Monthly Archives: March 2015

Optimizing Practice: Habit Versus Choice

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After teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians for a number of years now, one thing I can assert with confidence is that there’s never such thing as a “typical” lesson.

In fact, I usually have no idea what I’ll be working on with my student at the beginning of a lesson. My only agenda is to follow her/his needs, as I observe and ask questions.

But there is always one underlying theme to any lesson I give in the Alexander Technique: habit versus choice.

The subject of habit versus choice is always front and center in any Alexander Technique lesson. The musicians who seek my help do so because, in the simplest sense,  their (primarily unconscious) habits are creating difficulties for them as they make music.

It might be excess tension that is leading to pain and/or injury. It might be an issue of coordination that is interfering with their skills. It might be that they’re just stuck in their progress, no matter how hard they’re working to find a way forward.

Whatever the reason, it all comes down to habit. So often, what I work on with my students is teaching them how to replace habit with choice.

Because many habits are so deeply ingrained, they can tend to fall below the consciousness of even the most self-aware musician.

This is partly out of necessity. I mean, after all, a habit is really just a response pattern that you learn in order to make a particular movement/gesture/posture immediately available. In a sense, it’s your nervous system’s attempt at efficiency. For example, you wouldn’t get very far if you had to completely reinvent how to hold your instrument every day. You can rely upon habit to do that for you.

Yet “how you hold your instrument” might be the very thing that is causing some of your problems, especially if you have chronic pain, or get easily fatigued as you play, or struggle with your technique.

This is where choice comes into play. Through choice, you can learn that there is a better way to hold your instrument, a way that is not only in agreement with your desired musical outcome, but also, with your human structural design.

This begins by bringing the unconscious (habit) into consciousness (choice). In fact, once you bring habit into your consciousness, you bring it into the realm of choice.

For the practical purposes of a musician, I categorize habits in two ways:

1. Reactive

2. Strategic

Reactive habit is what you do with yourself immediately, and unconsciously, as you begin to play your instrument, or sing (as I’ve explained above). It starts the instant you think  about playing, and manifests itself into a set of bodily reactions (posture/movement).

Many of these reactions are necessary to the act of playing.

Yet many others are not…

For example, if you stiffen your neck and pull your head down into your spine as you pull your shoulders up toward your ears as you are preparing to play, that’s an habitual response to the thought  of playing that will never  help you to achieve your desired goal (no matter your instrument).

What you’re doing in effect is interfering with your gross motor coordination as you attempt to carry out a skill of fine motor coordination. It’s simply counterproductive.

Many of the problems of pain, as well as coordination, that a musician struggles with are a result of their reactive habits (how they maintain posture and balance, how they move as they play).

A large part of my job is in bringing these reactive habits into my students awareness, and then teaching them a practical way to prevent them.

Strategic habit is how you steer your practice efforts in the long run, and in the moment:

How effectively do you choose, organize and carry out your work in the practice room? How well do you regress and progress an exercise to suit your need? How willing are you to explore being “wrong” to find the possibility of a new kind of “right”? How flexible are you in your practice process in general? In your daily practice routine?

Being habitually stuck with practice strategies is a huge source of frustration for many serious musicians. Bringing habit into the light can give clearer choices about how to proceed in a more productive and efficient way.

And of course, many “strategic” habits are supported by “reactive” habits and vice versa. (Rigidity in thinking goes hand in hand with rigidity in the body.)

So if you’d like to change, start by addressing your habits. Question things. Notice what you do with yourself as you start playing. What happens in your neck? What do you do with your balance? What happens in your breathing? What about your arms and shoulders? Your legs and feet?

Once you notice something you “do”, ask yourself, “Do I want to do that?” If the answer is “yes”, then ask yourself if what you do is helping you along, and is accordance with your human design (this is where a good Alexander Technique teacher can really help), and in support of your desired outcomes as a musician.

If the answer is “no”, you’ve just moved habit closer into the realm of choice by opening up the possibility of changing  how you respond. You can choose to rethink what you do.

When you choose, you make yourself free to improve, free to move toward optimizing your potential, free to believe in your ability to change and adapt, free to step with confidence into the unknown.

