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Skill and Coordination (They’re Not Necessarily the Same Thing)

One of the aims of the Alexander Technique is to improve coordination.

And I would say more specifically for musicians, the aim of the Technique is to improve the quality of overall coordination that you use to implement your music making skills.

A misapprehension that many musicians have is that skill and coordination are one and the same thing.

Though they are certainly closely related, they’re not exactly one and the same.

How so?

Allow me to clarify by offering my working definitions of the two terms.

Your skill is your ability to carry out your desired task (for our purposes, playing music). It is manifested in tangible, sonic results: pitch, time, articulation, tone color, technical control, expression, etc.

Your coordination is what you do with your entire self to carry out your skill. It is manifested in muscular effort, or more specifically, the quality of movement you apply to the task. (This includes balance, posture, breathing….everything you do!)

So it is possible to be a highly skilled musician (and yes, this does mean having highly cultivated fine motor coordination skills), yet have less than optimal overall, gross motor coordination.

You can witness this in many instances, if you take time to notice.

Some musicians make it look easy, don’t they?

Truth be told, for most of these musicians, it is easy. They typically appear effortless because their efforts are so singularly integrated into the skill of their performance. Virtually nothing they do interferes with their artistic intentions, with their desire of self-expression, nor with the acoustic and physiologic components involved in playing.

(I look upon classical pianist Artur Rubinstein as a glowing example: free neck, strong and flexible back and arms, moving easily, fluidly and naturally with the music. It is this beautiful, efficient coordination that is at the service of his skills.)

And I think we’ve all seen/heard virtuosic musicians who look like they’re fighting an imaginary foe as they play music: head compressed into the neck, raised (stiff) shoulders, rigid ribs and back, hard narrowed gaze, noisy breathing.

Yet they still deliver the goods. They still play devastatingly beautiful music. (No, I won’t point my finger at any one musician here, as a gesture of respect. But I so easily could!)

So should these musicians even bother with improving their overall coordination? Should you?

Yes. And for three main reasons:

1. Your overall coordination impacts your skill. When you are working in a less than optimally coordinated way, you are interfering with your brain/body’s ability to carry out your skill in the most efficient manner. In essence, you’re working against your human design, and not in accordance with it. You might be able to do so. But you do so despite of, not because of, your coordination. Improving your overall coordination invites greater skill. Or, as F.M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technque) said, your improved coordination creates “the ideal conditions” for your skill to manifest itself through your bodily mechanism.

2. By improving your overall coordination, you reduce your risk of injury (and fatigue). This is why many musicians seek my help as an Alexander teacher in the first place. I have volumes of stories of very highly skilled musicians I’ve encountered who have career-threatening health issues that are related to the poor coordination they apply to their skill. As their coordination improves, so does their health, comfort, endurance and satisfaction.

3. By improving your overall coordination, you open yourself up to other expressive possibilities. This is the hidden gem of all this. As you improve your overall coordination, you also discover different ways to experience the music you play. You become less stereotyped (less “stuck”) in your interpretive choices, which, believe it or not, are highly conditioned by your bodily reactions. (This is especially true for improvising musicians!)

Our tendency as musicians is to sometimes become overly concerned with the parts that seem most pertinent to playing our instruments at the expense of neglecting the rest of ourselves. (For example, a flutist thinking perhaps too much about the formation of the embouchure at the expense of not noticing neck and shoulder strain.)

If this sounds even remotely familiar to you, consider including the quality of how you “use” your entire self (your overall coordination) into the consciousness of playing your instrument.

Let your head be poised freely atop your spine (and of course, let your jaw be free). Let your shoulders release and widen. Soften your gaze. Let you knees unlock. If you’re standing, let your ankles be free and mobile (feet, too!) as you permit the ground to support you. Let your breathing be elastic, easy, reflexive and expansive.

Think balance, mobility and expansion, instead of position or posture. A nice, lively, upward organization of your whole organism is the wish. Notice how these things impact your skill.

And of course, if you need any help in this area, consider finding a skilled Alexander Technique teacher. Allow your coordination to support your skill, and your expression.

Two Main Reasons Inefficient Practice Advice Gets Perpetuated

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One of the things I usually discover early on when teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians, is that part of the problem that led them to seek my help has to do with counterproductive pedagogy.

With a wind instrumentalist, for example, I might observe what appears to be a forced, tense, noisy, unnatural-looking inhalation before playing a note or phrase.

When I ask about this breathing habit, as often as not, I learn that it’s something that has been deliberately cultivated. In other words, it is something that they do consciously as they play.

When I ask, “So why do you do it that way?”, the answer is usually something like, “Because that’s the way ‘so and so’ (insert name of highly respected musician here) says it should be done.”

Then I ask a second question: “Why do you think he/she does it that way?”

The answer that follows usually falls into one of two categories:

Either:

They don’t know why this great musician does it that why, but it obviously works best for them.

Or:

They “know” why this great musician does it that way, but the explanation they provide isn’t in accordance with the acoustical principles of the instrument and/or with the design of the human mechanism.

And so yet more misinformation by well-meaning experts gets perpetuated. Some of it benignly inefficient, some of it downright harmful (and everything in between).

