Monthly Archives: December 2011

Reflecting Upon The Joy Of Sharing Knowledge

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I’ve been writing this blog for about a half a year now, and, in the spirit of the holiday season, I’d like to express my gratitude for all the unexpected gifts that came with writing it.

My initial desire to start this blog came from a genuine rebirth of passion I was experiencing this past year as a musician. In particular, I was excited by the things I was discovering in both my technical approach to playing music, and in my artistic development and growth. All of these great discoveries were driven by deep exploration and application of the principles of the Alexander Technique.

And as I share these Alexander principles to help my students to learn to play music with greater ease, confidence, authentic expression and joy, I feel as if I’m involved in a continuous, ever growing exploration of the human condition as it pertains to creating art.

What I learn from my students, I apply to myself. What I learn from myself, I share with them.  A circle of continuous growth, both teacher and student being blessed by the experience of the other.

F.M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technique) referred to his work as being “psycho-physical”, in that what we think conditions our muscular responses, and in turn our responses condition our thinking. It isn’t just that the mind and body are connected. It is that the mind and body are an inseparable entity, something Alexander referred to as the “self”.

In the simplest sense, the Alexander Technique is the practical study of the use of the self. We begin by observing our thinking to notice the quality of how we’re carrying out an activity. Is it tense, fluid, easy, forced, balanced, awkward, rushed…? As we learn to redirect our thinking, the quality of what we do improves. Significantly.

By keeping this always in mind, I’m able to address many issues important to my improvement as a musician (and to my students, too!)

So with the desire to share what I’ve learned (and am continuing to learn) with serious musicians, I began writing articles. And of course, to help people find my articles, I’ve been learning various ways of reaching out: social media, visiting and sharing on other blogs, forums, podcasts, etc.

In reaching out, I seem to affirm over and over this simple truth: People who are passionate about what they do love to share their knowledge to help others. I am constantly inspired by some of the folks I’ve run into who tirelessly put information out there to make other people lives better.

Not long after I started writing this blog, I discovered a great group of saxophonists on Facebook. This group was founded by a fine saxophonist and very generous person by the name of Rocky Gordon, who is always vigilant in keeping the group growing and staying on topic. There are some very high profile musicians in this group, such as Tim Price, Mel Martin, Terry Landry, Dave Moody, Brandon Fields, and many others ,who are so  generous and gracious about sharing they’re wisdom, experience, opinion and love of playing the saxophone. I’ve learned a great deal from many of these fine folks.

Again, the most inspiring thing is to witness how freely and tirelessly these great artists share their knowledge. It gives me a beautiful, optimistic feeling, like a model of how we all could live our lives all the time: helping each other, honoring and respecting our differences, giving passionately and unconditionally.

If you look at my blog roll, you’ll find some sites of others whose generosity of spirit, wisdom and experience have helped me to help myself and help my students. One person in particular I’ve developed a very nice relationship with from my blog roll is Doron Orenstein, who runs Best.Saxophone.Website.Ever.com.

Doron is deeply committed to providing highly useful, always interesting content about all aspects of playing the saxophone. He is a great writer, who is articulate, humorous, creative and downright cleaver. Recently I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of contributing to an upcoming ebook that he’s writing about playing the saxophone. I’m very much looking forward to its release.

I feel in debt to my other blog roll colleagues as well. In particular, Janet Horvath (author of Playing Less Hurt) is always an inspiration in how she’s constantly finding and sharing great information about keeping musicians healthy, and other many interesting and fun topics in music. Her energy, passion and commitment are like food for my soul.

If you’re at all interested in the Alexander Technique, I highly recommend that you visit Robert Rickover’s massive Alexander Technique Website. Robert is another person who works selflessly and tirelessly to share knowledge and information and to provide a network of communication and access to distribute it.  I’m deeply grateful.

I’ve also had such great support, feedback and insight from my friends on Facebook and on Twitter. I feel like I’m finding an ever growing group of musicians that are open and ready for the kinds of ideas I’m sharing. It’s a great feeling to be heard and appreciated by these folks.

In the coming year, I’ll probably expand the blog a bit. I’ve had lots of requests for more video and photo images in my posts, so I’ll be working toward that. My aim is to help my fellow musicians. I’m indebted to those of you who have shared with me and allowed me to share. I wish you all a happy, prosperous, and growth-filled New Year!

