I’m pleased to announce that I’m now offering an educational service specifically dedicated to addressing and improving issues related to time, rhythm and feel.
I call it Rhythm Coach, and it represents the years of study, exploration and teaching experience I’ve acquired in helping musicians (including myself!) of all ability levels refine their sense of time, as well as cultivate rhythmic skills that significantly improve general musicianship, skill and coordination.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that I’ve written a good amount of articles about time and rhythm. (I’ve even composed two e-books dedicated specifically toward improving both.) Anything related to time (including meter, pulse, feel, groove, etc.) and how we react to time (our skill/coordination) is a topic of endless fascination for me.
Over the past several years I’ve had a good number of musicians who have sought my help as an Alexander Technique teacher specifically because of problems they were experiencing with loss of skill and coordination (for example, problems associated with tremors, focal dystonia, injuries, health issues, etc; and sometimes just an inexplicable loss of skill).
Skill/coordination and time are so inextricably linked for a musician, that you can’t effectively address one without the other.
All the musicians I’ve encountered that have come my way seeking help with an unresolved skill/coordination problem (“unresolved” here meaning the musician has been working to improve it to no avail) also have come to me with unresolved issues with time and rhythm.
As a saxophonist successfully managing focal dystonia, I myself have had to spend a good amount of time reclaiming my playing skills. I did this, in part, by going deeply into working purposefully and methodically on my perception of time, as well as how my perception of time informs my coordination (my “reaction”). The work I’ve done on myself has yielded nearly miraculous results. (If you’re familiar with focal dystonia, you’ll know what I mean by “miraculous”!)
Besides helping me regain my saxophone playing skills, this practice has also been immensely (and somewhat unexpectedly) beneficial for me as both an improviser and as an ensemble musician. So I’d like to share my skills and experience with you!
In Rhythm Coach, you’ll get one-on-one help in identifying and effectively addressing any challenges specific to you. I’ll help you customize your practice routine by giving you notated exercises, as well as movement and thought explorations for you to measurably improve and gain confidence.
All of my work for Rhythm Coach is informed by continuous study (cognitive science, neuropsychology, etc.) and mindful inquiry, and is a continually growing, highly dynamic body of work.
So, no matter your current ability as a musician, if you’d like to improve your sense of time, groove, feel…or just expand your rhythmic skills in a methodical and comprehensive way (especially as an improvising musician), please consider Rhythm Coach! I’d be honored and thrilled to help you!
Resonance (in physics): The reinforcement or prolongation of sound by reflection from a surface or by the synchronous vibration of a neighboring object.
-The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language
Whether playing pianissimo, or fortissimo (or anything in between), an optimally resonant sound is complex and colorful, as well as nimble and flexible. When your instrument is resonating optimally, you have better technique, better intonation, and a wider dynamic and expressive range.
And whether you’re improvising or playing interpretive music, optimum resonance allows you to most readily access your creativity. Nothing gets in your way.
In a word, optimum resonance yields satisfaction.
There are lots of musical instrument makers, as well as manufacturers of musical equipment (such as saxophone mouthpieces, violin bows, etc.) that design and market their products with optimum resonance in mind. (Or, at least with their conception of what that means!)
And there are no shortage of conversations between musicians about how a particular instrument or piece of equipment can impact resonance (for better or worse) .
Virtually all pedagogical methods (for any instrument) that address resonance take into account the effect of the player’s actions upon the resonance of the instrument.
And of course this makes sense. Because, truth be told, when you are playing your instrument, you become a part of that instrument. (I don’t mean this just metaphorically, but also, physically.)
But let’s start with looking at equipment.
For an instrument (or other piece of equipment) to vibrate or resonate freely, its material and/or parts need to be able to move freely in response to the energies exerted upon them (by you!) This ability to “move freely” is the “synchronous vibration” part of the definition above.
With respect to my saxophone equipment, for example, playing reeds that don’t vibrate freely and evenly interfere with my ability to get a balanced, resonant sound. (Same with a ligature that doesn’t allow the reed to vibrate optimally.)
Non-responsive reeds and poorly designed ligatures have one thing in common: they don’t allow for the movement necessary for optimal resonance.
So of course it makes sense to seek out, experiment with, and use, the kind of equipment that creates the best conditions for optimal resonance.
Now let’s look at ourselves.
One thing that many musicians don’t take fully into account is the fact that, not only do they need to resonate their instrument, but also, they need to allow the instrument to resonate them.
