19 things new ventures can learn from big band jazz

Thing 1 - If you can only hear yourself, you’re playing too loud.

The JP Big Band - a large jazz ensemble that started in 2003 with an impossible dream.

This week, Amir Feizpour wrote an intriguing Substack post titled Should Startup Founders Learn Acting? Amir argued that acting can help founders pitch, communicate, and even take a break from the grind.

It got me thinking: If acting has lessons for founders, what about big band jazz? I spent 20 years in the sax section and as contractor of the JP Big Band, a group I co-founded in Modiin with my buddy Bob Trachtenberg and led by Eli Benacot. The band has the world’s largest book of Israeli big band charts and played everything from standards to swing to Pat Metheny.

A big band is a masterclass in building something extraordinary together—and that’s where startups and jazz meet.

Here are 19 things new ventures can learn from big band jazz.

Let’s hit the first note: Listening.

1. Listening. If there is one thing you should remember in any team/large ensemble, it should be this rule:
   
   “If you can only hear yourself, you’re playing too loud”.
   
   Listening is a foundational component of teamwork, music and any creative activity.
   
   While the tech industry labels everything as 'engineering,' much of it remains an art. You can say software engineer, but the person is still a programmer. You can say “prompt engineering” but it’s still black magic.
   
   A good professional programmer (like a professional musician) has 3 essential qualities: Good designer, good communicator, good coder. Good designer of software (or music), good communicator (with the team or the ensemble), good coder (master of your craft or instrument).
   
   Listening to your team and your customers is necessary for software success.
   

2. Technique. I will specifically use examples from woodwinds (for some bizarre reason a sax is a woodwind). Technique is a polyglot of things. It means fingering, breathing, breathing and fingering, music reading, it involves memory of how to finger a particular phrase, extremely rapid retrieval of patterns from the associational cortex (at 400 BPM - this means retrieving entire phrases of 8-16 notes in 150ms).
   
   Good technique is often measured in speed. Inside the ensemble, an individual player’s technique is often challenged by the tempo that the ensemble is playing (or attempting to play).
   
   In a team - good technique means being able to do your job at the same tempo as the rest of the team and at the tempo dictated by the leader. In a big band - if the individual musicians’ technique is not up to the piece, then the group needs to try something easier. In a team - trying something easier is an alternative pathway until the “engineers” can achieve the professional proficiency and speed required to deliver a high quality product to market, support customers at Coltrane’s Giant Steps tempo, and sell the product at a cadence that leaves positive cash flow for the company.
   

3. Tone. A great tone in a woodwind player means that the notes sound great to a listener. Pay attention to this definition:
   
   “Great tone sounds great to the listener”
   
   The analog in software is the visual aesthetic. The topic of software design aesthetics has been discussed extensively by many people. One of the best is Edward R. Tufte. I recommend his book “Visual explanations - images and quantities, evidence and narrative”
   

4. Time. A musician who has good “time” stays on the beat with himself and the rest of the ensemble, even when the music has complex rhythms. The ability to recognize rhythm and keep time is established in the developmental brain up to the age of 14 months. This is apparently unrelated to ethnic origin and language. If you want your child to be able to play Brazilian rhythms, they need to hear that kind of rhythm as a baby.
   
   The analog in a tech team is staying in the same cadence as your team mates. It’s pretty simple. If a team mate needs a piece of your backend software tomorrow, then you need to deliver it to her exactly when she needs it.
   

5. Melody. Music has melody, harmony and rhythm just like a product and product service. The individual team member and the team as a whole need to be playing the same melody at the same time. This may seem like a trivial observation, but I’ll illustrate with a quote from Eli Benacot - the JP Big Band musical director to Ilan, the band’s guitarist a few years ago at a rehearsal:
   
   “Ilan, You’re playing with the ensemble, but not this ensemble”
   
   In jazz it’s easy to get caught up.
   
   In software, it’s easy to go off on a tangent.
   

6. Harmony. Harmony is an entire topic unto itself and relates to how the brain interprets intervals of notes. The rules of harmony were set by Bach 400 years ago and continue today in jazz, pop and classical music. Atonal music (like Alban Berg and some free jazz), breaks the rules which is why it’s difficult to hear for many people. Big bands play from written charts with open space for improvisation. The charts have a harmonic rhythm of chord progressions. The progressions themselves have rules. Rules however are meant to be broken.
   
   According to a study from Yale, music needs to surprise the listener 50% of the time more or less.
   
   Less is boring. More is too surprising for the listener.
   
   A software product is a reflection of the software team.
   
   A software team is the leader’s product.
   
   Harmonious teams and leaders make harmonious products.
   
   Surprising the user with a cool feature every so often can be very satisfying.
   
   But, less surprises, means the team may not be meeting the users’ expectations.
   

7. Awareness. Awareness has many levels and is a topic for neuroscience. In jazz ensembles, awareness of time, melody, harmony and dynamics lives at the individual musician and ensemble level.
   
   When the musicians and ensemble are individually and collectively aware - you can achieve greatness.
   
   Software is no different.
   

8. Lead. A big band is based on 3 players: lead trumpet, bass and drums. The lead trumpet is the navigator, the bass player is the driver and the drummer is the engine of the bus.
   