Think More And Play Less To Optimize Your Practice Time

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I’ve been reflecting lately on how the structure and quality of my saxophone practice has evolved over the years since discovering the Alexander Technique. I think every serious musician can look back and notice the change in process and approach to their practice routine. Much of this evolution takes place because of edification (refining or eliminating ineffective efforts) , some of it because of change in perceived need (taking on new musical challenges, styles, interests, etc.)

Though the particulars of my practice continue to change to serve my ever emerging aesthetic impulses, the biggest change in my practice has been in approach. In any given amount of practice time, I’m simply playing less than I used to. Way less.

So what am I doing (if not playing) when I practice? I’m taking time to really think about what I’m doing.

This manifests itself in the following ways:

I stop much more frequently than I used to. This is key to all my improvement. I do this to give myself a chance to process what I’m doing, and to make sure that I am doing what I think I’m doing. By always allowing myself to stop at any point in my practice (mid-note, mid-phrase, mid-exercise, or?) I keep myself in a constant state of receptive fluidity and flexibility. It gives me a sense that I am always in control of what I’m doing. That I’m acting out of choice, and not simply habit.

I listen carefully to what I’m hearing in relation to what I’m thinking. It’s easy to get stuck into either hearing yourself at the expense of not noticing what’s going on in your body, or paying too much attention to what’s going on in (usually) one part of your body at the expense of not really hearing yourself. The idea is to integrate what you hear with what you sense in your body as a whole, integrated process. For me this means to always “observe my thinking” as I listen to the music I’m making. What am I thinking when I play well? When I’m not playing so well? Am I doing what I think I’m doing?

I rehearse things mentally before I play them. There are huge gains to be made by just taking a moment to mentally rehearse something before playing it. It gives me a chance to experience the thought process necessary to best produce the music. I can pre-bulid the neuromuscular pattern without any habits of tension that I might bring into the actual execution of the music. This becomes a natural process in thinking that I bring into all my performance and practice.

I rest much more. In a one-hour time period, I will probably take 3 or 4 mini-breaks (1 to 4 minutes) completely away from my instrument. I seem to do this every 10 to 15 minutes. If I’m practicing multiple hours in a row, I’ll also take a 5 to 10 minute break every hour to lie down in constructive rest. Besides helping my avoid injury and strain, it keeps me feeling receptive and present (fresh!) for the entire practice period. I’m able to really absorb things much more effectively this way.

Some of the smaller details of my approach show up as things like: really listening to the metronome to internalize the tempo before I start playing; pausing between key changes when I’m working out a particular scale or arpeggio pattern; taking time to imagine my pitch before I play my long tones or overtones; stopping completely between one exercise and the next to check in with myself and redirect my efforts and intentions.

Less playing, more thinking. Time well spent.

When a musician comes to me for Alexander lessons, I always want to observe his or her practice process. So during one lesson I’ll ask them to just practice they way they normally would for about 15 or 20 minutes as I observe without interrupting them.

What I usually see is nonstop playing, divided thinking, and escalating effort. If it’s a string player there usually isn’t even a pause. If it’s a wind instrumentalist there is usually lots of gasping going on as they jump right back into the fray over and over again, each time with ever increasing tension. (Keep in mind that many of these students have come to me because of chronic pain from playing their instruments.)

So one of the first things I get them to do is to learn how to stop (not always an easy thing for some). Once they’ve learned how to stop, they can learn when to stop. And this starts the process of positive, lasting change. Not just in the area of pain and tension management, but aesthetically as well. They learn to really hear themselves deeply as they play, and connect what they hear with their entire selves, body, mind and spirit. They replace habit with choice.

So how do you practice? How much do you pause to think, to really listen, to really understand what you are doing with yourself as you play your instrument? Do you feel exhausted, or exhilarated after a typical practice session? How much silence is there during a one-hour practice period?

I know that it might seem counterintuitive to stop so much during your practice, but that’s the beauty of it. It takes you out of the real time demands of performance to give a chance to think, to notice, to assess, to, well…practice.

Research has shown that to learn something,  it is not simply a matter of how many times the thing is repeated so much as the quality of attention used to practice the thing. Perhaps this is why many of the great virtuosi practice less than  many of us might think.

I remember reading about the great trumpet virtuoso, Rafael Mendez. In an interview, towards the end of his still brilliant playing career, the interviewer asked, “Do you still practice 5 to 6 hour a day?” He answered, “No, I only practice half that amount these days, but I really listen to myself.” Playing less, thinking more.

