One of the greatest piece of music of all time is the fruit of a blatant mistake: Keith Jarrett's Köln concert.
Instead of the required Bösendorfer 290 Imperial, the organization team brought a smaller and badly tuned piano on stage. Jarrett - who was a bit of a diva at times - initially refused to play, but gave in, and the recording is the thing of legends.
Keith Jarrett’s harmonic improvisational ability is insane. You could get lost analyzing small parts of his concerts for a long time.
Improv of any kind, in general, is fantastic for learning how to fail publicly. I do a bit of improv comedy and its fantastic for getting you out to make a fool of yourself publicly. Some of the best work in improv comes from people failing and flailing and channeling that into something fantastic.
Re:Failure Is the Mother of Invention
by black_knight on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @05:51PM
(#31829504)
«Once is a mistake. Twice is Jazz.»
John Cage once said: If you make a mistake, repeat it.
A trumpeter getting stuck once in a melody is clearly a mistake, them doing the same thing again, and then spinning the thing into a different direction is not only perceived as interesting, it is probably one of the moments where their true genius will become visible the most.
Key to this is to not be too attached to the plan, but to the goal. The plan is that melody you had in mind, or on the sheet. The goal is to play interesting music. If the plan is in the way of playing interesting music, ditch it. If the an is no longer feasible because you fucked up, the plan needs to be adjusted.
This sounds logical for music, but in all other domains (except maybe art and design) people have a very hard time ditching or adjusting the plans immidiately at the point of failure. Kill your darlings and you will get new ones.