Abstract

Digital platforms provide many avenues for musicians to organize, share information, and collaborate on projects remotely, though some crucial aspects, like jazz improvisation, are harder to substitute online. Amid various other methods to facilitate digital performances, some musicians are experimenting with improvisation on short video platforms, such as TikTok. This article presents a case study of JazzTok, a digital collective of musicians who create and share jazz arrangements, recorded and edited by members of the community remotely on TikTok. Building on previous research, this article examines how this community of musicians formed in 2020 through repeated interactions improvising musical performances together using the TikTok Duet feature. Duet allows users to create new videos side by side with existing videos posted by other users, and they can be chained together to simulate the experience of musical jamming. This article relies on seventeen qualitative interviews with members of the JazzTok community to illustrate how the Duet feature offers a similar experience to the unpredictable and spontaneous nature of jazz improvisation. This article also explores how algorithmic recommendations influence the formation of digital musical communities of practice and how short video platforms are shifting modes of performance for jazz musicians. This contributes to studies of jazz and culture by suggesting future directions for researching the platformization of musical performances and jazz improvisation.

You open the TikTok app and are greeted by a drummer who pauses briefly to smile to the camera before energetically pounding out an up-tempo swing pattern. The thirty-second video ends with a blistering fill before looping back to the beginning. At the bottom of the video, the caption reads three simple words: “please duet this!” You swipe up to view the next video. After scrolling for a few minutes, the same drummer appears on your “For You” page again, only this time slightly smaller. Next to her, a bassist stands at the ready in a separate frame. She grins to her left, as though she and the drummer are in the same room, before launching into a familiar set of changes walking up and down the fretboard. Scrolling further, you come across the same video this time with a new member, a keyboard player who quickly nods to acknowledge the two musicians who came before her and begins outlining the syncopated chords that solidify in your mind which standard they're playing. You can almost hear the melody in your mind as you scroll a bit further until at last a sax player appears at the front of the line to blow through the head of “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane, supported by a celestial rhythm section of TikTok Duets.

This article examines the features and affordances that make TikTok an apt space for digital jazz improvisation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with TikTok musicians, this article presents a case study of JazzTok, a musical community that formed on TikTok in 2020. These musicians came together from different parts of the world to create improvisational jazz performances using the TikTok Duet function, which enables users to download a video from TikTok onto their own in-app recording interface and record a new video that will appear side by side with the existing video when shared publicly.1 Improvisation is fundamental to the art of jazz but often does not transfer successfully from the physical world to the virtual world. Much jazz improvisation relies heavily on social interaction between players and environmental factors. Several factors can prevent musicians who improvise in digital environments from feeling natural or normal. Those who attempt to improvise online often must rely on creative workarounds or technical solutions. This article draws on the sociocultural psychology of creativity, on frameworks for digital musical communities of practice, and on music technology to explore the ways in which jazz improvisation can thrive on TikTok. In doing so, it considers the new directions these Duet jams envisage for the future of online jazz performances.

Duet Jams

Duet is one of a suite of socially creative features on TikTok that facilitate ease-of-use content creation among everyday users.2 In addition to the recording, editing, and uploading features that are standard on many other digital platforms (i.e., YouTube, Facebook, or Snapchat), socially creative features encourage viewers to create and share content by incorporating elements from the short video they were just watching. Some of these features were carried over from TikTok's international short video predecessor, Musical.ly. This includes the “Use This Sound” function, which allows users to import audio from an existing video into a new one. TikTok has also added new socially creative features, like “Stitch,” which allows users to clip a short segment of a previous video that will play at the start of their new video, and “Video Replies to Comments” which allows users to create a new video responding directly to someone who commented on a previous video, rather than simply posting a written reply to that person. Socially creative features encourage users to take a more active approach to creating content while scrolling on TikTok, which, in addition to opening new opportunities for spontaneous interactions between disparate users, also provides manifold benefits to the platform in terms of user engagement data.

When posting a video on TikTok, users can choose to enable Duet, a sharing option that allows other users to add their own reactions, responses, or entirely new content as a complement to the existing video. Once a Duet video is shared, subsequent creators can add more Duets to the same video, thus adding new content or context. The Duet feature originated on Musical.ly and was then migrated to TikTok.3 At the time it was added to Musical.ly, Duet was a unique affordance that was not available on other digital audiovisual platforms such as YouTube. Following the massive global uptake of TikTok between 2019 and 2021, similar Duet features have been added by newer short video competitors such as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

The Duet feature is popular among musicians, singers, and producers who can engage in Duet jams, chains of musical Duet videos strung together in a process that resembles musical “jamming” in person.4 Duet jams can produce branching and unexpected musical creations. They are also a fun way for musical users to interact playfully with each other on TikTok.5 In the case of JazzTok, Duet jams enabled users to simulate the spontaneous, creative, collaborative experience of in-person improvisation. Repeated interactions via Duet jamming helped a group of strangers from around the world to form friendships, initiate new musical collaborations, and constitute a basis for new online musical communities.

Communities on TikTok can be ad hoc and contingent. There are no groups, message boards, or forums on TikTok as on other platforms. Groups can find each other through using hashtags, similar to the formation of ad hoc publics described on other platforms where users rely on content with hashtags to discover likeminded users and organize together.6 Moreover, Sonja Petrovic describes TikTok communities as ephemeral and centered around the types of content that users are likely to see while scrolling the “For You” page (FYP).7 The FYP is the home page of TikTok, an endlessly scrolling feed of short videos that constantly refresh and precisely cater to users’ personal preferences via algorithmic recommendation. The TikTok mobile interface nudges users toward browsing the FYP as opposed to searching for content or scrolling through the “Following” feed that only displays videos posted by followed users. TikTok has released some details on the vast array of factors and variables that influence recommendations shown on the FYP.8 Users cannot be sure what they will see when scrolling the FYP. A major factor driving the global appeal of TikTok is that the FYP recommender system is likely to suggest videos that cater to users’ shifting interests. By engaging with videos through likes, shares, comments, or by indicating when a video is ‘not interesting,’ users can curate their FYP experience, find a sense of interpersonal belonging, and support other likeminded users.9 The next sections review the psychology of social creativity, digital music communities, and networked improvisation to demonstrate how the socially creative affordances of Duet, combined with other communal aspects of the FYP, make TikTok a fertile space for jazz improvisation.