(Again, I’m not just speaking metaphorically here.)
It is this “exchange of energy” between the user and the instrument that has a profound impact upon the quality of resonance.
You’ll notice I said “exchange of energy”. That’s a fairly apt description of what’s happening when you play your instrument.
When playing saxophone, I’m sending energy by moving an airstream into the instrument. That focused air stream has an effect upon the instrument, for sure.
But that effect comes right back to me instantaneously. Without going too far into the acoustics of playing saxophone, suffice it to say that energy is returning to me (specifically, to my oral cavity) from the saxophone.
This act we call “voicing” in playing wind instruments (how we shape our oral cavity/air stream) is in response to that energy returning to us from the instrument itself.
So in a sense, the instrument is resonating us. It’s a two-way street, so to speak.
In playing wind instruments, voicing problems are a leading cause of problems with resonance (including response and intonation).
If I’m not allowing the optimal movements in my voicing mechanisms, I’m going to have less than an optimally resonant sound.
So of course, if my jaw is clenched, or my soft palate is collapsed (or overly rigid), I won’t get the resonance I desire, in part, because I’m not resonating optimally.
But there’s more to it than just what’s going on inside my mouth. Our human design works as an integrated whole.
So yes, the components of my oral cavity (soft palate, tongue, jaw, nasal cavity, etc.) need to be free to move.
But their freedom is largely dependent upon the relative freedom of my head/neck relationship. If I’m compressing my head downward into my neck (or holding it too rigidly upward), my voicing components are not going to be free to move optimally.
And that head/neck relationship both impacts, and is impacted by, what I’m doing with my ribs, torso muscles, legs, arms….everything.
So if my knees are locked, for example, that will negatively affect the functioning of my “voicing mechanisms”. Will I still be able to get a decent, resonant sound?
Yes, most likely. Just not as optimally resonant as it could be. It’s simple physics.
And even if you don’t play a wind instrument, you are still part of this “partnership of resonance”, as I sometimes describe it to my students.
What you do with yourself as you hold and play your violin, for example, has a measurable impact on the quality of your sound. Just as your strings and bow need to have just the right amount of tension to produce your best sound, so does your body.
This is where the Alexander Technique (the teaching/learning tool that I use to help myself and other musicians) is so effective and practical.
The Alexander Technique helps you to become aware of some of the habits of movement and posture that you bring into your playing (often unconsciously) that interfere with your ability to move freely. The habits that interfere with your resonance.
The next time you practice, see if you can notice where you might be blocking the resonance within yourself. Start by noticing the relative freedom (or lack of) between your head and neck (no matter what instrument you play), and go from there:
Are you shoulders, arms and hands freely mobile and spacious?
Are your ribs moving freely and fluidly as you breathe? (again, no matter what instrument you play!)
How are you doing in your hips/pelvis?
How about your knees?
Are you well-connected to the ground? (allowing your weight to disperse evenly as you organize yourself lightly upward)
Take notice of how you “use” yourself when playing. Observe your habits. Aim at facilitating the “synchronous vibration of a neighboring object”, and enjoy the difference!
Often musicians don’t recognize this truth so readily, sometimes thinking that their problems with technique and articulation are simply “finger dexterity” issues, or “strength issues”, etc. In short, purely “physical ” issues. (And sometimes they are for sure, but not nearly as much as you might think.)
Part of my job with these musicians is to help them (through direct experience) discover on their own the connection between their technical struggles and their problems with time perception.
But when a musician comes to me knowing full well that they have issues in with time and rhythm, I too often find that their strategies to remedy their problems on their own have one thing in common that is fundamentally interfering with their progress.
In essence, they are thinking about time “accuracy” in an entirely abstract manner.
As I ask them questions, I often find they are also spending lots of hours trying to improve their time perception by practicing exercises that have little or no actual musical meaning.
Some of these exercise aim for what I call “pulse memorization”.
An example of this might be to count out loud in 4/4 with the metronome clicking quarter notes until the tempo seems firmly established in your mind. Then turn the metronome off and clap, count or play the quarter notes for a minute or so, then turn the metronome back on to see how accurate you were in your “memory” of the original pulse.
Another example might be the classic “canceling the click” exercise with the metronome. If you don’t know this one, it’s where you clap with each click of the metronome, attempting to “cancel” (you can’t hear) the click because you’re right in the “center” of the beat.
To be clear, I don’t think either one of these exercises is a bad thing to do, nor a waste of time (no pun intended!)