Four Skills Every Beginning Jazz Improviser Must Develop

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One of the unfortunate things that beginning students of jazz improvisation often face is frustration. To create music spontaneously can seem like such a vast, daunting, almost shapeless subject.

As a teacher, many of the novices I encounter have already started practicing improvisation. But because they are working on it in an illogical, or inefficient way, they don’t seem to get past square one:

I can’t seem to make any music out of it all when I try to improvise. Just random, seemingly unrelated attempts at stringing notes together.

Exasperations such as this are quite common from the beginner, especially if she/he has lots of experience (and reasonable skill) playing notated music.

How do you approach such a discipline as jazz? Where do you begin?

You begin with having a genuine passion about the music, and with the thrilling process of spontaneous creation we call improvisation. Without that, nothing really happens.

Improvisation is a process of self-expression. It’s not a “right/wrong” type of skill like engineering or grammar. You can’t really learn it in a sterile, “test tube” kind of way. It’s more of a “I want to say it like this, because that’s how I feel” kind of thing.

If you’re passionate about the music, you can then commit to regular serious study (regardless how limited your time is).

So what to study? How do you minimize frustration?

Well (if you haven’t already), listen to lots and lots of recordings of the artists you most admire. The more you listen, the clearer your internal conception of the jazz language becomes.

Then, work on developing a constructive  practice process to help you cultivate the skills that will enable you to express yourself within this language.

There are essentially four skills that every jazz musician is constantly (or should be!) developing in order to grow. These four skills are necessary no matter where you are in your journey. They are:

1.Hearing-You need to be constantly working toward connecting what you hear  with what you play  (or would like to play). Ultimately, improvisation is a process that is driven by your aural imagination. This applies to rhythm and time feel, pitch and form (see below). The more vividly you hear something, the more likely it is to come of your instrument as you improvise. This includes listening deeply to the improvising musicians you would most like to emulate. Pick a solo that you absolutely love, and listen to it as many times as it takes for you to be able to accurately sing it in unison with the soloist.

2. Controlling time and rhythm-You must be able to move. It’s that simple. Improvisation involves moving pitch in time. If you have nothing to imagine (which rhythms, what kind of time feel), you lack the necessary impetus to move.

3. Controlling pitch-Of course you need to gain control of the notes you’re playing. Whether you’re improvising over harmonic progressions, modes, or even freely, the question of how you choose and organize pitch is a never-ending pursuit. Scales, chords, passing tones, melodic patterns, classic licks, etc., all need to be studied and absorbed over time in your practice process. But all of your note choices must be integrated with (and driven by) your rhythmic and time/feel impulse.

4. Internalizing form-Being able to feel  bar forms, song structures, etc.,  without having to think about it (get distracted by it) is crucial  if you’re going to express yourself  freely as you improvise. Learning to feel the building blocks of two-measure phrases and then learning to connect these blocks to internalize longer forms (like standard songs, for example) is necessary to allow you to play confidently with other musicians, as well as give you a broader perspective of the canvas on which you’re painting your improvised picture.

It is important that you prioritize these skills in the most productive manner, and organize your practice efforts around these priorities.

The biggest mistake I see novice improvers make is putting far too much emphasis on which notes to play. Sure, pitch is important. It’s very important. But if you can’t move, if you can’t dance with the pitches, you have nothing but nondescript spatterings of random notes.

Start with controlling time and rhythm  instead. Start by working on simple, pre-determined rhythmic patterns, with a limited pitch set (for example, a pentatonic scale, or blues scale). Find easily singable melodic patterns that you can bring to life. You should be able to dance  to what you play. Work in two-bar phrase segments, in order to help you deepen your sense of form.

The second biggest mistake I see novice improvisers make is biting off more than they can chew. Simpler, easier, clearer and more precise…all better choices. If you’re getting frustrated with what you’re working on, regress it. Make it more doable and  more satisfying. Avoid what the great pianist Bill Evans described as “approximating”. Build patiently on what you have.

Sing as much as you can! If you learn a blues scale, for example, practice improvising without your instrument. Sing your solo. And listen to your favorite improvisers very mindfully, noting as many details as you can about their time feel, phrasing, rhythmic  and pitch choices. Listen to a solo until you can sing it vividly, bringing it to life with these details.

Your clear conception in conjunction with your ability to move (rhythm, time, form) will have you steadily and surely developing your true voice as an improviser.