Improvising Online

Social Creativity

Jazz improvisation is a form of social creativity that is universally accessible, socially mediated, collaborative, spontaneous, and interactive.10 Decades of social creativity research highlight the ways in which creativity is enacted in groups, relies on social validation, is a communicative process, and is directly impacted by social environments.11 Social psychological approaches to creativity commonly define and measure creativity by specific outcomes.12 The specific creative outcome of interest here is jazz improvisation performed in a remote, digital environment.

According to ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner, jazz improvisation involves “reworking precomposed material and design in relation to unanticipated ideas conceived, shaped, and transformed under the special conditions of performance, thereby adding unique features to every creation.”13 This conception offers useful characteristics to understand what is referred to below as successful improvisation. Successful improvisation is spontaneous, it is influenced by personal and environmental factors, and it is different each time. It is enjoyable for the musicians involved, both in terms of personal satisfaction and by eliciting sensations of flow, the optimal state of enjoyment where time seems distorted and the world outside of the activity momentarily fades away.14 Successful improvisation may include material outcomes such as songs, performances, or recordings but also may include social outcomes such as building new relationships, learning new ideas, and creating communities.

Sociocultural psychology views creativity as a process. Psychologist Vlad Glăveanu defines creative processes as exchanges of different perspectives among individuals and groups that shape and are shaped by the affordances of objects or ideas.15 This perspective-affordance theory of social creativity accounts for sociocultural and material differences in creative processes:

To study creativity as action, one needs to understand much more about the person and context including about the motives and goals of creative individuals, the meanings they give their own productions, the relations established with the actions of others, the cultural norms upheld or violated in the process and, last but not least, the constraints and possibilities for creativity afforded by the material environment.16

Perspective-affordance theory distills several principles and concepts from social creativity research that have been used for decades to explore various manifestations of creativity, such as musical creativity and jazz improvisation. Psychologist R. Keith Sawyer describes the creative practice of jazz improvisation as an ongoing process of interaction and tension.17 Continuous interaction occurs between individual musicians, the soloist and the rhythm section, or among group members collectively. Tensions arise on a moment-to-moment basis due to the unpredictable nature of improvisation. These tensions may produce risks that, if too great or unmitigated, might lead some musicians to avoid improvisational performance settings altogether. The risks of improvisation extend to other performance formats, such as improvised theater performances, in which “psychological risk arises from the spontaneity of the situation, which means [performers] do not know what to expect. Not being in control makes many individuals quite uncomfortable.”18

There are a host of factors that may influence whether individuals or groups succumb to or overcome the risks and tensions of improvisation, which are referred to in psychological studies of social creativity as constraints on creative processes and outcomes. Four relevant categories of constraints that can detract from successful improvisation are: individual, interpersonal, temporal, and environmental. Individual constraints are personal decisions made while improvising or strategies and techniques to monitor and execute ideas while performing.19 Some improvisers who focus only on their own playing or who lack the technical dexterity to execute ideas may struggle to engage with other players, whereas other players may thrive on the interdependent freedom of playing together by playing apart.20Interpersonal constraints can be understood simply as whether musicians groove well together. Jazz improvisation is a deeply social activity. Improvisers shape, negotiate and cocreate their own musical identities through the interactions of playing music with others.21 Berliner vividly depicts moments when interpersonal constraints have led to bad performances where musicians were unable to lock into a groove due to interpersonal incompatibility between group members, resulting in experiences of disappointment or frustration.22 Conversely, he describes the experience of musicians finding a groove together as engaging in nonverbal communication and forming a sense of kinship through improvisation.

Live improvisation imposes temporal constraints. There is less time to think about the act of musical creation when improvising, as compared to composing music in nonperformance settings.23 Rather than acting as a barrier, Sawyer argues, improvisational creativity is enhanced by its contingent, spontaneous nature.24 Successful improvising does not involve stopping a jam session or, even more unimaginable, a live performance because someone makes one mistake or is displeased momentarily and wants to start over. Finally, there are spatial constraints, referring to the phenomenon of making music together. Spatial factors include whether musicians can see each other in order to communicate and exchange cues nonverbally.25 The size and acoustic qualities of a space are also spatial constraints that can influence improvisation (e.g., if the room is too loud to hear what other performers are playing).

Psychological research helps to demystify the elusive and unpredictable qualities of jazz improvisation. Creative outcomes, or successful improvisation, can manifest in any number of musical expressions, shaped by processes of interactions and tensions and limited or enhanced by various constraints. Importantly, much of this work has explored jazz improvisation in offline, in-person settings. The next section reviews many types of digital music communities before moving on to explore improvisational performances in online, networked settings.

Digital Communities

Long before the advent of short video platforms like TikTok, countless online spaces were bustling as hubs for musical communities. Much work on online musical communities draws from communities of practice (CoP) frameworks, which explore groups who share a common concern or passion for a topic and who develop understanding and expertise through repeated interaction.26 Ailbhe Kenny expands on the CoP framework by including ethnomusicological research that demonstrates how CoPs built around musical practices beget unique and creative musical outputs.27 Kenny elucidates a communities of musical practice (CoMP) framework that specifically focuses on communal processes rather than the resulting musical outputs that may emerge. Therefore, this article merges insights from CoP and CoMP frameworks with concepts from social creativity outlined in the previous section to foreground both the processes and the creative outputs among jazz musicians improvising on TikTok.

