{"id":359,"date":"2015-11-07T15:48:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-07T13:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/wp\/?p=359"},"modified":"2025-07-18T17:51:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:51:24","slug":"la-tecnica-dellimperfezione","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/la-tecnica-dellimperfezione\/","title":{"rendered":"The Technique of Imperfection"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Lorenzo Frizzera<\/a><\/p>\n

Over time, I\u2019ve developed the idea that there are three different technical levels among musicians, similar to three heroes from my childhood.<\/p>\n

The Technique of Action<\/h3>\n

\"Zorro is the strongest.\"<\/em> That\u2019s exactly what I wrote, in my clumsy handwriting, on a tile in my parents\u2019 bathroom \u2014 and to this day, thirty-five years later, that writing is still there, because with wicked foresight I covered it in a generous layer of nail polish, so it wouldn\u2019t fade over time. To me, Zorro was by far the strongest, and I lived in total admiration of him, wandering around the house with a towel around my neck, tracing imaginary Z\u2019s everywhere.<\/p>\n

If I had to describe Zorro with a single word, I would use the verb \u201cto win\u201d<\/em> \u2014 and that\u2019s what many musicians desire: to win the battle with music and with their instrument \u2014 if not with other musicians \u2014 proving their ability through precision, clarity of sound, and speed. What fascinates them is the pursuit of perfection understood as maximum efficiency, and this reflects the idea that music can be evaluated with an objective standard, in which maximum complexity performed with maximum precision produces the best music. However, while this is true for sports \u2014 where someone who runs a marathon in the shortest time is objectively better than the rest \u2014 it is not true for music.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve had many students like this: generally efficient and capable people, often entrepreneurs, for whom the study of music was necessarily tied to achieving specific goals. To these students, I\u2019ve tried to communicate \u2014 while fully respecting their background and mindset \u2014 that to enter into music, one must set the goal of having no goal at all. For some, this is the hardest exercise. But little by little, through countless studies and by experiencing firsthand the vastness of music, they begin to realize that the point is not to conquer it, but to live it. And then they finally feel a sense of peace with it \u2014 the foundation for truly playing well.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this form of musical competition comes with serious risks \u2014 both physical and psychological. Nearly all students who have suffered from tendinitis approached music this way. And many classical musicians have had nervous breakdowns in their lifelong quest for the perfect performance, having fought against a single enemy \u2014 completely unbeatable: the challenge itself.<\/p>\n

A certain segment of the audience, too \u2014 those who love technical efficiency \u2014 plays a role in this, because they also get \u201cconquered\u201d by the acrobatics of these musicians. They feel a reflected sense of power and enjoy it as if it were their own. These concerts tend to attract mostly male audiences, drawn to music conceived as The Perfect Machine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I too enjoy the power that music can express \u2014 I love energy, vitality, and enthusiasm \u2014 but when technique becomes the end rather than the means, it becomes absurdly ridiculous. Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov would never have imagined that his piece The Flight of the Bumblebee<\/em> would become a battleground at the edge of the human limit \u2014 a sort of extreme musical typewriting contest where players compete with YouTube videos, proudly shattering their opponents\u2019 metronome speeds. It seems that the current record holder is Iranian guitarist Vahid Iran Shahi, who performed the piece at 350 bpm \u2014 that\u2019s 1,400 notes per minute, or if you prefer, 23 notes per second.<\/p>\n

This is the Technique of Action<\/em> \u2014 music as sport \u2014 and it saddens me that when people say \u201cvirtuoso,\u201d<\/em> they usually mean this type of musician, because the word virtue<\/em> certainly deserves a much deeper meaning.<\/p>\n

The Technique of Knowledge<\/h3>\n

A few years after my Zorro phase, I began to admire many TV heroes, including MacGyver. Truth be told, the episodes were quite boring, and my friends and I, glued to the screen, would just wait for the moment when the protagonist got trapped in some absurd situation \u2014 just to see how he\u2019d escape. He always did it in the most improbable and brilliant way: to be clear, MacGyver was the kind of guy who could build a stick of dynamite in twenty seconds using only a pencil, two shoelaces, a can of Coke, and his trusty Swiss Army knife. He was the hero of the Technique of Knowledge<\/em>, because he never used violence or force \u2014 only intelligence.<\/p>\n