So why/how do these “myths” get perpetuated?

Two reasons:

Trusting without testing.
It works (to a certain degree).

Let’s look at this first one, trusting without testing:

No matter what we might think about how our bodies work, or about how our instruments work, there are certain solid, measurable, scientific realities about how they really work.

As a serious musician, it is your responsibility to continually improve and broaden your understanding of these things.

The more clearly you understand the real “hows and whys” of your organism (including how your thinking impacts this organism!), the better your sense of cause and effect becomes when being introduced to any new pedagogic principle and/or procedure.

If you comprehend the science behind playing your instrument, you’ll see that “some musicians do well (in part), not because of what they do, but despite what they do.” (All of my students, and some of my readers, will recognize this as one of the recurring themes in my teaching.)

It is not enough to trust and expert. You must also build a solid faith in the efficacy of a particular pedagogic element because it stands the test of actual, measurable fact. Cause and effect.

The second reason these inefficient practice ideas get perpetuated sounds contradictory to the point I’m trying to make here:

They work (to a certain degree).

It’s the “certain degree” part that opens the door to trouble. The reason for this is actually fairly simple.

Let’s go back to my earlier example about inhaling when playing a wind instrument. If you believe that you need to noisily suck in air as you try to force the air down into your abdominal region, in order for you to get a sufficient breath, you are simply working against nature.

You can’t put air “down into your gut”, because you have no lungs there. (And don’t talk about pushing the diaphragm outward to “make space for the air”; it doesn’t work like that, either.)

Yet the noisy, gasping, overly energetic breathing often accomplishes one thing: It creates a more “active” inhalation that engages more muscles (not necessarily in the most efficient way, mind you!), and that does seem to draw in more air than when you inhale in a more passive, unintentional way.

But there is some unwanted baggage attached to this way of breathing.

To begin with, all this effort creates undue strain in your jaw, glottis and facial muscles. Not to mention the strain it puts on the rest of your body. I’ve had musicians come to me for help with chronic neck and back pain that is clearly related to these poor breathing habits.

Equally important, you lose touch with what it is like to have a free, naturally reflexive inhalation.

It’s the free movement of the ribs, the diaphragm, the pelvic floor, and other muscles in the body that creates the kind of necessary expansion to draw in a deep breath. Combine this with the intention of the musical phrase and expression, and you’re good to go.

Yet, as long as you need to “feel” this forced inhalation as a “complete and full breath”, you will continue to work in this inefficient way.

And unfortunately, you’ll likely pass this advice onto your students. In Alexander Technique slang, we sometimes say that this is a case of “specifically focusing on a part, while neglecting the whole”.

So stay clear about these two things as you practice, explore and expose yourself to new ideas about playing your instrument. You’ll be better off (and so will your students!)

I’ll leave you with a quote from F.M Alexander, the founder and developer of the Alexander Technique:

If I went to a man to take singing lessons, it wouldn’t matter what he taught me, he couldn’t injure me.

10 Recurring Principles Of Effective Practice (And Performance)

1. Be clear about what you want.

How do you want to play? Strive for a detailed conception of the kind of musician you aspire to be. Understand that this conception will most likely change along the way, but being clear about what you want will help you work most specifically and effectively.

2. Be clear about how things work.

Understand at least the basic science behind how your instrument works (acoustics), and your human design (anatomy and physiology). You can avoid lots of misdirected effort by being clear on these things. Take responsibility to learn and understand the physical principles involved in playing, and pick and choose the pedagogy that best suits these principles.

3. Use yourself well.

This is the foundation of the Alexander Technique. How you “use yourself” includes your movement, posture (including how you hold your instrument) and your quality of attention (basically, how you “react” as you play your instrument). By using your entire self in a balanced, more conscious way (i.e., in cooperation with your human design) you create the best conditions for successful musical results (not to mention you also avoid strain and injury).

4. Let your ear lead.

Aim for an expressive rather than a mechanical quality in your attention as you play. This is a matter of letting your aural imagination (your ear!) be the initiator of musical activity (e.g., your desire/conception for your best, most expressive sound; not your desire/conception for the “correct embouchure”). When your aural conception is clear, your brain is free to organize the movement to manifest your musical expression in a naturally efficient way.

5. Balance the internal and external.

More specifically, don’t become too internally focused as you practice and/or play (micro-managing tongue, fingers, embouchure, etc.) Be available to notice what you’re doing with your entire self (an internal awareness), and integrate that with hearing and feeling your sound and expression outside of yourself (in your instrument, in the room, in conjunction with the other musicians, etc.) Many coordination problems musicians develop (including focal dystonia) are partly a result of a too narrowly focused internal attention.

6. Understand (and strengthen) the relationship between your perception of time and your coordination.

All problems musicians have with coordination and technique are some form of problem with perceiving time. As you improve your time, you improve your coordination and technique. The clearer and more precise your time perception becomes, the cleaner and faster your technique becomes. So rather than wishing for “fast fingers”, wish instead for clear, solid time. (Even things like pitch and attack are conditioned by your perception of time.)