Research into online CoPs examines the ways in which understandings of “community” and “practice” can shift, extend, and transform in digital spaces and explores relationships, geography, and habits.28 In earlier years of the internet, musical CoPs formed around websites that offered a shared space for communication via forums and community organization posts,29 where users could also share learning and teaching resources.30 Moving forward to the 2010s and beyond, as the focus on “digital platforms” has become more ubiquitous across several fields,31 digital media researchers have explored communication, connectivity, and creativity on platformed CoPs.32 In a study of online healthcare CoPs, Sarah Gilbert argues that Twitter affords knowledge exchange and productive dialogue among a more diverse cohort of participants with differing levels of expertise and past experiences to share, despite certain constraints such as character limitations in messages.33 Further, platforms that host user-generated content, such as YouTube, help facilitate CoPs organized around entrepreneurship, cocreation, and business networking for content creators.34 Digital platforms offer more of a centralized space for sociality among musical CoPs, such as through communication in dedicated music groups on Facebook.35 Like Twitter, Facebook is easy for participants to use, offers a suite of business development and content creation tools, and helps to amalgamate discussion threads and forums that were previously dispersed across countless different websites.

Platformed musical CoPs are also highly useful for music education. Surveying two decades of literature on online musical communities, Kari Veblen and Janice Waldron delineate three prominent categories of communities for informal music education.36 The first group includes genre-based musical CoPs, which are comprised of participants who share an interest, expertise, or enthusiasm toward particular musical genres, such as hip-hop or folk; those who play particular instruments, such as guitar; and creators of certain types of musical content, such as children's music on YouTube. The second group of musical CoPs is fan based, focusing on cultural and social participation, grassroots activism, homage, and content creation. Fan-based musical CoPs offer members a space to connect and find belonging online. They can also reveal the lengths some fans go to manipulate musical discourse, such as by creating fake accounts or using automated bots to spam posts. Veblen and Waldron's final group of musical CoPs is compositional; these COPs are communities that explore different methods to compose, record, and produce digital music. Compositional CoPs provide members a cache of tools and techniques for creating music as well as a space for discussing composing and production techniques for music creators.

By focusing on creativity and performance, compositional CoPs come the closest to the kind of improvisational musical activity described below on TikTok. There remains an important distinction between communities that center on education, tutorials, and expertise and those whose primary activity is collaborative creativity. Using a similar sociocultural approach as described above, Michele Biasutti examines the process of collaborative composition among a group of three musicians working together to create a new piece of music entirely online. Results from Biasutti's studies shed light on the feasibility of musical collaborative creativity in remote virtual settings. Biasutti's first study addresses questions of communication, identifying differences between face-to-face and virtual collaboration.37 Biasutti's subsequent study addresses questions of composition.38 He details five phases of virtual composition: context definition, improvisation, analysis and evaluation, construction, and playing. These studies highlight two key points for further research. First, the participants discussed by Biasutti knew each other; in fact, they were all members of a band. These participants, therefore, are a poor representation of a musical CoP as described above. Second, although improvisation was part of the virtual composition process, participants described it as a source of inspiration or brainstorming in pursuit of a more complete musical output.39 This study addresses musical interactions among individuals who did not previously know each other, aside from being members of a platform musical CoP, and who engaged in spontaneous improvisation largely without the initial goal of creating a final product.

Networked Improvisation

TikTok is far from the first technological solution enabling musicians to play together online by creating conditions that resemble or replicate the sensation of playing together in person. These networked musical performances40 tend to fall into one of two broad categories: asynchronous and synchronous.41 Asynchronous networked performances involve participants remotely recording their contributions and then uploading their recording to a central individual or hub to be combined, edited, and uploaded or released.42 Examples of asynchronous performances include the popular YouTube multimedia project “Playing for Change” and the virtual choir that brought together nearly three thousand vocalists from around the world for some of the largest chorale performances ever produced by human beings.43 Asynchronous networked performances require some degree of technical knowledge and the hardware to record one's remote contribution, but they are far less complex than their networked counterpart.

Synchronous networked performances refer to “music-making undertaken simultaneously by practitioners in multiple locations, facilitated by use of internet applications and hardware.”44 This type of networked performance comes much closer to the conditions necessary for the kind of “successful” jazz improvisation described above while simultaneously introducing new barriers that can hinder creative expression. In their “Together Apart” project, Schroeder et al. simulated various conditions to test capabilities and environments for live performances in virtual networked settings.45 Tests included audio latency, video conferencing tools, enhanced audio monitoring systems, virtual avatars, and traditional stage conditions to understand limits and possibilities for synchronous networked performances. Findings suggest that certain solutions, such as virtual avatars, were distracting, while others, such as enhanced monitoring, provided reasonable alternatives to face-to-face performing. Some aspects of performance, such as nonverbal cues, bodily interaction, and the physicality of shared space, could not be replicated online.

A major barrier to synchronous performances is latency, the slight delay that occurs between signal input, transmission, and output. With high-bandwidth networks and powerful processing hardware, audio latency can be reduced to be nearly imperceptible, though at times, literal physical distance can also be a factor for lag. But even the most sophisticated low-latency systems may still not be good enough for musical performances that require precise timing.46 Further, for synchronous performances that involve video conferencing tools, latency may differ between audio and video feeds. This may contribute to confusion if visual cues come before or after aural cues.