The verb that best describes him is to escape<\/em>, and many musicians seek precisely that: to know every aspect of music so thoroughly that they can face any musical context with confidence, allowing their creativity to run free \u2014 building rhythms and melodies even in fully improvised situations. This technique is less flashy than the first one (though it often presupposes it), because these musicians prioritize creative freedom over powerful display. They are the kind of artists who can build disproportionate musical structures from nothing \u2014 people with immense talent cultivated through years of study and dedication. The public usually doesn\u2019t notice their skills, even though they often have a respectable Zorro-style technique. That\u2019s because knowledge is less admired than power.<\/p>\n

These musicians are children of our time \u2014 a time in which science is the most widespread religion, the place where we deposit fears and hopes, the source we trust to solve all problems. These artists understand music as a kind of complex equation solvable only through study, research, analysis, and rationality. They know there must also be an emotional component \u2014 but it's \u201ctamed,\u201d embedded in the equation and ultimately secondary. This is the exact opposite of what happened in the 1970s \u2014 a far more glorious time for music and for art in general.<\/p>\n

The culmination of this scientistic view can be found in certain jazz musicians, who experience the act of creating melodies as the resolution of complex algorithms, striving to be fully aware of each process with a huge expenditure of mental energy \u2014 and a result that, to me, feels terribly arid. To help non-musicians understand, it\u2019s like speaking in Italian while doing a full grammar analysis of each sentence as you speak. And yet, for many jazz students, improvisation is just that \u2014 because that\u2019s how it\u2019s taught to them, and because the way our society is structured around the principle of efficiency confirms this vision.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s art as science. And these artists become trapped in their own knowledge: all those sounds, so carefully constructed and logically connected, end up hiding them \u2014 both from themselves and from their audience.<\/p>\n

The Technique of Imperfection<\/h3>\n

Not everyone remembers the name of the protagonist of Kung Fu<\/em>, the TV series starring David Carradine \u2014 and that, in itself, is quite significant. Kwai Chang was strong and wise, but he made no effort to appear that way. He wandered the West in search of his brother, living off alms and helping those he met. This journey, in truth, led him to a deeper understanding of himself \u2014 made memorable by the flashbacks to his youth in China, where he received life teachings from his old Zen master. Kwai Chang, in fact, was against showing off his strength or intelligence \u2014 unless it served to help someone else. In every episode, his main enemy, usually provoked by some villain, was actually an aspect of his own personality, which he had to understand, accept, or perhaps transform. The verb that best describes him is therefore to reveal oneself<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When a musician \u2014 even one endowed with power and knowledge<\/em> \u2014 lets go of both in order to discover themselves, laying bare in front of the audience, they make themselves vulnerable, exposing their own fragility. They are willing to accept that the audience might see them as incompetent \u2014 perhaps mistakenly thinking that what they play could easily be performed by a beginner, or judging their sound as primitive and raw. But that\u2019s because this musician wants the freedom to be imperfect. They wish to reveal to themselves and to their listeners their true nature, made of wonderful, astonishing flaws.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, it is precisely in this vulnerability that some people are deeply struck \u2014 by the artist's self-revelation and by the privilege of being included in it. It is technique that renounces itself in favor of truth. It is the Technique of Imperfection<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This kind of musician is clearly stronger than the previous ones \u2014 because to expose one\u2019s weaknesses publicly requires a greater strength. This is the only musician who does not lie \u2014 neither to themselves nor to others \u2014 and is therefore closest to Art. This is the musician I would call a virtuoso<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yet, if audiences usually recognize power more easily than knowledge, they almost never recognize the voluntary embrace of imperfection as a value. Not by chance: everyone knows Zorro, some remember MacGyver, but almost no one recalls Kwai Chang Caine. Perhaps the more refined the technique, the higher it ascends \u2014 and the less visible it becomes to the naked eye. That\u2019s when we need telescopes, binoculars, lenses \u2014 people whose music helps us fly higher.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

di Lorenzo Frizzera Nel tempo ho sviluppato l’idea che esistano tre diversi livelli tecnici tra i musicisti, simili a tre eroi della mia infanzia. La Tecnica dell’Azione ‘Zorro \u00e8 il pi\u00f9 forte’, scrissi proprio cos\u00ec, con la mia calligrafia stentata su una piastrella del bagno dei miei genitori e\u00a0tuttora, dopo trentacinque anni, la scritta \u00e8 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pensieri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1385,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/1385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lorenzofrizzera.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}