Monthly Archives: February 2012

Want Less Tension As You Play? Think About Your Space

When you’re playing music (or engaging in any activity, for that matter), all your habits of unnecessary tension have one thing in common: they tend to diminish your stature rather than expand it.

Essentially, you become smaller. You compress yourself. You lessen the space within.

It is sometimes difficult to discern unnecessary tension because you are so habituated to how it feels. Often you don’t feel the “tension” until it morphs into pain. And sometimes, even the pain you accept as the price to pay for playing your instrument (though in reality, this does not have to be the case!)

So tension can be an almost abstract idea, a subjective matter. That’s why I like to include the idea of thinking about the space within ourselves as we play.

As I get further along teaching the Alexander Technique, I find myself bringing more of my student’s attention to their space. My aim is to tie their perception of tension into their awareness of their own space, helping them to think more expansively.

This tends to get them to stop trying too hard to feel (and judge) what may or may not be tension. It brings their attention more outward, making it more inclusive of themselves and of their other senses.  Always good results when this happens.

So as you practice, take stock of your space. Where are you closing yourself off as you play? Notice how closing yourself off changes the ease and balance of what you do.

Here are a few things you can do to help you perceive and maintain your internal space, and reduce lots of unnecessary tension:

  • Notice yourself and your instrument-Are you collapsing and compressing down into your instrument? If so, see if you can think lightly up and away from it instead.
  • Notice your head and neck-Let your head balance lightly upon your spine, releasing it in an upward direction (Don’t tighten and compress your neck.) You can even think about allowing more space in your mouth and jaw. Even around your eyes.
  • Notice your shoulders, hands and arms-Are you pulling your shoulders back? Or collapsing them forward as you close the space of in your chest? Are your arms plastered against your rib cage closing off the space between your arms and torso? Are your hands, wrists and fingers compressed? Allow yourself to release into length and width.
  • Notice your back and hips– Notice if you tend to either tuck your pelvis, thrust it forward, and/or arch your back when you play. Let your pelvis release away from the crown of your head, creating more length in your entire torso.
  • Notice your knees-Are you locking your knees by pulling them backwards? How does this affect the space, not only in your legs, but in your lower back and hips?
  • Notice your feet-Are your feet “holding on the the floor” in tension? Do you feel most of your weight in the balls of your feet? Let your weight drop down to the ground through your ankle bones and slightly into your heels. Notice how you gain more space in your feet (and the rest of your body!) when you do this.
  • Notice your breathing-Are you holding on to your rib cage as you breathe? Are you stiffening your neck? Healthful, efficient breathing involves movement of your entire torso, flowing from gentle contraction to expansion in three dimensions. Allow space in your entire torso to let this happen.

In the Alexander Technique we use something called the primary directions to help us to think about releasing into expansion. The directions are simply a description of how our bodies naturally expand into our full space. Thinking about them can help you with some of the habits of compression I’ve listed above. Here they are:

I allow my neck to be free so that my head can release forward and upward on top of my spine

So that my entire torso can lengthen and widen,

So that my knees can release forward from my hip joints, and one knee can release away from the other, 

So that my heals can release into the ground

And that’s it. All you have to to do is think the directions and you’ll start to find your space again. Get to really know the directions and use them often. By doing so you’ll keep much of that unnecessary tension in check.

Want To Really Hear Your Sound? Include Your Other Senses

It’s an oversimplification to say that we hear with our ears. Sure, the ears are a big part of it. They receive the incoming vibrations from the world and send them to the brain for processing. But it’s really the brain that hears. It’s the brain that interprets those vibrations as sound.

Timbre, pitch, dynamics, color, stridency, beauty, depth…these are all things manufactured in our brains. When we say that we are improving our ears as musicians, what we’re really doing is improving our brain’s ability to discern and judge sound. It’s a matter of broadening our perception.