Just as digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter provide simplified, centralized alternatives to older websites and forums for musicians, platforms for synchronous communication such as Skype and Zoom also contribute to lowering technical, logistical, and interpersonal barriers for online musical participation. In a study of synchronous networked improvisation during the COVID-19 lockdowns, MacDonald et al. document the many ways in which Zoom provided a space for collaborative musical practice when face-to-face performing was not available.47 Participants were initially twenty-nine members of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, which later extended to a wider group of more than seventy musicians. The study reflects on the technical constraints of networked improvisation via Zoom, the mental health benefits of participants meeting together regularly on Zoom to play with other musicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how participants’ initial apprehension at the prospects of Zoom improvising eventually gave way to excitement about future creative possibilities for synchronous remote performances after the lockdowns ended. Though, as noted below, some of that excitement appears to have dissipated in the months and years that followed.

Finally, reflecting on their own musical practice and insights from other practitioners, Rebekah Wilson and Andrew McMillan48 offer several strategies to make playing apart feel “less un-together.” Some strategies (i.e., documenting and sharing hardware setups, asking for advice online, extending online relationships offline) essentially advocate for joining or establishing networked performance-based musical CoPs. Other strategies (i.e., seeking easier technical solutions, experimenting with new technologies, discovering new modes of performance) are more on the tech side and are, arguably, facilitated by socially creative features on TikTok.

There are many possibilities, as well as constraints, that can inhibit social creativity among a musical community of jazz improvisers playing together on digital platforms. Musical CoPs demonstrate numerous ways in which musicians can productively collaborate, organize, and educate online, but these are distinct from the communal experience of playing together in online settings. Studies of networked music delve further into the differences between synchronous and asynchronous performances, highlighting the dedicated effort and technical skill required to feel “less un-together.” The next section reviews the qualitative methods used to study a community of jazz musicians on TikTok and demonstrate the ways in which TikTok Duets helps enhance possibilities and overcome the constraints upon successful improvisation online.

Methods and Data

This study is part of a larger body of work on the platformization of culture on TikTok.49 Data were collected through semistructured qualitative interviews conducted via Zoom in January and February 2021. Interviewees were English-speaking TikTok creators in the United States, Australia, and Canada, identified first via purposive sampling and expanded with snowball sampling. All participants were approached online via email and social media messaging. Interviews lasted between 40 and 120 minutes, were recorded via Zoom, and were automatically transcribed using a secure automated transcription service. Twenty-five interviews were conducted in total, seventeen of which were musicians affiliated with @JazzTokOfficial. None of the interviewees identified primarily as TikTok creators. Rather, most admitted they joined TikTok out of boredom while remaining inside during the global COVID-19 lockdowns. Only six identified as full-time or professional musicians, with the rest being part-time do-it-yourself musicians with day jobs, hobbyists, or music students.

Though the main focus of the larger project was not specifically to understand musical practices on TikTok, jazz musicians were intentionally selected as the subset of creators to illustrate and exemplify a range of creative and communal practices on TikTok. The decision to use @JazzTokOfficial as a case study came after initially contacting key members of the community who offered to assist with snowball sampling to reach conceptual saturation.50 Interview transcripts were thematically analyzed by the interviewing researcher using a grounded approach to qualitative coding.51 Initial themes were identified for the main project in 2021. Thematic analysis of transcripts was repeated in 2023 to develop themes specific to this study.

Interviews are a useful method for understanding reflexive understandings of jazz musicians and improvisation.52 Findings from interviews can be productively enhanced through systematic participant observation. In this case, performances were indirectly observed by viewing videos shared on TikTok by individual creators and @JazzTokOfficial. This was intended to provide background context and understanding, not ethnographic or textual data. As such, interviews provide the basis for analysis in the following sections. All interviewees gave informed consent to use interview data in subsequent research, in accordance with relevant human research ethics protocols at a large Australian university. Further, all interviewees provided informed consent to be identified using their real names and TikTok usernames, which appear below (see also the appendix).

Improvising on JazzTok

Maiden Voyage—Algorithmic Intros

Before the inaugural video posted in December 2020 by @JazzTokOfficial, community members first had to find each other on a platform with more than one billion active users. Unlike other digital platforms with main menus, front pages, or viewing libraries, the TikTok FYP is an endless scroll with no guarantees as to who might appear. None of the JazzTok members interviewed had preexisting relationships or knew each other offline prior to meeting on TikTok. They were introduced while scrolling on the FYP. Interviewees explained the ways in which they attempted to “train” their FYP algorithm to connect with others, loosely informed by unsubstantiated or speculative algorithmic gossip.53 Damoyee, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, explained her approach to building connections with other musicians:

The only thing I can think of is helping out by triggering the [FYP] algorithm. And that [happens] by viewing the whole video, following the creator even if you don't want to follow them, sharing the video to three friends or even one. . . . If one person triggers [the algorithm], the video might get sent to five more people. But who knows how the FYP works.

Before its corporealization as a TikTok account, JazzTok was a hashtag used by several interviewees to sort their content and to connect with other jazz-related TikTok communities. The early manifestation of JazzTok was as an ephemeral and content-based community54 that also represented an ad hoc public created and organized around specific hashtags.55 Participants included other generic hashtags to improve visibility, such as #fyp or #viral; nonsensical hashtags that were trending at the time such as #xyzbca; hashtags connected to popular viral marketing campaigns, such as #chobaniflip; and other more descriptive hashtags related to the actual video content, such as #music or #jazz. Adding the suffix “Tok” is platform vernacular on TikTok used to describe discrete communities. The hashtag JazzTok became one of many anchors for musical communities, as Kyle, a keyboard and synthesizer player, remarked: “I started posting a lot of synthesizer content, so then I would start seeing more synthesizer content. And then I realized that these hashtags, like #Synthtok or #JazzTok . . . have now kind of become their own little communities.”