I simply think that they have limited value.
You see, both of these exercises are lacking in any kind of musical context.
When I coach a musician who is struggling with time, I might have them work on exercises like this in a sort of remedial way in the beginning to help them begin to recognize certain habitual tendencies in perceiving time.
But what I attempt to establish from the beginning with the musicians that I’m coaching, is to let them discover that they already have a strong sense of time. It’s really a matter of teaching them to access it more readily by changing how they think about time.
This is where meaning comes into play.
You see, even the most “time challenged” (or “rhythmically challenged”, if you prefer) person has one thing they do all the time that has rhythmic pulse and regularity: They speak.
Yes, words not only have meaning, but also a rhythmic component that is conditioned by the structure of the language itself, and any kind of accent attached to the spoken langauge. Linguists refer to the this as “prosody”, or the natural “music” within any language. (When the musicians I coach discover this truth, their confidence and skill expand exponentially!)
So rather than having a musician start remedial work on improving time with an “abstract” activity, like cancelling metronome clicks, I might have them notice rhythmic patterns in how they speak, both in individual words, and in phrases/sentences. This creates a “context” for their rhythmic expression.
A simple exercise to discover this would be to speak words of various syllable lengths with the metronome click, noticing how “regular” and rhythmic the words are, how they line up so easily and naturally with the metronome click.
It is virtually impossible to speak in any kind of understandable way without the element of rhythm.
You think it’s difficult to “feel” and conceive of a quintuplet?
As far as your brain is concerned, it actually isn’t.
If you repeat the word the five-syllable word, “fundamentally” over and over, back to back, you’ll find that quintuplets are quite easy.
That’s because this word has a meaning (in this case, the adverb form of the word “fundamental”, meaning “essential”) that is inextricably linked to it’s sonic/rhythmic expression. Sound, rhythm and meaning work together, in an immediately integrated manner.
It’s simply wired into your brain that way. And though it has less meaning out of context here (repeating it over and over) than it would in the context of a sentence, it has more meaning to you than trying to “imagine” the subdivisions of the quintuplet.
You see, whether you’re playing your instrument, or speaking, you’re always doing one fundamental (there’s that word again!) thing: You are connecting meaning to movement.
The meaning is to be found in the intention, and the movement is the manifestation of that intention.
When you speak you move (your vocal mechanisms certainly do, at least). When you play music you move. It’s impossible to have either of these without coordinated movement.
I’ll say it again: Movement is the manifestation of intention.
Even a cursory understanding of how the brain is involved in making music makes it easy to understand why dance is so inextricably connected to music in virtually all cultures. Dance is the psycho-phyisical whole musical impulse and expression. Context provides meaning, which turns into movement.
Another way to turn the abstract idea of “pulse memory” into something meaningful is to always imagine tempo and rhythm within a more specific musical context.
I remember once taking a class to become certified in CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation), where we had to learn to give chest compressions with our hands at the tempo of 100 beats per minute.
The teacher told everybody in the room to sing or “imagine” the disco classic by the Bee Gees called, “Staying Alive”. (All the class participants were easily old enough to know this song.) Sure enough, the whole room is creating chest compressions with considerable rhythmic evenness and unison.
Meaning informs movement.
So if you’re working to improve your time, or are helping other musicians how to do so, bring the abstract into meaning as much as possible. Use your imagination.
You don’t have to use just the metronome for a time source when practicing, you know. Using backing tracks, drum loops…anything the establishes context and broadens meaning.
And instead of focusing exclusively on the “clicks” whenever using the metronome as you practice, imagine how you would like to express each phrase relative to the clicks. Let each phrase come vividly to life in your mind before you start to play. It is the music between the clicks that is the most meaningful, and the most beautiful.
The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
–Serendipity (as defined by the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language)
It was my frightening and frustrating struggle as a saxophonist with focal dystonia (a neurologically based movement disorder that impairs coordination) that brought me to the Alexander Technique.
As I began to do more research on my condition, it became evident to me that, even though my focal dystonia symptoms were experienced through my muscles, they only ever surfaced whenever I began to prepare to play saxophone (more precisely, the moment I began to think about playing).
In the simplest sense, it was my reaction to the thought of playing saxophone that was triggering my focal dystonia symptoms.
After doing a good amount of research about the Alexander Technique as it applied to musical performance (and considerable amount of reading about the neuroscience of learning and unlearning), one key truth stood out to me that prompted me to seek out a certified Alexander teacher: Thought precedes and conditions reaction.
