Playing through the pain: Whiplash’s offbeat version of jazz

Musicians are well aware of the complexities of language. Music is a beautiful tool of communication and jazz is one of its many languages. As a listener to jazz, we get to eavesdrop on a conversation and a journey, a story as it happens in real-time. A musician spends a lot of their formative years, as we all did as children, developing a vocabulary to allow them to communicate and express themselves as an individual. To do this effectively, much of the time we only need to say something simple but it is also important that we have a wide vocabulary to occasionally draw on. This provides us with a means to express ourselves in an emotional capacity to those around us on a much deeper level.

Just as a child will learn words and how to structure a sentence, a musician learns the words and structure of the dialect in which they are trying to express themselves. Jazz, as it is based on improvisation, is extremely close in how we already conceptualise language and communication. With all languages, there are dialects, features of phonology, grammar and vocabulary. A jazz musician will spend countless hours honing their art in an effort to easily communicate to those around them, listening and contributing to the conversation as it develops live on the band stand. So how do we learn to talk? By being in the company of those how can already speak.

This is where Whiplash maybe got it wrong. Miles Teller plays Andrew Neiman, a 19-year-old jazz drummer attending the Shaffer Conservatory, a fictional New York music school, is not really in a band or combo, and doesn't jam or hang out with his fellow students. In the practice room, he works on playing fast, alone. The practice room can be a lonely place: we develop our vocabulary, the reading and writing of it, work on our pronunciation, but can we hold a conversation? Ultimately, we need to hang out and talk to people.

On my first day in New York studying drums, my ensemble leader wrote four things on the board: time, feel, dynamics and development. In drumming terms, time is a resource: it is the pace at which we surrender to the music. “Feel” is how it grooves – the sensation of the beat. Dynamics are the forces that produce motion, influencing how loudly or quietly we play/speak. If we are in conversation and I scream the whole way through it, you will probably think, this guy is insane and not listening. Development is listening and responding to those around you.

In New York, I found that people push you as hard as you are willing to accept to get the very best from you. To have that kind of open honesty and integrity to the music allows for the chance of beautiful conversations that others can listen in on. A good bandleader will only get good results if they show an equal amount of love and enthusiasm as discipline and toughness. Being the jerk is self-defeating in any environment and nobody responds positively to it.

Musicians make music because they love music. This does not seem apparent in Whiplash. Yes, I have struggled on many occasions with a tough bandleader, teacher and, more than anything, my own self-worth. Perhaps Terence Fletcher (JK Simmons's character) represents that voice that is inside every serious musician, unrelenting and in constant search for a greater confidence of vocabulary and belief to express their own voice. This, of course, is addressed by the many hours of practice hinted at in the movie. However, the practice and journey we experience as musicians is a joy. Trust me: we would not do it otherwise.

The blood-soaked hands of Neiman really don’t lend themselves to the technically proficient drummer who might well play an eight-hour studio session and will no marks on their hands at the end of their day’s work. Every practice scene sees Neiman trying to play fast: this seems to be the only goal. To play fast, inside you must feel everything slowly. This can only come with relaxation and breathing comfortably: not holding your breath, tightening your grip and playing through the pain. You’ll begin to slur your words and nobody will understand what you are trying to say.

Just as an English professor will eloquently describe the subject matter at hand without falter, the practiced and gigged improviser will burn through the changes but still have the headroom to think ahead while listening presently and, of course, breathing.

But this of course is Hollywood. And, as the racecar driver while watching Rush criticises it’s focus on acceleration, I am going to pick potholes in a movie where a kid is tested in his ability to play at tempo: oh, and you give me a four beat count in, not just two, Fletcher.

I went to the movies, not a gig, and I thought to myself, if this movie makes a kid want to play jazz, then it’s a positive thing. The question is, though, does it? Personally, the kid I was would have taken up drums straight after watching Whiplash, knowing that (spoiler alert) if I arm myself with some practice I’ll be free to rebel against the band leader and any form of authority. What kid wouldn’t be excited by that? But a leader should inspire those around him, not provoke rebellion. My feeling is that the kids rebelling this week are still going to need inspiration from you bandleaders further down the line. I know I did.