Interactions between interviewees and other members of the widening JazzTok community became more frequent as users became mutuals, the platform vernacular for “friends,” referring to users who mutually follow each other. Users are more likely to see mutuals’ content on their FYP. They can also browse mutuals’ content exclusively via the “Following” feed. And, most important to community building, only mutuals can send and receive messages using TikTok's internal messaging system.

Becoming mutuals was, therefore, an important step toward communicating, exchanging knowledge,56 and organizing as a musical CoP online.57 To get to that point, members of JazzTok described taking an active role to find and build community on TikTok, such as jazz drummer Anthony:

I'll just keep comparing [community] on TikTok to Instagram. On TikTok, people are more likely to comment, like, share or add something. On Instagram, I feel like people like the videos and then keep scrolling. With TikTok, I think it's much more open, like “Hey, I saw your video. I'll like it, I'll give you a comment on something you should do next or share something I liked about it.”

Finding the right people on the FYP helped a group of relative strangers overcome interpersonal constraints that might have prevented them from actively improvising on other platforms. Additionally, through platform practices of tagging, following, and becoming mutuals, a nucleus of musicians gathered to form an ephemeral content community58 through brief interactions via videos lasting sixty seconds or less that largely focused on a specific type of content: Duet jams.

Giant Steps—Spontaneous Jams

All music videos uploaded on @JazzTokOfficial are clear examples of asynchronous networked performances that are recorded in isolation, submitted to a central individual to be combined and edited, and finally uploaded several days or sometimes weeks later.59 Duet jams, by contrast, were frequently described as more spur-of-the-moment collaborations. According to Bri, a singer and songwriter: “Most of them [musical collaborations] have been spontaneous. Like absolutely no planning whatsoever, which I think is just so much cooler. . . . We have that creative freedom to do what we want to do.” Interviewees described Duet jamming as a cycle that frequently begins while scrolling the FYP with no intention to create content. During their scroll, they encounter a video that seems ripe for a Duet, such as a Duet jam already in progress or a video tagged with the caption “please Duet this” posted by a mutual or other user. Next, they get up and record their contribution, maybe rerecording it once or twice to get a better take, and post it. After sharing their video, they return to scrolling, and the cycle can then repeat.

By posting quickly without thinking much or obsessing over a perfect recording, these kinds of Duet jams reflect the contingent and spontaneous nature of “successful” live jazz improvisation.60 Ralph, a jazz trombonist and one of the few who identified as a professional musician, explained that he would scroll TikTok in between practicing:

Ninety-nine percent of what I post is one-takes, and that's why I do it. When I'm learning charts for other people, I'll sometimes take short breaks. Those are the times when I'll start posting on TikTok. Having the ability to just jam without having to take time to edit . . . because I'm not an editor [laughs]. I'm not too much of a “[content] creator” in that sense. I'm more of a musician. I love having the ability to just do one shot, one take, and say, “Well yeah, I'm satisfied,” and post that.

Like Ralph, many other interviewees identified themselves more as musicians than content creators. Their primary interests were making music, not digital video content, though several reported previous experiences sharing music, videos, or other forms of content on social media before joining TikTok. A recurring theme was that shifting from being a user to a creator on TikTok was significantly easier than on other platforms. This was particularly the case for several interviewees who were well versed in musical improvisation, and perhaps even do-it-yourself audio production, but not in video editing. Ben, a multi-instrumentalist and founding member of JazzTok, was a proficient video editor before joining TikTok but still felt that TikTok's ease of use appealed to him more than other platforms when the spark of creativity struck him:

When ideas come to you and it's that easy to make them happen . . . it's just too tempting not to. . . . Like on YouTube, you can upload a video that you've already made easily, but there's no Duet function. There's Acapella [singing app], but you have to do a lot of preplanning. You have to know exactly how many boxes you want before you start recording them. If you want to add another one, you can't just Duet it and add another layer. And when you Duet someone, they get notified and then you might connect, and it can turn into chains of people. . . . Like you could post something so small and think that it's not going to go anywhere, and then other people take it in a completely different direction.

In January 2021, when this interview took place, YouTube did not include a Duet feature. However, as noted above, later in 2021, YouTube did add a Duet function to its TikTok competitor YouTube Shorts, as would Instagram with Reels.61 Other short video platforms that predate TikTok, such as Musical.ly and Vine, prioritized ease of use with simplified recording, editing, and uploading features housed in one place.

Like other forms of networked performances, Duet jams are not seamless. Interviewees described several technical issues they needed to overcome to improve the overall quality of their Duets. Input latency came up more than once during interviews. Kris, a music teacher and church pianist, mentioned that some Duet jams that were not strictly rhythmic, such as Duet jam praise breaks, could conceal negligible delays that threw a recording off by a quarter or an eighth of a beat. Those who needed to be more precisely rhythmic, such as drummers, were less flexible with input lag issues. Anthony said he often did record multiple takes if he discovered even the slightest input delays upon listening back to a Duet recording. Rachel, a singer and guitarist, was frustrated with the inability to balance the audio mix when adding to ongoing Duet jams that would sometimes drown out her contributions when singing in a lower register.62

Low audio quality was also cited frequently as an issue with multiple creative workarounds. Many Duet jams would be sung or played into a dangling earbud microphone, but for Jay, a professional trumpeter, that was nowhere near good enough:

I talked to a couple of my friends in Nashville doing online virtual concerts with studio quality sound . . . and that took everything to another level with the sound quality. It has been less than six months, and I don't know how many people, probably hundreds of people have said, “How are you getting that audio quality? What are you doing?” So I talked to them and they pass it on to the next person and so on. And then all of a sudden, I started seeing everybody's audio quality start to get better over time.