“So”, I said to myself, “if I can learn to think and react in a different, more constructive way when I play saxophone, I’ll have the best chance at improving my focal dystonia symptoms.”
I’m happy to say that this has proven to be true.
Resoundingly so.
And in the process of applying the Alexander Technique in addressing my focal dystonia symptoms, I became absolutely intrigued by the efficacy and possibilities of the work.
So much so that I decided to commit to the 3-year training program to become certified to teach this work.
The Alexander Technique continues to be my most effective tool in helping both my clients (mostly professional and serious student musicians) and myself as a musician.
If you’re not familiar with the Alexander Technique, it’s a practical set of principles you use to become aware of the (often) unconscious habits of misdirected effort (things that take you out of your optimal coordination) that you bring into your activities (like playing music!). By studying and applying the Technique, you learn to prevent or lessen these unwanted habits by changing your thinking, bringing yourself back to your natural, optimal coordination.
It’s about learning to respond to things in a more conscious and constructive way, instead of reacting habitually (and sometimes harmfully).
Lots of musicians who regularly take Alexander lessons rave about how the Technique makes playing feel easier, more natural, and with far less tension/effort than they’ve ever experienced before.
It’s helpful for decreasing/eliminating chronic back, neck, shoulder, jaw and wrist pain, as well as improving breathing, and balance (obviously helpful for any instrumentalist or singer!)
And even though I myself wasn’t motivated to seek out and Alexander teacher because of the maladies mentioned above, I did indeed suffer from most of them (especially back and shoulder pain!)
I was usually in some sort of state of discomfort when playing my instrument, just chalking it all up to “working hard”. I accepted pain as part and parcel of what a serious musician struggles with.
No, my motivation was simply about restoring (or at least improving) my coordination when playing saxophone. Period.
But as I began to take lessons, it wasn’t long at all that my back began to feel better (not just when playing, but all the time!), my shoulders began to widen and become freer, my jaw became flexible and responsive, and my breathing became more full, easy and supportive of my saxophone sound.
All great things, for sure!
I began to describe these other changes I was experiencing to my friends and colleagues as “serendipitous gifts”, meaning I was blessed in finding such positive things I wasn’t even looking for.
(And as you might have wondered/guessed by now, my focal dystonia symptoms were inextricably connected to the misdirected muscular effort that was causing these pains I’d been experiencing for so many years.)
Yet the most cherished, most profoundly life-changing serendipitous gift I found in studying the Alexander Technique was more simple, more basic, more essential to my personal well-being and growth as a musician:
I learned to treat myself with kindness.
This kindness includes how I treat myself when practicing and performing:
How I changed my previously harsh and rather loud “self-talk voice” to one of soft inquiry and assurance;
How I allow myself to be wrong in order to discover new ideas and techniques;
How I give myself permission to pause when practicing in order to redirect my efforts;
How I allow myself to rest optimally;
How I listen to myself (and the other musicians) with a more detailed presence;
How I allow myself to peacefully walk away from an exercise (or even a practice session) if it isn’t going just right and I can’t seem to put myself back on track;
How I accept and trust my efforts, sound and intentions when performing.
And so much more…
One of the biggest changes in how I treat myself is that, even when I’m doing something “wrong” when practicing or performing, that I don’t interpret that to mean that there is something wrong with me.
That’s huge for me, as it places me squarely in a place of gratitude, with an almost child-like curiosity when I practice. And feeling grateful, is perhaps, the most beautiful of all states of being.
As I’ve mentioned in some of my other blog posts, practice for me is now a form of meditation. It’s nourishing and ever so pleasurable.
And as a bonus, my saxophone practice has become more dynamic, more efficient, more directly helpful to me than it ever was.
All this because of the gift of kindness I give myself.
You see, when applying the Alexander Technique to any activity, you are learning to redirect your thinking in the most helpful way you can.
To do this, you must ask things of yourself, rather than demand them. (You can’t bully yourself into reacting constructively!)
I “ask” for my optimal coordination. I do so with kindness and deference. With sincere respect and love.
That makes all the difference.
I feel compelled to talk about all of this in my first blog post of the year because of my experience over these past years teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians.
I’ve had the honor and pleasure to share this work with (quite literally) some world-class performers.
And one thing I continue to notice is how harsh many of these wonderful artists can be with themselves as they approach practice and performance.
Of course they seek excellence! Of course they are disciplined! Of course they have high standards! Of course they’re willing to sacrifice!