Often when I teach the Alexander Technique to musicians, there is a magical moment when my students really hear their sound in a profound way. It’s almost as if they are hearing their authentic musical voice for the first time. It’s a powerful experience.

But it might surprise you to know what they are doing differently to hear their sound this way. I’ll give you a hint: they aren’t trying to listen more carefully. In fact, they usually have stopped trying to hear their sound at all. Let me illustrate with a recent experience I had teaching a small group of instrumentalists at California Institute of the Arts.

These student were part of a two-week intensive program in the Alexander Technique offered at CalArts, wonderfully organized and directed by my dear friend and colleague, Babette Markus.

After spending the first few days working with these musicians on their general coordination (sitting, standing, bending, reaching, walking, breathing), it was time to begin to apply the Alexander principles of awareness, inhibition and direction to the act of playing music.

One of the students in my working group, a young guitarist, had a particularly tense habitual use of himself, whether sitting, standing, walking, or playing music. Though we had addressed many of these habits of his “non-musical” activities with some success, we seemed to be back at square one when it came to making music.

When he played guitar, you could see him carrying out the same postural and movement habits that he was bringing to all his other activities: jutting his head forward as he stiffened his neck, pulling his shoulders forward and downward, thrusting his pelvis forward while locking his knees, ankles and toes (and holding his breath from time to time).

But one of the things that stood out most to me was how intense and inward looking his eyes were as he stared at his left hand as it moved up and down the neck of his guitar. It was clear to me that his attention was divided, and not well integrated.

I asked him what he was thinking as he played. He told me that he was concentrating on his left hand, mostly. When I asked why, he said that there really wasn’t a good reason. It was mostly for giving him a sense of security about his sound, allowing him to see his fingers land in the middle of the frets.

I then asked him about what else he noticed as he played. Did he notice what was going on in his body? Did he notice how he was balancing himself in relation to his instrument? Did he notice the size, shape and sound of the room that he was playing in? Did he notice his breathing?

He answered “no” to those questions. So I began to work with him as he played, helping him to notice some of these other things.

I asked him to shift his attention (and primary intention) from playing music to noticing himself, as I used my hands and verbal directions to help him. He was a quick study, and it wasn’t difficult for him to let go of many of his habitual tension responses. The moment he brought too much of his attention to the guitar, I would gently guide him back into noticing himself instead.

Then I got him to think more outward, more spatially. I had him play notes slowly as he listened, not to his guitar, but to the sound of the room as he played these notes. I also had him use his eyes differently, again, more outward. I instructed him let his eyes soften to take a visual tour of the room as he played.

Within minutes he had changed rather dramatically. He went from a very inward, downward and rigid direction to a soft, expansive and outwardly expansive direction. He looked completely different, changing from looking “focused” to looking easily aware of himself, his instrument and his environment.

But the most remarkable change was something we both perceived: his sound. The clarity and gentle precision of his attack in his right hand, and his easily responsive and supple left hand worked together to form a gorgeous sound.

Then he said the thing I often hear my students say when this happens: “It’s so easy to hear my sound.” So easy to hear. Easy. That’s always the adjective my students use to describe this phenomenon.

In this particular case it became easy because my student integrated his sense of hearing into the most important of all his senses: his kinesthetic sense. Specifically, his sense of his body physically, and the space around it. His awareness of himself in relation to the world.

Before, he was dividing his attention, focusing on his left hand at the expense of excluding the rest of himself and his environment. Now he was integrating and expanding his attention. He went from trying to hear his sound, to actually hearing it.

When you organize yourself this way, it becomes easier to see, easier to hear, easier to play music, easier to notice…easier to be.

So start observing your habits of attention as you play. Where do you place most of your attention? Where is your body in this equation? Where is your external environment? Is your attention balanced and expansive, or overly focused and narrow?

Start by noticing how free and easy you can be in your body as you play, and take that possibility outward toward your environment. You might be surprised by what you hear.