This willingness to experiment and share technical solutions further contributed to the eventual formation of a networked improvisation musical CoP on TikTok.63 After users had enough repeated exposure on the FYP and many Duet jams together, the next step for the founding members of @JazzTokOfficial, including interviewees Ben, Lisa, Emerson, Kyle, and Gabbi, was to set up a chat server in November 2021 on Discord. Discord is a social messaging platform that provided the budding JazzTok community a more accessible space for social interactions to discuss technical fixes and to plan out future asynchronous arrangements.64

Time Out—Asynchronous Improv

Though Duet jams are not as synchronous as other networked musical configurations, interviewees described the unique potential for something akin to quasi-synchronous improvisation through Duets on TikTok. Returning to creative outputs, Duet jams produce successful improvisation by relying on the same kinds of social interactions and psychological tensions that characterize in-person improvisation65 even though they are clearly impeded by lag introduced in the time needed to watch a video and then record and upload a response. Improvisers interact individually with the previous performer when adding a Duet and collectively with a larger musical ensemble when contributing to an ongoing chain. Posting a video creates tensions; musicians have no idea what will come next in the chain or in which direction the new jam will go.

Duet jams also provide opportunities for creative spontaneity, enhanced by adhering to the “yes and” philosophy of improvisational theatre.66 As Alex, a multi-instrumentalist and composer with a background in musical theater and improv comedy, explained:

So many Duet chains are the exact embodiment of the “yes and” philosophy. You're not using it as an opportunity to shine a spotlight on yourself, you're doing it to make everyone else look good and justify what they were doing. The way TikTok approaches Duets is very consistently in line with that philosophy.

As mentioned above, too much focus on oneself can constrain collaborative creativity. Jazz improvisation is as much if not more about listening and responding than knowing the most technical licks and showing off. Duet jams offer the same to musicians whose purpose when contributing to a Duet jam is not to steal the spotlight but to raise up everyone else. Bri offered a concise statement to this effect: “I try not to put too much into a video if that makes sense. . . . I want other people to maybe join me and help spread the sound and promote the people before.”

This approach to Duet jams embodies the social creativity of jazz improvisation. It reflects the same motives, relations, and norms that are present in an offline environment while taking advantage of affordances on TikTok to overcome performance constraints. Gabbi, who also has a background in musical theater and comedy, remarked that even though they are asynchronous and not a one-to-one representation of live improvisation, “[TikTok Duets are] the ultimate improv exercise . . . and when it's in the hands of people who will always say ‘yes and’ it's a really incredible way to connect when you're successful.” This reflection inspired this article's focus on “successful improvisation” as the key creative outcome from Duet jams.

Success for content creators working on digital platforms can take many forms. As previous research has shown, beneath the shiny veneer of doing creative labor on platforms, there is a more taxing and competitive landscape than outside observers, and aspiring creators, may realize.67 If members of JazzTok viewed successful outcomes on TikTok in terms of money, they would have stopped Duet jamming altogether. In 2021, at the time of interviews, there was no way for TikTok creators to monetize advertising revenues as on YouTube. The TikTok Creator Fund had debuted several months earlier in 2020, but the interviewees who were eligible to join reported that it paid them a pittance and that their overall views had decreased since joining.68 More relevant here, however, is that Duets are ineligible for monetization.69 Those who joined the Creator Fund were aware of this and commented on it during the interview. Creator Fund payouts are calculated based on views and engagement metrics, but if a Duet jam went viral, as many often did for these creators, they would receive nothing.

While members of JazzTok continue to make and share Duet jams, viewing their success in terms of social creativity frames concerns about platform labor in a different light. For example, Adam, a composer and music student, lamented:

There's a lot of pressure to be productive, to be creative. It's objectively problematic that we as a society value creative outputs over personal identity. I don't make much money on TikTok, it's [enough to buy] a loaf of bread. And I get people that say, “You're wasting your time on this platform, you're making no money, doing it for no reward.”

Of course creators deserve to be paid, though wading into the complexity of art and commerce is beyond the scope of this article. In this narrow interpretation, the reward is the creative output, the transcendent, satisfying experience of successful improvisation. It is the same reward that motivates jazz improvisors to come together for private face-to-face jam sessions that can stretch on for hours and the same reward that provided mental health benefits to other jazz musicians during an unprecedented period of social and musical isolation.70 To the JazzTok community, these Duet jams were anything but a waste of time, as Gabbi summarized:

Obviously, I'm a big believer in paying people for their work, but we [the JazzTok collective] all support each other. I don't know if it's a thing with creators or whether it's just with musicians, but I find with a lot of musical people [on TikTok], there's this huge sense of “I've got your back and you've got mine.” And people will just jump on ideas. It's so much fun.

A Love Supreme—Offline Collabs

These interviews took place during the COVID-19 pandemic at a very uncertain moment for live performers. Many came to TikTok as means of temporary escape. After discovering new musical possibilities through jams and communities, some, like RJ, saw TikTok as a way to explore new musical heights:

I think that I have been conceptualizing TikTok as a means to an end, rather than a means in and of itself. I don't really think that at least for me, there is a future in TikTok. . . . I've been considering starting a YouTube channel or all other sorts of things, but TikTok right now is the best way to just connect to people and share my art.

