Jazz Piano: Duo vs. Trio

   The jazz trio typically includes a bass player laying down low-end walking lines or ongoing riffs or some repeated pattern, and a drummer laying down some sort of rhythmic groove or pattern spelling out the main beats and filling the holes.  There is a full, round and on-going sound density that is created and  expected in a trio setting that becomes the defacto standard for all group playing.  In contrast, a piano duo, usually consists of piano with either guitar, sax, bass, voice, flute or trumpet.  When musicians attempt to recreate the defacto standard no matter what the instrumentation, there is tension in the air.  Everyone is trying to recapture the feeling and sound quality that they remember from all the thousands of trios that they've played with.   But, good luck. The duo is simply not physically capable of producing the big room filling sound density like the trio, not for lack of trying, so it is helpful and certainly easier to just let go of the underlying feeling that one should try to compensate for what's "missing".  The pianist feels the uncomfortable need to walk bass lines or pound out a chordal riff and try to sound like the missing bass and drums , or the bassist feels the need to slap offbeats and play lots of extra notes or to walk 4 with an extra intensity to rival the feeling of missing drums,  or the sax player feels the need to play many more notes-per-second  then jangle a tambourine during the piano solo, or the singer feels the need to add a snapping finger, close to the mic. 

    An easier and, in my opinion, much more musically effective approach in a duo setting, is to just let go and let the time be "in the air".  Let the time tick away, steadily, but separate from having to actually PLAY the time.   Play against the time, playing the holes, playing contrapuntally to the time that both musicians naturally hear in their heads.  It is very freeing to play this way - in a duo, every part is precious ( since there aren't very many parts!), so it seems a shame to waste a hand pounding out the time, when, in fact, time never goes away, whether or not it's being played.  It frees up the musicians to interact musically and makes for many more opportunities to be inventive and playful.  It takes some trust in the other musician to do this, and it also takes musicians that have the time skills to play this way, musicians that know the music inside and out, memorized, and have the stylistic common ground and a rich stylistic experience to have an idea of what is in the other person's head.

   There are a thousand options for what to play in the duo that go beyond the simple walking bass line, or the strumming Freddie Green chords or the stock piano riffs for musicians willing to go out on a limb and embrace rather than fight  the inventive.