Category Archives: Alexander Technique and Music

Two Things You Should Be Clear About Each Moment You Begin To Play

One of the things I emphasize when I’m coaching a musician is the importance of regularly redirecting thought whenever practicing or performing. It is this “redirecting” process that is an essential element of constructive change.

It is quite easy to fall into an autopilot frame of mind when spending any length of time with your instrument, letting yourself run on unconscious habit. Yet whenever this happens, you’re missing out on opportunities for improvement.

Each time you start a phrase, or even just begin to play a single note, you will have the greatest chance for success if you affirm and clarify two things in your consciousness:

Intention
Direction

Both of these are things that you wish for, things that you would like to have as you play.

Let’s start with intention. The way I define it, your intention is simply what you’d like to have happen musically.

Now, to be clear, intention has nothing to do directly with the mechanical aspects of executing the music, and has everything to do with how you imagine the music.

Your intention includes, but is not limited to:

What you feel, what you’d like to express, what you’d like to communicate. It’s about the meaning of the music.

How vividly you imagine your sound, including color, dynamics, articulation…even pitch.

How your imagined expression will manifest itself in time (rhythmic clarity).

The “bigger picture” of your imagined expression, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

How this whole will interface with the other musicians (where applicable).

The more detailed your wish is for the musical expression, the more likely your brain will speak to your muscles in an effective way to carry the wish out. As one of my students (an outstanding professional French Horn player) says:

“Let the ear lead everything else.”

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention things like “embouchure”, “breath support”, “hand position”, “fingering”, etc. These things are not part of your musical intention. They are simply things that serve your intention. These are mechanical elements, not expressive ones.

Now, of course, it is fine to have some of these “mechanical” components in your thinking as you play. Just remember that they are not part of your musical intention. Rather, they are part of your overall direction.

Your intention is nested into your direction, but your direction is primarily about how you are going to carry out your intention. It’s about how you’re planning to coordinate your entire self to realize your imagined expression.

Your direction includes, but is not limited to:

What you are doing with your head, neck, shoulders and back (letting them work together in an integrated, free way).

How you are maintaining balance (and finding support and stability).

The mobility of your joints (including your hips, knees and ankles).

Your breathing (including the mobility and freedom of your ribs).

What your eyes are doing (and your facial expression, in general).

How you attend to the mechanical details as you express the music (fingering, support, embouchure, etc.)

Even the clearest of musical intentions won’t necessarily overcome a poorly directed, overly tense, and uncoordinated effort. To optimize your chance of success, you need to see to both. Intention and direction.

A key benefit of studying the Alexander Technique is in learning to improve how you use yourself in activity. It’s about learning to consciously and constructively direct your energy to most effectively serve your intentions.

The reason a good Alexander Technique teacher is so essential to this process, is that it is possible that you might be:

Unclear about the best, most efficient and effective way to use yourself. (Unfortunately, some of this could be a result of poorly prescribed pedagogy.)

Or,

Unconscious of the habits of use (movement, posture, reaction) that are interfering with your music making intentions.

(And of course, you might be challenged by a combination of both these issues.)

The aim of the Alexander Technique is to help you clearly understand how to use yourself in accordance with your design. By consciously subtracting habits of unnecessary tension, you learn to make music with greater ease, efficiency, clarity, consistency and satisfaction.

It’s about directing your efforts to help give you what you want.

As you become clearer and more detailed about your musical intentions, along with becoming more effective at directing your effort, you’ll find that you spend less conscious energy managing the specific mechanical details (what your tongue, fingers, etc. are doing) as you play.

You’ll learn to gradually trust that your brain knows quite well how to carry out your intentions, and does so best when you leave yourself alone enough for it to happen. This allows the music to flow from you more freely and expressively.

So next time you’re practicing, see if you can notice how clear you are with your intention and your direction. If you’re like a lot of reasonably skilled musicians, you might find that your intention is sometimes muddled by too many mechanical instructions (embouchure, air support, fingering, etc.), and that your direction does not include your entire self in a constructive way.

Notice how and where you create tension as you begin to play. Notice if/how you begin to take yourself out of balance. Notice where you begin to brace yourself. Notice where your attention goes. (Does it become narrow, inward and exclusive, or expansive, multi-directional and inclusive?) Then, consider how some of these things can impact the quality of your music making.

Notice how clear you are with the details of your intention. How vividly do you hear what you’re going to play before you play it? How clear are you about the meaning of the music? How clear are you about what you wish to communicate?

It takes time, curiosity, and persistent practice to effectively couple intention with direction in this way, but it is very much worth the effort.

Start each note, each phrase, each time you begin to play, with clear intention and constructive, inclusive direction, and you’re on your way to continued improvement and greater satisfaction.

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.

Strength, Coordination And Endurance: Avoiding Confusion

Playing cello and chopping wood

Yes, it does take strong shoulder girdle muscles and back muscles to play an instrument like the cello. But it doesn’t take nearly the strength to play the cello as it does to chop a pile of wood.

Yet you might find a cellist who can chop wood all afternoon and not get nearly as exhausted in his neck, back and shoulders as he would practicing cello for an hour. (I actually had one such Alexander Technique student as this.)

If you take into consideration the quote above by Herbert Spencer, the best thing a cellist can do to develop the necessary endurance to play the cello would be to, well… play the cello.

According to Spencer’s principle, it is the activity of playing the cello that builds the kind of muscular endurance specific for the task. (In exercise science, this is the training principle of specificity.)

So why does this cellist, who can chop wood all day, get fatigued so easily playing his instrument?

The answer is simple: He is coordinating himself in a way that is counterproductive to playing cello.

