Two Ways to Cook an Omelette

Okay, if I were you I would probably be asking myself why the hell there’s a video on the Hitz Academy blog of two different ways to cook an omelette!

The truth is I’m not particularly interested in omelette technique and while I enjoy cooking, my YouTube history is not exactly riddled with a bunch of cooking videos.

So why share this video with you?

Because it’s a wonderful example of the beauty of simplicity and of how much an outcome can change with just a slight tweak to our technique.

I see a lot of parallels between these things and the creative process.

First, let’s talk about beauty in simplicity.

Our tendency as musicians is to add things to the music in order to make it more exciting.

When in doubt, a young improviser will almost always add more notes to their solo. Composers will often make the orchestration thicker. Singers of the national anthem almost always add embellishments and melismas (as well as popping octaves!)

But sometimes less is more.

When that same young improviser learns to add space and utilize longer notes, the magic starts to happen. My favorite composers know that one way to create excitement and tension is by utilizing unusual instrument combinations and not just writing higher/louder/faster. And the best singers of the national anthem, for my taste, are the ones who embellish like Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude (when he waits until halfway through the song to add a sing embellishment and just lets that incredible melody do the work!) rather than using it to show off their technique.

This video is also a perfect example of how small changes in a process can produce big differences in results. It features one of the best chefs in history making two different traditional omelettes using only three ingredients.

These two omelettes are quite different in appearance, consistency and taste. And they use virtually the same ingredients! As you can see in this short video, there are just a handful of minor differences between the two techniques and each produces a very different result.

This inspired me to think about how this could be applied to my playing.

One minor tweak that can make a huge difference is note endings. In my experience, both performers and teachers tend to focus much more on the beginnings of notes than the ends of notes.

And yet the best players in the world have a lot of ways to end notes at their disposal.

The exact same phrase can sound quite different when changing one, some or all of the note endings. Listen to multiple recordings of any solo piece and listen for how the soloist ends their notes. If you listen close enough, you will hear differences and you will have a preference.

Note endings are just one of countless ways to change some small aspect of your playing that can produce a big difference on the musical storytelling front. You just have to spend the time to experiment enough to find them.

Hopefully you’ll find this short, random omelette video as inspiring as I did!