Want To Improve Your Jazz Playing? Take A Style Vacation

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The language of music. The language of improvisation. The language of Jazz. The language of Bach. The language of Lester Young….What does it mean exactly when we refer to something in music as a language? It certainly means different things to different people.

To some it implies something immediately distinguishable, yet flexible and changing. To others it might mean an exact codification of patterns, harmonic ideas and melodies…”licks”, as it were. I think we use the language metaphor because in music, as in speech, we are hoping to express ourselves, and be understood by others in a clear manner.

It seems natural for anybody studying a particular genre or style of music to spend an extraordinary amount of time studying, listening to, transcribing and analyzing music particular to that genre or style. And for sure, this is a reasonable place to start in order to absorb the so-called “language” and “logic” of the music.

But one of the wonderful things about the modern, living, continuing-to-unfold jazz tradition, is that there is so much room to absorb new languages. Jazz has a rich tradition of this.

Think back to the many different stylistic elements jazz has absorbed: gospel music, field hollers, rural blues, broadway show tunes, modern classical composition, Latin music (everything from Afro-Carribean to South American and beyond), Rock and Roll, Gypsy music (and other ethnic folk musics), just to name a few.

Something that the vast majority of modern jazz innovators have in common was (is) their deep and active interest in music outside of the jazz idiom. Artists such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Lennie Tristano and Ornette Coleman listened to and studied a vast array of music outside of anything that could be called jazz: from Bach, to Bartok, to West African folk music, to Chinese opera, to Indian classical music, to…

And all of this study and listening added to the uniqueness and expansiveness of their artistic output. It is partly why we find them so unique, so compelling.

So If you have a fairly good handle on the basic elements of jazz improvisation, such as rhythmic control, playing comfortably over chord changes, knowing some standard repertoire, etc., here’s something to consider to make your improvisational language richer, more distinctive and personal: Take a style vacation.

Take a few weeks or even months getting away from actively listening to jazz. Completely. Find some another type of music that lights you up, and spend some serious time with it.

It doesn’t matter what that music is, as long as it is something that really speaks to your heart and mind.

But don’t just listen to the music, study it. Transcribe pieces and solos, and analyze them. Improvise from these pieces as well. Find musical ideas you like and put them in all 12 keys. Absorb the language of articulation, time, Harmony (where applicable) and feel of the music you’re studying. In essence, do what you did (or are continuing to do) with your jazz studies.

I also suggest taking a vacation from practicing jazz. Instead, practice learning to improvise in your newly chosen idiom. Don’t worry, your jazz playing won’t get worse. In fact, it will get ultimately much better. Here’s why:

  • You are still engaging your brain in the process of improvisation. The “imagination-to-ear-to-sound” skills are still being called upon in a big way.
  • You are developing a different way of thinking about note organization. Again, this is a brain skill that you will bring into your jazz playing with (what I predict) surprisingly good results.
  • You are learning to hear music in a different way. If you transcribe, as I’ve suggested, your ears will get huge.
  • You are expanding your conception of rhythm and articulation.  Though at first it may seem foreign to your jazz playing, it will ultimately enrich and expand it. You will absorb this new time/articulation feel into your jazz playing, and make it a part of your personal language.
  • You are learning new forms to improvise over. Whether you are working with closed-ended bar forms, open-ended forms, such as modes, or just free, thematic improvisation, you’ll really broaden your jazz concept by becoming fluent improvising in your new idiom.
  • You are learning to imagine your jazz improvisational language in a broader context. Remember that you’ll be bringing your improvisational skills as a jazz musician into a new idiom. This in itself will help you to think differently about how you play.

I have spent various periods in my practice career taking these kinds of diversions, these “style vacations”. Amongst them studying: Balkan folk music, the music of Charles Ives, Cajun folk music, the music of Bela Bartok, Astor Piazzolla and Hank Williams.

I’ve looked at these different kinds of music deeply, with real passion and curiosity. I’ve never consciously tried to apply a single idea or element I’ve absorbed from studying this music, but I always notice how richly different my jazz playing becomes when I return to my jazz studies.

So give yourself a break from your continuous pursuit of the jazz language and style. See what emerges. You might be very pleasantly surprised.

