What Music Taught Me About Comedy
Timing is everything. In music, you learn this literally. You're playing with other people and you have to be perfectly in sync; being slightly behind or in front of the beat can make the whole thing fall apart. You probably knew this from watching Whiplash though. Comedy works the same way. A joke that lands is often just a joke with better timing than the one that doesn't. I spent years counting beats, and it turns out I was just training for the stage. One of the things about playing by yourself, or with yourself, is you also get to make your own rhythm.
You have to rehearse to be spontaneous. The best moments on stage—in both music and comedy—feel effortless. They aren't. They are the result of doing the same thing over and over until it becomes second nature. Even the notion of improv and spontaneity requires practice and training. It takes years of going up and saying I’m not going to tell one joke for a minute, or two minutes, or ten, and forcing yourself to rely on your instincts. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but overall it builds the skill.
Bombing is just a bad show. Every musician has played a set that died. The crowd wasn't there, the energy was off, and nothing connected. You pack up your gear, go home, and come back next week. Comedy is no different. A bad set isn't a referendum on your worth as a human being—it's just Tuesday, it can be a poorly timed check drop, a heckler who really gets to you that night. The skill is learning to work with the obstruction, moving through it or around it, but even still sometimes you have to try new raw material. And sometimes the stuff that won’t make it to your act just bombs, and it has to, several times so you know to abandon it.
The crowd tells you everything. In a band, you learn to feel a room—when they're with you, when you're losing them, or when you need to speed up, slow down, or just shut up and play the song they actually want to hear. That instinct is the most valuable thing I brought from music into comedy. You can't fake a room; you have to listen to it. It’s all energy, we feed off energy, we also provide the energy, so it’s about making the stage your own, cultivating your craft through your energy, and knowing how to dial it in.
These days, I'm a working stand-up comedian. I still love music, and I think about those years in bands more than I probably should. But every time I walk up to a mic, I'm carrying all of it with me: the late nights, the bad gigs, and those rare moments where something clicked and the room was suddenly, completely yours.
Turns out, I was always performing. I just had to find the right instrument. Plus, I still carry my guitar to all my gigs, so I get to play a little anyway.”