Musical Silences

I saw a live jazz band last night, and which were quite good. Parts of the improvisation, especially on the double-bass, made me realise that the gaps, or longish spaces, in between a stream of notes, or scales, are very important too, because it connects different phrases or streams, in surprising, unpredictable, and unusual ways, and the spaces also leave thought for the imagination.

This also seems to occur, when there is a key change of some sort, and maybe this is similar to the spaces inbetween words in speech, when the conversation subtly shifts or changes.

I've been listening to the saxophonist Paul Desmond lately, and he doesn't use the spaces method of streaming, but it's a technique that John Coltrane uses quite a bit.

Music helps me to understand communication and speech, and vice versa.