Practicing Music: Paying Attention To “How” Instead Of “What”

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“The experience you want is in the process of getting it. If you have something, give it up. Getting it, not having it, is what you want.”

-F.M. Alexander

On of the great temptations when I practice my saxophone is to try to “memorize” how it feels in my body when I’m playing well. Fortunately for me, I rarely ever yield to this temptation (anymore). If I did, I might find myself losing touch with the most important element of my progress: the thinking process I use when I play my best.

It’s easy to disconnect our consciousness from our activities by aiming directly for a feeling  of the result we’re after. In the language of the Alexander Technique, this is working along the lines of the “end-gaining” principle. When we end-gain, we bring all our attention and effort directly to achieving a desired result, without sufficient consideration to the process of how we can best achieve that result.

When I do this practicing the saxophone (or engaging in just about any activity) the results are usually less than optimal. This is because I’m being guided by an unreliable source: my habit.

For better or for worse, we are typically guided by habit, and our habits have a certain feeling of “rightness” to us even if they aren’t helping us. (F.M. Alexander described this as an unreliable sensory awareness.) Much of my progress in playing the saxophone since I started applying the Alexander principles has involved learning to not be guided by the feeling of my habits to achieve the results I’m after. Instead, I aspire to be guided by my reasoning, by what I can honestly discern.

Alexander said that rather than going after our desired results directly (guided by the less than reliable sensations of our habits) we would be better served by paying attention to the quality of the process we use to achieve those results. He described this as paying attention to the “means-whereby”. In essence, it is a matter of being more “process oriented” than “results oriented”.

And so I’ve found over and over, both as teacher and as performer, that giving the quality of process top priority is the best way to insure desired results. Consistently.

This is not a new idea. If you’ve ever read the Tao Te Ching, studied Zen, or experienced many of the other forms of eastern mindfulness disciplines, you’ll regularly encounter this idea. It seems to be universally true.

Before I discovered this principle, I practiced in quite a different manner than I do nowadays. I really got no sense of satisfaction from my practice session unless I felt certain certain things as I practiced. “Does it feel right?” was becoming more and more of an indicator of success or failure in my practice attempts.

As a result, not only was I not allowing myself to change and grow as much as I could, but also, I was feeling frustrated by the inconsistencies of my efforts. Not to mention that a lot of what I was hoping to feel was actually nothing more than unnecessary, habitual muscular tension. It wasn’t helping me at all!

These day when I practice, I’m giving my thinking process top priority. This often manifests itself into deeply mindful work, as I pay attention to the quality of how I’m using myself as I practice.

This primarily involves two things that were missing from my pre-Alexander practice sessions:

  1. Letting myself stop frequently to prevent habitual tension patterns, and to understand specifically what went wrong (what I’d like to prevent).
  2. Allowing myself to slow things way down to connect my thinking to the activity (particularly when working on technically challenging material).

As I do this, I’m always coming back to discerning the quality of my own use as I play saxophone. Where am I stiffening unnecessarily? How is my balance? Am I mostly contracting or expanding, tightening or releasing? How is my breathing? Am I rushing ahead in my thinking, or staying with myself (and the music!) in the present moment? Am I tense and anticipatory, or am I flexible and yielding?

I’m not using these thoughts to distract me in my practicing process. I’m simply using them as the criteria for discerning if what I’m doing is really what I want to be doing.

When I approach my practice in this manner, I’m staying with (quoting Alexander, above) the “getting it” rather than the “having it”.

You may have heard the saying, “To play faster, you have to practice slower.” Part of the reason this works for so many technically brilliant performers (I’m thinking here of the great clarinetist, Eddie Daniels, as he describes his approach to gaining technical fluency and velocity), is that it gives them a chance to really process what they’re doing.

Add to this paying attention to the quality of how you are using yourself, and you have a surefire recipe for continued, consistent progress.

So next time you’re having a really good day practicing, when everything seems to be going well, take time to notice some things. Notice the quality of muscular tension in your body, specifically through your head, neck, shoulders and back. See if you can understand what your not doing that you normally would do (where are you not working so hard, not tensing so much). Then observe your own thinking process. See if you can connect this kind of thinking to the ease that you have in your body as you play your instrument.

Remember, it’s your thinking process that determines the quality of your playing more than anything else. By shifting your attention from what you are doing, to how you are doing it, is a big step in the right direction to cultivate the kind of thinking that helps you the most.