Advice For Improvisers: Stop Approximating

One of the ways I seem to be able to help myself as a musician  (as well as my students!) is to take time to clarify  the details involved in playing music. Sometimes a problem remains unsolved simply because the musician in question hasn’t addressed one small element sufficiently.

Though of course this is an issue that can hold back musicians in any genre, I’m thinking here specifically about how this affects the improvising musician.

In the last couple of years I find myself going back to deeply examine and practice what might seem to be very basic musical material.

For example, I’m getting an even deeper intimacy with my diatonic scales, practicing all kinds of different melodic patterns and their variations. No passing tones, no chromatic outlining, just simple diatonic music in major and minor.

It’s been wonderful for me to discover how much music can be made from just using these materials.

In turn, when I improvise on any type of music, whether harmonically based (chord changes), thematic, modal or even completely open-ended and free music, I have found a wealth of beauty and surprise.

Just to be clear, I did spend a good amount of time in the past “mastering” my scales and arpeggios (the diatonic material), but I never went as deep as I could have.

And as the years progressed I worked less on these diatonic materials and more upon chromaticism, symmetrical tonalities, intervalic based (non-diatonic) melodies, and so forth.

And that was great! It opened up my thinking and playing to help me find my voice as an improviser (After all, these, too, are essential musical materials).

But as time passed I began to experience some dissatisfaction in my improvising.

Through reflection and careful observation, I came to realize that my melodic language was lacking in a certain kind of possibility of colors and melodic shape. For me to address this, I realized I had to go deep into the diatonic language again.

As I began to explore this, I realized that I didn’t have the conception/ear/execution mastery of this material that I really needed. So I started to listen to (and study) great diatonic melodies (lots of Bach, lots of beautiful folk melodies from around the world!)  and worked on getting some of this material inside of me.

I would find a particular melodic passage that really moved me, then put that passage into all twelve keys. I would also make variations on these melodic ideas, and spend a good amount of time improvising slowly in order to crystalize these new ideas.

I also took time to work on singing and playing ideas that I imagined myself, in order to connect my muse to my instrument. I’m still working on this diatonic material nowadays, but with more complexity (e.g., rhythmic displacement and variation, complex meter, etc.)

The long and short of it is that I’ve gained a certain kind of precision and clarity with this material that I just didn’t have before.

In essence, I stopped approximating. Because of this my entire improvisational language has been significantly expanded and enriched.

So, this post isn’t really about the value of doing all this diatonic work. It’s about going deeply into the musical material to gain control over your medium. For me that meant revisiting and deepening my control over diatonic material. I had to stop approximating.

Where do you approximate when you improvise?

Is your control of time strong and clear? How about your articulation?

Is your sound meaningful and beautiful on each note that you play?

Is your rhythmic imagination rich, or is it still mostly the language of endless eight notes?

Is your phrasing free and spontaneous, or are you stuck in two-bar symmetry as you improvise?

Do you take full advantage of the range and color palette of your instrument? How broad is your harmonic knowledge?

To go deeper into the music, you must gain precision. This means really being able to control the materials of music. Ask yourself where you are approximating when you improvise, then make a practice plan to bring you into the rich and beautiful world of precision and clarity.

I actually borrowed this “stop approximating” slogan from the great pianist, Bill Evans. Mr. Evans had a remarkable tone, clarity and conception in his playing that always sounded immediate, spontaneous, beautiful, thoughtful and passionate. This was reflected in his approach to practice.

Here’s the video below of him elaborating on this topic. Enjoy:

Want To Improve Your Technical Facility? Pay Attention To Your Sound

I’m having a week teaching where many of my Alexander Technique students are (purely coincidentally) discovering the same truth about their technical facility. It’s a a truth that is rather surprising to them. Let me illustrate with a short story:

One of my students, a fine cellist, was in his lesson with me noticing the lack of evenness and rhythmic clarity in a particular musical passage he was playing. (Specifically, he was rushing some notes in the passage.)

