Another way of stating that one ..
"A wrong note at the right time is still half right; a right at the wrong time is ALL wrong."
In another thread re/ a jazz guitarist's complaints re/ a bassist's P-bass tone during soli, one of the responding posters replied that (and I'm paraphrasing, but not a lot) in jazz, playing the "right notes" was more important than anything else. I couldn't disagree more. Not to belittle the importance of hearing and understanding chord structures (it IS, obviously, an essential part of jazz playing), but too many (all?) beginning and even intermediate improvisers are WAY too hung up on notes, and almost completely disregard time, tone quality, and feel... which are, to my ear and experience, more important, especially time and feel.
As a demonstration for my students, when I think they're focusing too much on notes, I play two choruses on whatever tune they're working on. On the first chorus, I'll stick to the changes carefully but play with terrible time and clunky technique. The second chorus, I play with good time, feel,.simply and cleanly, but playing as absolutely bizarrely harmonically as possible, completely devoid of any relationship to the tune or the key. When asked which chorus they prefer, 99% choose the one that's in the rhythmic pocket. Now, of course, neither chorus is going to get anyone any work, but the primary commandment is, "Thou Shalt SWING," with "Thou shalt adhere to proper note choices... unless a few unproper note choices once in a while sound better..." being much further down the list.
I guess the cliched axiom for this concept is, "It's not what you play that's important, it's HOW you play it. "