   A professional big band does not have a conductor. Charlie Mingus led the Mingus big band from the bass position as did Boris Kozlov years later.
   
   Software teams don’t have this exact structure.
   
   Maybe they should.
   

9. Breathing. Correct diaphragmatic breathing is the basis for a wind player. Breathing has an intimate connection with your finger technique. Good breathing supports good finger technique.
   
   In a software team, breathing is essential for individual ‘engineers’ to function properly and with intent.
   
   Big bands and software teams operate best when collectively, the team members are breathing properly and in a stress-free manner. Charlotte Grysolle writes about breathing and teams on her substack.
   

10. Rhythm. Rhythm is movement. Movement makes music interesting. Too complex and your audience won’t understand. Maybe some audience somewhere - just not the people who came to hear you tonight.
    
    In software teams, rhythm is the development, feature enhancement and support cadence. Too complex and you don’t deliver. Too slow and you lose to the competitors. Too fast and you get bugs and lose to the competition.
    

11. Practice. Practice at home. Learn the charts and changes. Come prepared for the rehearsal. Come prepared to make music, not figure out the fingering.
    
    The topic of practice for technology teams is highly neglected. I can best illustrate this with a quote from my boss and mentor at Rad-Bynet - Yehuda Zisapel of blessed memory.
    
    “If you’re a salesperson - practice your sales technique for an hour/day. If Michael Jordan could practice layups 2 hours / day for his entire career, so can you if you want to exceed your quota”.
    

12. Communications. Inside the big band, communications between the musicians are visual and aural. You watch the conductor, listen to the rest of the sax section, to yourself and the rest of the ensemble.
    
    If you lose your place in the chart (which happens), you stop, listen and get back. You don’t get off the bus.
    
    Alto 2 sits next to Alto 1 (lead alto). Since the 2 of you are listening to each other, if one of you gets lost and misses a repeat in the B section, then your section mate will point to the right place in the chart and you’ll find your way back. This is part of the individual and collective awareness we talked about earlier.
    
    Software teams are no different. Or should be no different.
    

13. Expressivity. The chart has dynamics but you also need to express yourself correctly within the piece while not playing too loud or going off on a tangent. Ultimately - the group will achieve a collective expressivity. Which makes for great listening and communicative music which connects with the listeners.
    
    Software teams are no different. Or should be no different.
    

14. Colors. Jazz charts have an infinite range of colors, from bright to dark, to happy to sad. The individual horn player (having practiced at home) understands the color and will blend in (since she is not playing too loud to hear her friends in the section.
    
    Software has color also. This part of the design aesthetic is investigated at length by Tufte in his books.
    

15. Confidence. Confidence is the product of everything - your technique, breathing, listening, time, understanding of the colors and your communications with your section and the rest of the band including the director. But - your confidence must be part of your ensemble playing not at the cost of the ensemble.
    
    Software teams are no different. Or should be no different.
    

16. Pitch and intonation. There is probably nothing worse than a horn player being out of tune with the rest of the section. Woodwind pitch is very sensitive to temperature, reed, embouchure and breath support of the air column. Since the instrument’s pitch will change as you play, you need to listen carefully to yourself and the section and stay in pitch. You do this with breath and embouchure.
    
    In software teams, similarly, we all have good days and less good days. This is usually random and out of our conscious control. The best thing to do is to listen to the rest of the team just like a big band and not to feel under pressure.
    
    “Don’t feel bad about feeling bad”
    

17. Phrasing and articulation. Frank Sinatra was a master of phrasing. His singing with a big band sounds just perfect. Sinatra of course was a solo vocalist and he dictated how he wanted the band to sound during rehearsals. For the big band itself and the individual players, phrasing and articulation need to be part of the complete product. Alto 1 can be playing the line perfectly (for herself) but with articulation that does not sit well with the rest of the section. Gordon Goodwin is an LA-based musician who writes for big bands. His writing is very specific and precise regarding articulation by the musicians. Follow Gordon’s chart and you won’t go wrong.
    
    When some of the band gets phrasing wrong, the performance will sound like sh*t.
    
    In software teams, this is somewhat related to the notion of interfaces between modules; sending messages in the correct order and format to the other software services in the system.
    
    If you get it wrong, the system crashes.
    

18. Improvisation. Jazz improvisation can be learned. I’m not sure it can be taught.
    
    Improvisation is in a way, the culmination of everything: your ear, technique, tone, phrasing, rhythm and time, melody and harmony, awareness and listening. Improvisation is highly based on your musical memory; pieces you transcribed, great artists you listened to, your own ideas and lines from the masters you made your own.
    
    In software teams, improvisation is often required in a time of crisis. When the system crashes or when you need to make a special deadline for a quote or delivery, the team improvises to get the job done.
    
    As in jazz, successful improvisation in software is something you learn over time.
    

19. Live. So you studied clarinet in 6th grade and then sax in high school. You practiced and became better and now you play in a big band. You learned the charts at home, listened to other performances and mastered the phrasing. The ensemble rehearsed and is ready for a live performance.
    
    Just like in software. Well - almost like in software.
    
    Go out there and enjoy yourself.
    
    The JP Big Band live