7. Bring things within reach.

I too often see musicians reaching too far beyond what they are capable of doing in that particular practice session. Besides being a less than optimum learning experience, this also leads to frustration and self-doubt, as well as poor movement and postural habits (i.e., “misuse”). Aim at regressing (simplifying) a too-difficult exercise so that is only slightly out of your reach. Then work gently and mindfully to bring it back within your reach. Repeat this process many times as you’re practicing something and you’ll be pleasently surprised at your progress. “Lots of little bites finish the entire meal with the greatest satisfaction”, my mother used to say to us kids.

8. Get good at stopping.

There is no point in rushing on to the next attempt to correct what you just did until you are clear about what needs to change, or more specifically, what you need to do differently to make that change. Get good at stopping and redirecting attention and effort. The better I get at practicing music, the better I get at stopping. It is never a waste of time.

9. Find satisfaction.

Sure, you want to get better. You want to be able to do more than you can do right now. But it’s important that you reaffirm what you already can do. You need to do this everyday (no matter how “poorly” your practice session has gone). Always try to end your practice session with something that makes you feel satisfied with what you can already do as a musician. This will keep you inspired, motivated, and in love (which leads me to the next principle!)

10. Play from a place of love.

I leave the most important principle for last. I still witness far too many musicians that are making music predominantly from a place of fear. This often creates problems for them, some of these problems quite serious. Playing music with a motivational energy of love not only is more satisfying, but it also helps your brain organize the movements necessary to play in the most optimum manner. Love brings with it curiosity, faithfulness and persistence, and with these come continued improvement.

So I hope you consider some of these principles, as I also wish you a wonderful, growth-filled, musically challenging and satisfying life!

Improvisation: Using Silence As A Part Of Your Expression

Something You Are Always Practicing When You Practice Music (Whether You Know It Or Not)

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One of the biggest frustrations that many of the musicians have who seek my help as an Alexander Technique teacher is with consistency.

Sometimes this seems to be within the practice cycle itself (some days you have it; others you don’t). And sometimes it seems to be the gap between the practice room and the performance.

There are many reasons for these variances in consistency. But one of the most often neglected reason is this:

No matter what you’re practicing at any given moment, you are, for better or for worse, practicing a state of being.

A state of being. Let that sink in for a moment.

This is beyond merely what some might call “a state of mind” (though it sure starts with that). Your state of being when you practice includes what you are doing with your entire self.

It includes how your thinking is impacting your movements (skill and coordination), your choices, your hearing, your receptiveness and your learning, to mention just a few things.

(This question of the quality of “my state of being” was presented to me on a daily basis as I trained to become an Alexander Technique teacher.)

And this state of being has a profound impact not only on how and what you practice, but also, how you’ll perform.

You might notice that when you’re playing well, you’re also in a fairly easy state of being. Your thoughts seem clear, you feel light, mobile and responsive, perhaps even joyful and playful. You feel present. (There are a few exceptions to this, which of course, makes it the rule.)

Often, when I observe and ask questions to a musician frustrated with inconsistency, I’m met with very telling answers. Lots of negative self talk. Lots of bodily tension. A narrow perception of what is “right”. An inability to stop and redirect thought and effort. A rigidity in pedagogical approach. A lack of play and exploration. And more.

The great news is that if you practice improving your state of being, you’ll improve your practice and performance. You’ll more consistently work toward your potential.

So ask yourself as you practice, “What is my state of being?”

The answer to that question you could include other questions:

How am I using myself? Are my neck and shoulders tense or free? am I bracing myself? Am I breathing freely? Am I letting the ground support me (This is where the Alexander Technique is particularly helpful.)

Where is my focus of attention? Is it narrow and exclusive or broad in inclusive? (e.g., are you overly focused on one aspect of what you’re doing, like your embouchure, bow grip, etc.) Or does it allow me to hear, feel and think in a flexible, responsive way?

What kind of energy is motivating me? Am I approaching this practice session (or performance) with love and interest in the music? Or is it more fear, boredom, or perhaps dread? (Let love lead the way, always, no matter how difficult the music may be.)

Do I let myself take chances? Do I let myself be wrong to explore finding something new, maybe something even better? Am I playful and flexible in my attitude? Can I let myself sound bad for the sake of trying to do something differently?

Do I allow myself to stop? Do I give myself a chance to regroup and get my bearings when something goes wrong, so that I can improve my chances in my next attempt? Or do I just rush on to the next failed attempt, spiralling toward frustration and inefficiency?

Am I kind to myself? Do I discern, i.e., do I objectively recognize a problem or challenge that rises up in my playing, approaching it with kind, helpful thinking? Or do I immediately judge, i.e., subjectively jump to negative, useless self-evaluation the moment something goes wrong? (If you practice speaking kindly to yourself during practice, not only will your practice become more effective, but your performances will be more consistently satisfying.)

And you can take the idea of practicing your state of being outside the practice room, as well. As you stay present with yourself, moving easily and lightly, taking time when you need to, breathing easily, speaking kindly to yourself, and finding love and joy in what you do, you continue to develop two of the most fundamental qualities a performer can have: poise and confidence.