playing

I have just played a wonderful set of music with the Spoilers of Utopia Brass Band. The group has been put together by John Bell to play the music of jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler and some other brass band gems. I love this music. I hardly played a beat, as such, all night. I was able to range freely through the sound world of the drum kit in support of the music.

It was an excellently timed gig in relation to some persistent thought grooves I been jamming around - what is the relationship between music (or any discipline) and play? 

I keep coming back to this possible answer - master some simple fundamentals to get started, master them so you can forget them. The more "second nature" the techniques become, the more freely you can play. Up-skill as you go to make the game more sophisticated but never lose sight of playing. 

My not quite 2 year old daughter already knows how to play... it seems the essential ingredients of real play, when you are actually, really, forgetting yourself in the fun of a game, have to do with strong contrasts:

Now you see me, now you don't! 

Keep the ball and run with it or pass it to someone else. 

I have to get to there and you have to try and stop me.

It strikes me that in music we are presented with a series of contrasts that comprise the material of play, and the contrasts can be two extremes of a continuum - quiet to loud (silence/sound), slow to fast (tempo/frequency), sparse to dense (rhythm/harmony), low to high (pitch), rough to smooth (texture), relaxing to agitating (intentionality). 

The implications are profound. There are life affirming skills and attitudes to be gleaned from this process, the process being acquiring/exploring techniques and subsuming them in the service of play.