Practicing Music: There Are No Foolproof Exercises

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Musicians love to share advice in an attempt to help other musicians. (I’m no exception.) And it probably goes without saying that some of the advice is helpful, and some isn’t.

One of the most common forms of advice that I often take issue with is when a musician blindly prescribes a particular exercise to another musician to solve a particular problem.

It’s typically a generic, well-known standard form of exercise. Something like, “If you’re having problems with your intonation on saxophone, you need to practice overtones.”

Now, to be clear, as a saxophonist, I find great value in practicing overtones. Not only can regular overtone practice help with intonation, but also, it can help with tone color, control and resonance.

So you might ask, “What’s the problem?”

The problem is that unless you choose the exercise for the right reason (the most effective prescription) and carry it out with the right conception, it can actually create more problems than it solves. (Notice I said above that overtone exercises can help you; not will help you.)

Mindless, and/or misdirected practice is often more harmful than no practice at all.

Recently, I gave a Skype lesson to an excellent young saxophonist. He sought my help because of difficulties he was having with tone production and endurance. In short, he complained of working really hard when playing, often feeling exhausted after playing a long phrase.

I asked him about practicing. He told me that he spent lots of time everyday practicing overtones (sometimes two hours per day!)

When I asked why he did this, the mystery of his problems came to light.

In essence, he had the wrong conception about what the aim of overtone practice was. He thought it was (primarily) about “strengthening” the airstream coming from the diaphragm, abdominal and back muscles.

For that reason, he was pushing the air forcefully (very forcefully) into the instrument in an attempt to change pitches in the overtone series. It was all this excessive pushing of the air that was wearing him out.

So we had to talk about what the main objective in overtone study on the saxophone actually is: voicing. (specifically, voicing in conjunction with airstream)

Voicing entails the necessary changes in the oral cavity (soft palate, tongue, etc.) to accommodate the vibrations from the reed and mouthpiece. When a saxophonist has good intonation, a powerful and colorful sound, voicing is playing a major role.

When practiced with this aim  in mind, overtones help a saxophonist cultivate a responsive, flexible, well-coordinated oral cavity/vocal tract/ airstream combination.

But all this overtone practice was making this saxophonist work harder and less efficiently. His conception was that overtone exercises are about increasing strength, when in reality, they are about improving coordination.

So why did he spend so much time on overtones? Because that was the conventional advice given him by many well-respected saxophonists. To them, it was foolproof. “Work on overtones, solve your problem.” It’s a no-brainer.

Not necessarily, so it seems.

By clarifying the aim  of overtone practice, this saxophonist gave himself a chance to change his habits: less jaw tension (his jaw was doing the work of his vocal tract); less tension in his shoulders and back; better able to hear and respond to his actual sound.

And so it is with any exercise. As an Alexander Technique teacher, it is not unusual for me to encounter musicians who have religiously practiced exercises in a fundamentally misdirected way.

If you’ve been practicing the same type of “foolproof” exercise for many months (or even years), yet the problem you have that led you into choosing this exercise is not significantly lessened, you might want to reconsider your choices. Here are three things to keep in mind when considering an exercise:

1. Know why you’ve chosen a particular exercise. Try not to blindly trust the advice of others. Make it a point to understand cause and effect: “This will help me improve because…” You should be able to fill in the blank because you understand the physiological as well as the mechanical principles being brought into play. Is it an issue of strength? (it rarely is, by the way); Is it an issue of coordination? Hearing? Air flow? Time and/or rhythm?

2. Make sure you know what the specific aim of the exercise is. See that your conscious intentions (i.e., the desired outcome) is in line with your efforts as you practice. You should have a clear idea of what a successful attempt and outcome is as you practice the exercise. For example, “my resonance increases”, “my pitch becomes more stable”, “my execution of sixteenth notes becomes more even and balanced”, etc.

3. Pay attention to how you use yourself when you carry out the exercise. Don’t stiffen yourself in an over-efforting manner as you carry out the exercise. Let your head, neck, shoulders and back be free and mobile. No exercise in music should make your entire body exhausted from just a few minutes of practice.

Keep these things in mind, and remain a healthy skeptic when it comes to advice. In the end, it’s not so much what  you practice, as it is why  and  how  you practice it.