Though face-to-face improvising and performances would resume later in 2021, Duet jamming on TikTok still provides an opportune setting to test creative ideas through spontaneous, asynchronous improvisation. Recording a Duet jam in one take and uploading it to TikTok requires significantly less time than fleshing out a full song, recording it, mastering it, and making it available to stream online. When an original audio clip starts to gain traction on TikTok, the video's comment section is often flooded with questions asking for a full release. In some instances, members of the JazzTok community have agreed to those requests.

In separate interviews, Jay and Stacey shared their experiences collaborating on a single “Bust Your Windows” that was released on streaming platforms in November 2020. Despite being credited on dozens of recordings, “Bust Your Windows” was the first single Jay released as a named artist. This came about by adding thirty seconds of trumpet on a Duet jam and then recording the full song with someone twenty years his junior. As a music student, Stacey described the process of releasing her first song guided by an industry veteran and friend from the JazzTok community.

Several months after being interviewed, Adam and Alex released a single called “Trust the Funk” under the band name Sus Chords. During the formative months leading up to the debut of @JazzTokOfficial, Emerson, Gabbi, and RJ all contributed original music and lyrics to a fully produced, crowdsourced Broadway-style musical version of the 2007 Disney film Ratatouille. The project began as series of TikTok videos and was later realized as a live online performance that grabbed headlines around the world, raised nearly two million dollars (US) for charity, and featured celebrity performances from Wayne Brady, Adam Lambert, and Titus Burgess, alongside many others.71

The friendships described by members of JazzTok exemplify the kinds of strong interpersonal social ties that are conducive to successful improvision. By the time these interviews took place, the JazzTok Discord server was nearly six months old and the JazzTok community was still expanding with a revolving ensemble of members working together on new arrangements and collaborations. The members interviewed had formed strong friendships as described by a participant named Jake:

These jazz TikTok people that you have been interviewing, we talk like every day. We're friends and all have gotten to meet each other. We really gel well and are such great friends. I think partially because the [FYP] algorithm brought us together. . . . It's a little scary, but yeah.

The Shape of Jazz to Come—Conclusion

This article argues that short video platforms are expanding the potential for social creativity, community building, and networked improvisation in online settings. Short video platforms will never replace jazz musicians getting together in person in a practice room, in a rehearsal space, or on a stage to jam. There are now and will be in the future other digital platforms that emulate the experience of in-person improvisation better than TikTok. Even so, short video improvisation offers a foundation for future research into the platformization of live music culture, community, and social performances.

This study makes three interdisciplinary contributions to the study of jazz and culture. First, this study adds analytical depth to previous accounts of social creativity on TikTok.72 The specific focus on jazz improvisation demonstrates how Duet jams can produce the interactions, tensions, and spontaneity that foster creative outcomes73 while also overcoming certain constraints that might inhibit outcomes in other environments.74 Though primarily concerned with the affordances of the Duet feature, this study highlights other features, such as the FYP algorithmic recommender system, which influence the sociocultural dynamics of creativity on digital platforms. Future studies should explore other social creativity features of short video platforms not discussed here (e.g., Stitch, Use This Sound) as well as the potential for short video platforms to enable social creativity in other domains of live performing arts and creative practice.

Second, JazzTok is an example of an online musical CoP that is not primarily centered around organization, education, or composition. JazzTok can be all of these (a place to plan events, to learn new techniques, and to write songs), but its roots as an ephemeral content community75 are grounded in improvisation and performance. JazzTok also offers many of the same opportunities as other platform CoPs such as globally diverse participation, knowledge exchange from all levels of expertise, and opportunities for creative entrepreneurship. Future research should also investigate other performance or improvisation-focused online musical CoPs. Additionally, many online musical CoPs (including JazzTok) formed out of necessity during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. However, as a wealth of interdisciplinary literature demonstrates, these communities existed before and will continue to exist long after the COVID-19 pandemic period. Future research should avoid overfixating on the pandemic when examining key issues of musical creativity online.

Third, this study emphasizes the creative potential of asynchronous improvisation. The spontaneity and speed of Duet jams described above problematize the binary construction of a/synchronous networked improvisation, suggesting directions for future research to explore quasi-synchronous improvisation. However, even in this limited, nongeneralizable sample, not all interviewees approached Duet jams with quick shots in one or two takes. As time goes on, computing power and bandwidth will continue to increase, as will accompanying technologies that facilitate more seamless synchronous virtual performances. Even now, researchers are exploring synchronous virtual performances from perspectives of psychological studies76 and music technology studies.77 Future research should also consider the ways in which asynchronous improvisation pushes collaborative performances in different directions from those that make every attempt to simulate live performance conditions.

Finally, it is noteworthy that since these interviews were conducted in early 2021, a small number of interviewees have stopped posting videos on their TikTok accounts at the time of this writing in 2023. There are many possible explanations. One is that JazzTok is not an insular community on TikTok. As stated above, these interviews covered a range of topics beyond musical practice. One concerned people's experiences with harassment and bullying. Several creators shared that they had encountered abusive behavior related to race, gender, culture, religion, and political beliefs. A small number of participants were already exhausted with having to personally police their comment sections. This is applicable far beyond jazz or musical communities on TikTok and extends to other digital platforms. This article has been fairly positive about the social and communal aspects of JazzTok and TikTok; however, it is important to acknowledge negative social interactions, broader governance issues, and failings on behalf of the platform developer, which can dramatically alter experiences of users, creators, and musicians.

