Collaborating to make the music better

I had a gig on Saturday with my band Jazz Division in a gorgeous setting in Norfolk supporting The Brain Tumour Charity and Mind. Something came out of this that I thought was relevant to how we collaborate in the tech community and in our teams.

So I'm a trombonist. I was the only trombonist in the band for years and playing jazz/blues is my natural habitat. I have a unique sound when I play as I like to sound like a singer. Singers don't move rigidly from one note to the next, they glide between notes. Thats how I wanted to sound. I also love the emotion from guitar solos so I wanted to recreate that feeling too. A friend once said they could line up 10 trombonists along side me playing the same piece and they could tell which one was me...which I hope was meant as a compliment, I certainly took it that way 😁

Playing as the sole trombonist I kind of had the freedom to interpret the music any way I liked. Recently though, we decided to recruit a few more musicians including another trombonist that I'd played with before but not in a this style of band. Suddenly, there was someone sitting next to me who interpreted the music differently to me, so in rehearsals sometimes there was a clash of styles. So, I listened to the way she played and chatted about our differing styles. So we came up with a way on certain pieces where we were playing in unison or harmony, to make sure we play the same style and where we're off doing individual solos that we show off our own styles.

The result was I didn't believe how good we sounded together. In fact I realised there were times previously that the way I was playing some of these pieces on my own was maybe a bit OTT and collaborating with another musician, understanding each others approaches actually produced a better sound than I ever done on my own. When we had solos, we could celebrate our differences and just let lose our own styles of playing.

So when you're working in teams with different ideas, there are times we need to collaborate, creating better ideas than we individually brought to the discussions. There are also times we can support each other to celebrate our differences and let individuals run freely with their ideas. Get that balance right, you're making sweet music together! 🙏