But what they learn when studying with me is that it is often their fierce self-talk that is taking them out of their optimal coordination, taking them away from getting precisely what they want.
As their coordination improves, it does so by going hand in hand with their self-directed kindness. They ask instead of demand and marvel at the results. It’s about as “win-win” as you can get. A beautiful thing.
So I’ll continue to enjoy and cultivate my serendipitous gifts, and graciously share them with my students, living a musical life of gratitude, exploration, growth and satisfaction.
One of the key things I take notice of when giving an Alexander Technique lesson to a musician for the first time, is the language my student is using to describe what they are doing when playing their instrument.
Words are necessary, of course, to help inform me about their needs, as well as to bring to light how precisely (or imprecisely) their thinking is impacting their playing.
I often encounter two sets of words as students begin to describe the perceived problem(s) that brought them to me for help:
One set of words describes what the student thinks she/he is doing while playing that is causing the problem(s).
The other set describes what the student would like to happen instead.
It is this second set of words in particular I’d like to address here, as trying to embody these words can sometimes bring about unintended (and unwanted!) consequences for the musician.
“How can that be?”, you might ask.
Well, the short answer is that the words may not accurately describe what the musician actually wants.
In fact, sometimes these words are counterproductive, in that they are describing an impossible event.
For example, when I hear a musician tell me she/he would like to be “completely relaxed” while playing, I feel compelled to gently call this into question.
For starters, if relaxed means “no muscular tension”, than that in itself would be impossible for two reasons:
First, we need a certain amount of muscle “tonus” (the constant low-level activity of a body tissue) just to function in the most essential way (breathe, maintain balance, etc.)
Second, muscular tension is actually necessary to play music. In fact, it would be impossible to play without it. (I won’t digress here on optimallydirected, versus mis-directed muscular tension.)
And because we function as psychophysically whole beings (our thoughts condition our movements), being “relaxed” might also mean being in a state of attention that is too under-engaged to play music optimally.
So I must ask more questions of my student to find out more specifically what the word “relaxed” means.
Often it means simply working with a more optimally directed amount of muscular effort, while being calmly alert.
When I describe what I mean by being “calmly alert” (fully engaged and present in an activity, while being freely mobile and flexible in my body) , my student usually says something like, “Yes. That’s what I mean. That’s what I want!”
When a musician thinks “relaxed”, sometimes there is a “should” attached to it. Most specifically, “relaxed” should feel a certain way.
And if it doesn’t feel that certain way, something must be wrong. With that feeling of “wrong”, often misdirected effort and a divided attention follow (not to mention frustration)!
Here are a few more “loaded words”, as I call them, and some of the ways I modify them in my own thinking:
Instead of saying:
“Loose” (as in, “I want to be ‘loose’ when playing.”), I think instead of being “mobile” (as in, “I’m free to react constructively to my desires, and free to move in cooperation with my with my human design.”)
Instead of having “good posture” (which can encourage a rigid, immobile and uncomfortable way of being), I think instead of having “good use” (which means I’m neither collapsed, nor overly stiffened into uprightness, but moving easily in and out of balance in a dynamic and expansive way).
Instead of being “focused” (which implies a forced, narrow, reactive, divided andexclusive field of attention), I think instead of being “easily present” (which implies an easy, expansive, responsive, integrated andinclusive field of attention).
Instead of doing things “perfectly”, where pedagogy is concerned (which can lead to a rigid and inflexible approach that can stifle improvement), I think instead of doing things “optimally” (which allows room for inquiry and flexibility, and takes into account my human design, as well as my specific skill level and challenges; optimal is the best that can be done in the present moment, all things considered).
Instead of “my body”, where movement, posture and breathing are concerned (which can dis-coordinate my thoughts to my actions; as in “What am I doing with my body?”), I think instead of “myself” (which helps me to work in a holistic, constructive manner; as in “What am I doing with myself?”
And there are many more such loaded words…
So how do you use words when thinking about practicing/playing your instrument? Is it possible that just changing a few of these words can lead to a better experience, to even greater efficiency of effort?
It sure has been possible for me and my students.
Keep in mind that my words are not written in stone. These are words (thoughts, or “directions”, as we might call them in Alexander Technique lingo) that work best for me and for some of my students, and they change over time as understanding deepens and need dictates.
I’m constantly exploring and expanding how I speak to myself as I play music, as well as how my Alexander students think to themselves. It’s a work in progress. Just as it should be.
