stan Getz reputedly said that ‘there are 4 qualities essential to a great jazz man [or woman]: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence’. Not a bad list, and nothing there about anything specifically technical. Those 4 things are also really good qualities for a music therapist to have, and perhaps to encourage in their clients.

And you don’t need to be able to ‘play well’ to be courageous, or irreverent, or to play with taste even. So Stan’s onto something interesting here that’s relevant to music therapists. When I play with other musicians, the things that can really annoy me, really grate, are not to do with musical ability, in a narrow sense. It’s when people don’t listen to what’s going on around them. It’s the piano player who fills all the gaps in the melody, the drummer who plays too loud and too much, the saxophone player who goes on for too long. It’s human, rather than musical, qualities which I really value, people who can play for the band, rather than just for themselves, players who you feel are really inside the here-and-now, rather than imagining themselves sounding like their favourite recordings, but not paying attention to the immediate musical events. ‘Hell is full of musical amateurs’ perhaps (said George Bernard Shaw), but it’s also full of lazy, bored professionals, just getting through the gig. If you can make a connection with another person by playing something simple which they get, which they can connect with right now, then you’re doing your job as a music therapist, and as a musician.

In music therapy, playing ‘well’ isn’t the only thing, it’s just one choice. In might even be an artistic choice. Martin Scorsese admires the Beatles film ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ partly for its amateurishness, which for him is refreshing in contrast to the slick professionalism of most Hollywood movies. When a client strums the open strings on a guitar, an appropriate and encouraging response might be for me to support on piano, creating a containing structure for their explorations, but it might be better on some occasions for me to play bass or drum kit at the basic level I have on these instruments. This forces me to play simply, and it puts me in touch with something about the client’s experience. We can ‘play badly’ together, which can sometimes be more liberating than playing ‘well’.