My relationship with the trumpet is very conflicting.
I think it is a terrible instrument. I cannot even say I like it.
Even as a listener I am not a fan of trumpeters.
I am a fan of certain trumpeters. like Armstrong, Bix.
Miles, Chet Baker.
However, I can't stand the typical trumpeter, with all the high notes.
And I can't stand the instrument itself.
I must have thought 2.000 times about changing instrument,
playing sax, for example, something less harsh.
It is an instrument that requires...
at least 1 or 2 hours a day of habitual practising.
I don’t like studying, in general, I was not a good student.
I didn't want to study, I didn't want to study music theory.
I loved music, I've listed to it ever since I was a child,
but I didn't want to study solfège, or things like that,
and today I still have a horror of that.
Just hearing that word makes me feel horrified.
Learning by yourself is much faster than studying,
ever since I was in my mother's womb I have listened to music,
she played the piano very well.
And I've listened to many albums. I did not study music theory.
but I had all these rules inside of me.
While listening to my first jazz records.
I immediately realised how it worked.
Many people, many jazz lovers, most of them...
listen to jazz but do not know how it works.
Maybe they like it for other reasons,
they are impressed from an emotional point of view,
but they do not know how a solo evolves.
I understood, from the very first moment,
that there was a harmonic basis on which a theme was developed,
then the theme ended,
and the harmonic basis was repeated cyclically, a cycle of chords,
and on this cycle improvisation arose.
It was not a random, piss-poor improvisation.
as they say, it was not.
I immediately understood that.
Learning to play was just... I had the notes in my head.
the sound of the notes that I wanted to make.
I just had to find them. Rules are important for everything,
even to cross the road without risking being run over,
or to have a healthy diet to prevent diseases.
It is the same with music,
but rules are also made to be broken,
especially in music, but also in literature, in painting.
When you break the rules,
even if you know them or you assimilated them somehow,
even if you did not study them,
you break them and make the whole thing change direction,
creating something unexpected, different and original.
Improvisation, actually...
it is a mix of fragments of memory.
The most classic example is when 2 people talk,
they are improvising, they are not reading from a script.
They choose a topic,
let's talk about the election of the President of the Republic,
let's talk about this topic,
you say your opinion, the other responds,
then you answer, you pose a question...
We are using grammar, syntax, subjects, direct objects, verbs,
there is subjunctive and conditional. There is a logic.
Improvisation is exactly the same.
Just like when you talk, you use phrases.
phrases that you have already used a thousand times.
Now I am talking, but I am not inventing a language.
I am saying sentences I have already said millions of times.
I am just building them in a different way.
to say what I want to say.
That is exactly what happens when you improvise.
Usually, when you play, you do not think about anything,
you think about the music, but not even about the music,
you try to identify with the sound, with what you are doing.
It is like playing a part,
a good actor entering a role,
in that moment they are not thinking they are playing a part,
or how to act,
when they enter the role they become Richard III,
or any other character.
You have to enter the sound, you do not have to think,
when you start to think it is a disaster.
You have to enter the music, full stop.
Imagine a white wall,
and we have to paint a big fresco, all together.
Each one of us has to add what is lacking,
and remove what is in excess.
Together we have to find a way to paint this fresco.
It is the same with music.
I often say that, when it happens,
it is the perfect example of an absolute and ideal democracy,
which will never exist in reality.
It is a microcosm,
where everybody gives what is needed,
and everybody receives what they need,
nobody imposes their will, without abandoning your ego.
There is a perfect balance
that is connected to our inner balance.