Another explanation as to why some accounts have gone dark and @JazzTokOfficial has slowed down on posting new arrangements is that jamming on TikTok is not an alternative to live musical improvisation. Toward the end of conversations with participants, some interviewees reflected on the circumstances surrounding JazzTok's birth and whether, or for how long, it would last. This is very understandable for a group of mostly young adults who will grow and change, including those who have music careers to look after and others who have separate lives not tied to jazz and JazzTok. Even so, the indelible record of Duet jams scattered across TikTok, not to mention the community that formed around these jams, should be exciting for players and listeners looking forward to new directions and future generations of jazz. It is more than just a question of why jazz matters, but it is also about how people and platforms can make jazz matter differently to themselves and to others. To close with words from Lisa, one of JazzTok's founders:

I've been thinking about it a lot, and not just because of the pandemic. I had a very small music career in the place where I live. Much of it is church gigs and smaller gigs that involve networking with people who are really nice but there's a huge age difference and we don't really share any similar interests. And there's no opportunities for jazz stuff. If I wanted to do that I'd have to live in a big city, which isn't really feasible right now.

By having [this community] on TikTok, not only can I work with musicians my own age who share my interests, but I feel like we can share jazz with more people instead of just saying, “Guys come to my jazz show,” and then like thirteen people show up because it's the middle of nowhere and that's a huge crowd for you. I just love that there can be this forward momentum of people who care and who are interested in jazz music. And we [JazzTok] are making new music from this music! I just love every bit of it.

Appendix: List of Participants and Interview Dates

NameDateAccountCountry
Emerson 14Jan21 @emersonbrophy Australia 
Ben 15Jan21 @bensrightbrain United States 
Kyle 15Jan21 @felonious_skunk United States 
Anthony 18Jan21 @ewokbeats United States 
Damoyee 19Jan21 @damoyee United States 
Kris 20Jan21 @musixicn_kris_ United States 
Bri 20Jan21 @souparstarbri United States 
Lisa 20Jan21 @utzig United States 
Rachel 21Jan21 @rvmillz United States 
Adam 21Jan21 @adamdorfmannmusic United States 
Jake 21Jan21 @jakedoesmusicsometimes United States 
Jay 22Jan21 @jaywebbtrumpt United States 
Alex 26Jan21 @alexengelberg United States 
Ralph 27Jan21 @theboneguy United States 
Stacey 28Jan21 @staceyryanmusic Canada 
RJ 30Jan21 @rjthecomposer United States 
Gabbi 4Feb21 @fettuccinefettuqueen Australia 
NameDateAccountCountry
Emerson 14Jan21 @emersonbrophy Australia 
Ben 15Jan21 @bensrightbrain United States 
Kyle 15Jan21 @felonious_skunk United States 
Anthony 18Jan21 @ewokbeats United States 
Damoyee 19Jan21 @damoyee United States 
Kris 20Jan21 @musixicn_kris_ United States 
Bri 20Jan21 @souparstarbri United States 
Lisa 20Jan21 @utzig United States 
Rachel 21Jan21 @rvmillz United States 
Adam 21Jan21 @adamdorfmannmusic United States 
Jake 21Jan21 @jakedoesmusicsometimes United States 
Jay 22Jan21 @jaywebbtrumpt United States 
Alex 26Jan21 @alexengelberg United States 
Ralph 27Jan21 @theboneguy United States 
Stacey 28Jan21 @staceyryanmusic Canada 
RJ 30Jan21 @rjthecomposer United States 
Gabbi 4Feb21 @fettuccinefettuqueen Australia 

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I extend my deep thanks to the members of JazzTok and the other TikTok creators who took time to speak with me and welcomed me into their community in 2021. Without you, none of this would have been possible. Thanks to my coauthors, Dr. Jing Zeng and Prof. Patrik Wikström, who were instrumental in helping to complete the main project that prompted this research in 2020. Thanks to my parents, Michael Kaye and Susana Valdovinos, who proofread earlier versions of this article and offered incredibly useful feedback. Finally, thanks to the special issue editor Kate Galloway, Jazz and Culture editor Michael Heller, and my anonymous reviewer for their support and constructive comments.

This article was made open access as part of a research project—Music Culture in the Age of Streaming—which has received funding from the European Research Council, under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, in the form of an Advanced Research Grant awarded to Professor David Hesmondhalgh, at the University of Leeds (Grant agreement no. 1010020615).

Notes

3.

Kaye et al., TikTok.

6.

Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess, “Twitter Hashtags from Ad Hoc to Calculated Publics,” in Hashtag Publics: The Power and Politics of Discursive Networks, ed. N. Rambukkana (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2015), 13–27.

13.

Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 241.

19.

See, for example, Jeff Pressing, “Psychological Constraints on Improvisational Expertise and Communication,” in In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical Improvisation, eds. Bruno Nettl and Melinda Russell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 47–68; Martin Norgaard, “Descriptions of Improvisational Thinking by Artist-Level Jazz Musicians,” Journal of Research in Music Education 59, no. 2 (2011): 109–127.

20.

Benjamin Givan, “Apart Playing: McCoy Tyner and ‘Bessie's Blues,’” Journal of the Society for American Music 1, no. 2 (2007): 257–280.

26.

See, for example, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

27.

Ailbhe Kenny, Communities of Musical Practice (Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2016). Kenny draws, for example, on John Blacking, Music, Culture, and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking, ed. Reginald Byron (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

35.

Alberto Trobia and Fabio M. Lo Verde, “Italian Amateur Pop-Rock Musicians on Facebook: Mixed Methods and New Findings in Music Making Research,” in The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure, ed. Roger Mantie and Dylan Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

49.

Kaye et al., TikTok.

57.

Kenny, “‘The Next Level.’”

61.

Kaye et al., TikTok.

63.

Veblen and Waldron, “Digital Sociology and Online Musical Communities”; Wilson and McMillan, “Being Together.” 

68.

Kaye et al., TikTok.

72.

Kaye et al., TikTok.

73.

Sawyer, “Improvised Creativity.”

77.

For example, see Smith et al., “Low-Latency Networked-Music Collaborations.”

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