As my student and I began to explore this further (he, too, could hear the rhythmic imbalance in the passage), I asked him to stop the moment the sound of any given note in the passage was less than the quality he wanted. (I had him slow the tempo a bit to make this exploration.)

He stopped each time he didn’t like his sound on any given note in the passage. This was somewhat new and surprising for him, as he said he wasn’t paying such careful attention to his sound as he played the passage.

What we found was that many of the notes he didn’t like were notes bowed on the upstroke. I had him repeat each of these notes several times, going from downstroke to upstroke.

What became immediately apparent was the difference in color between the two strokes. (Now, for sure there is naturally a color difference between bow strokes, but his was more than necessary or desirable.) The reason he could so easily hear the difference is that he normally plays with a more homogeneous color between bow strokes.

So we had to ask this question: What are you doing differently with your entire self as you change bow direction on this particular passage. What are you adding in terms of tension and doing that you don’t need to do?

We found that he was mostly bowing from a narrowing shoulder (mostly contracting) on the up stroke in this passage, as opposed to bowing from a widening back (mostly expanding), which he was doing on his downstroke. It was fairly easy for him to redirect himself (he’s a good Alexander student!) and to not worsen the conditions of how he was using himself from up to down bowing.

He was then able to keep a beautiful evenness in his tone color.

Suddenly, as if by magic, as he brought this into the context of the passage he was playing, his rhythmic troubles disappeared. He was soon able to play the passage with great facility, speed, clarity and expression. He could really hear his sound as he played.

As I mentioned above, this seems to be the week that many of my students are learning this same lesson, whether on guitar, saxophone, trumpet, drums, or cello. It’s actually a lesson about cause and effect: Technical problems are often rhythmic problems. Rhythmic problems are often sound production problems. Sound production problems are often problems of unnecessary tension. Unnecessary tension is caused by unhelpful thinking.

(Last week I wrote an article specifically about maintaing the ideal conditions in yourself to play your best. Give it a read after you finish this article.)

Often when musicians are struggling with a technical passage, they sort of lose connection with their sound. They get very interested in the parts of themselves they think are responsible for playing the passage. For my cellist, it was placing far too much attention in his left hand, at the expense of dividing his attention and cutting of his capacity to really hear his sound.

There is one simple truth about the great virtuosi: every single note they play is sonically gorgeous. Every note. Not only does this make beautiful music, it also makes for greater technical facility.

So if you’d like to improve your technique, make paying attention to your sound the lens that you judge the quality of your work. Sounds simple enough, I know.

Here is a way to proceed as you practice in this manner:

  • Don’t approximate-Give yourself a chance to really hear each passage clearly, note by note. This means playing very slowly, with the metronome.
  • Listen and stop-The moment you hear any note out of color, any note less than as beautiful as you know you can make, stop and see if you can understand why it is less than ideal. Are you tensing somewhere? Are you being less than accurate with finger placement, embouchure control, air stream, bow energy (or any other element relevant to your instrument). Give yourself a chance to discern what you are doing differently with yourself to interfere with the sound, then make a conscious choice not to do that.
  • Stop and listen-Once you’ve noticed your less than optimal sound, stop and play this note by itself a few times, sustaining it, to really get back in touch with the quality you want. See if you can use your thinking to bring you back to that ideal state of conditions to produce the sound you know you can get.
  • Work your way forward-Define the length of the technical passage that’s presenting the challenge. Let’s say it’s about 12 notes long. Play from the first note until you run into any notes whose color you don’t like. Play the passage up to that note and sustain that note, again, going back to your good conditions to produce your best sound. Continue this until you can successfully make it through the entire passage with beautiful, clearly intended and executed sound.
  • Enjoy your new rhythmic clarity and technical control-You’ll be consistently pleased with the results if you follow this procedure.

To sum up, stay connected to the sound you hear on each note, discern what you are doing if your sound is less than what you know you’re capable of, then trace that back to how you’re thinking. Because above all, it is your thinking that conditions everything else in your playing.