The following fantastic list of advice comes courtesy of legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, a musical genius who died exactly 30 years ago, on February 17th of 1982. The list was transcribed by saxophonist Steve Lacy in 1960.
Amongst my favorites on the list:
- Stop playing all those weird notes, play the melody!
- Don’t play everything (or all the time); let some things go by. Some music just imagined. What you don’t play can be more important than what you do.
- A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.