Herbie Hancock Explains the Big Lesson He Learned From Miles Davis: Every Mistake in Music, as in Life, Is an Opportunity

"One thing they don't teach you in par­ent­ing school is how to guide a young child into mak­ing few­er mis­takes in her home­work, while also com­mu­ni­cat­ing to her that mis­takes are not "bad" but often "good" in that they can be con­duits for cre­ative think­ing and intu­itive path­ways to progress. This les­son presents even more prob­lems if your child has per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies. (If you have sound ped­a­gog­i­cal meth­ods, I'm all ears.)"

"The prob­lem isn't just that adults con­stant­ly tele­graph bina­ry "yes/no," "good/bad" mes­sages to every­one and every­thing around them, but that most adults are deeply uncom­fort­able with ambi­gu­i­ty, and thus deeply afraid of mis­takes, as a result of imbib­ing so many bina­ry mes­sages them­selves. Impro­vi­sa­tion fright­ens trained and untrained musi­cians alike, for exam­ple, for this very rea­son. Who wants to screw up pub­licly and look like... well, a screw up?"

"We think that doing some­thing well, and even "per­fect­ly," will win us the pat on the head/gold star/good report card we have been taught to crave all our lives. Sure­ly there are excel­lent rea­sons to strive for excel­lence. But accord­ing to one who should know-the most excel­lent Miles Davis-excellence by nature obvi­ates the idea of mis­takes. How's that, you ask? Let us attend to one of Davis' for­mer side­men, Her­bie Han­cock, who tells one of his favorite sto­ries about the man above."

Parents often struggle to guide young children to make fewer homework mistakes while teaching that mistakes can be productive conduits for creativity and intuition. Perfectionist tendencies complicate that lesson. Many adults unconsciously transmit binary yes/no or good/bad messages and are uncomfortable with ambiguity, which fuels fear of mistakes. Improvisation triggers anxiety for both trained and untrained musicians because of public risk of error. Social rewards such as praise, gold stars, or good report cards reinforce the belief that perfect performance is necessary. Miles Davis and anecdotes from colleagues illustrate tension between exacting standards and the creative value of loose improvisation.

Read at Open Culture