It is a matter of what he is doing with his entire body as he carries out his skill.

In the case of this particular musician, he was over-straightening his spine, while at the same time stiffening his neck, as he held on rigidly to his elevated shoulders.

Because of all this holding on, his arms were not free to move out of his back. His shoulders were doing way too much work, and his upper back muscles (which are very well-designed for such a task) were doing far too little. His shoulders would get painfully exhausted after just 20 or 30 minutes of playing.

You could hear it in his sound, which tended to be small and sometimes brittle.

To make a long story short, as he began to improve his coordination (through his work with the Alexander Technique), he began to improve his endurance. Just that simple.

If you find yourself constantly struggling with endurance as you play or sing, it is likely a problem of coordination. You can take any very fit and strong person, have them carry out a task in a mechanically disadvantageous enough way (poorly coordinated), and they’ll get exhausted in no time at all.

Strength and endurance

Now to be clear, strength most certainly has an impact upon endurance. But let’s also be clear about what strength and endurance are.

From a functional point of view, strength can be defined as the ability to exert force against an external resistance. Whereas, endurance is the ability to maintain low levels of force for extended periods of time.

In a well-coordinated organism, increasing muscular strength can have a marked improvement upon endurance. But for others, if these stronger muscles are not coordinated in an optimum way, there might be little to no improvement in endurance.

I’ve not yet had a musician come to me for help who has needed to “strengthen” anything, directly. They just need to rethink and re-experience kinesthetically, a more efficient coordination. This coordination comes about primarily by subtracting unnecessary, habitual tension, and the lasting changes typically develop gradually, but surely.

What you can do

So again, if you struggle with endurance, or have students who do, here are a few things to keep in mind that might help:

The test of time-If you’ve been working for more than a couple of months on a particular exercise in an attempt to address an endurance issue, and you are noticing little or no improvement, you need to change course. Adaptations in strength and endurance come relatively quickly. If you’re going on for prolonged periods without improvement, either change the exercise, or (more important!) consider that your problem is one of coordination. (This is where a good Alexander teacher can help.)

Think of the whole instead of the parts-As I mentioned above, you are using your entire self, your whole body, to play. Begin to notice where you might be unnecessarily tensing yourself or taking yourself out of balance as you play. See if you can begin to lessen the effort.

Specifity is best-If you think that you actually do need more strength to deal with certain demands of playing your instrument, aim at doing things that are as specific as possible to the task at hand. For example, daily long tone exercises on a wind instrument to strengthen the facial/embouchure muscles are much more effective than a series of “tension” exercises without the instrument (like vigorously pressing and releasing your lips and corners in multiple repetitions). Specific activity leads to optimum functional strength.

Equipment-Sometimes what is making you exhausted is simply poor equipment choices. I recently gave a Skype consultation to a very good tenor saxophonist who was struggling mightily with fatigue. It turned out that one of the biggest factors was his mouthpiece. The lay and tip opening were just not right for his anatomy and his conception of sound. When he changed to a better mouthpiece, his problem was effectively solved. Stay open-minded about your equipment. As your coordination improves, sometimes your equipment needs change (this is always a good thing!)

Health considerations-It is also possible that your issue with muscular fatigue might be of a medical nature. If you’ve tried just about everything (including my suggestions here), believe it’s not an issue of coordination, yet you still have problems and/or, your condition seems to worsen, by all means seek medical consultation. It could be a variety of issues, from neurological, to autoimmune, to orthopedic, or more. Get yourself the help you need.

So it’s fine if you want to do exercises every day to increase/maintain your endurance to play. The reason many accomplished musicians do so is because they get good results from their efforts.

But I can’t help but think about what Eddy Merckx (arguably the best racing bicyclist in the history of the sport) said when asked what the best thing a serious competitive cyclist should do to improve:

“Ride lots.”

And so it should be for us. Play lots. Improve your coordination. Enjoy the results.

One Of The Most Overlooked Elements Of Effective Sight-Reading

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One of the absolute best sight readers I’ve ever had a chance to play with (a saxophonist by the name of David Hughes) had a saying about reading even the most difficult music at sight:

Sight-reading is as much an attitude as it is a skill.

And it is.

There is a good deal of agreement amongst highly skilled sight-readers that the most important thing to address as you read music for the first time is time and rhythm.

And I agree with this wholeheartedly.

If you play a few wrong notes, but “keep it going” (maintain that forward motion of the time as expressed through rhythm) you’re not only going to help the music along, but also, you’re going to increase your chances of playing the correct pitches.

Learning from a master

I can remember playing with David Hughes, as he would single-handedly hold an entire saxophone section (of good players!) together by his sheer will and his powerful sense of time.

But there was something else that he held in his attitude that made him such an effective and highly musical sight-reader.

It wasn’t so much what he did, as it was what he didn’t do when the rest of the saxophone section was struggling with a beastly new composition:

He didn’t interfere with the flow of his sound energy.

No matter how far he was stepping into unknown territory, no matter how daunting, no matter how complex (and even unfamiliar) the rhythms, no matter how dense the ink on the paper, he simply never lost the intention nor the intensity of his sound.

The rest of us, on the other hand, would sometimes just sort of fumble with our sound, lose the strength of our intentions, lose our presence. We would do this by interfering with the production and flow of our sound as we read the music.

We four saxophonists would shrink (so to speak) while we played, as David Hughes would continue to expand.

Now, don’t misunderstand. It’s not as if the bottom would drop out of our collective dynamic volume. Truth be told, there wouldn’t be that much of a noticeable change in volume.

No, it was more subtle than that. It would be as if the life force of our individual and collective sounds just became slightly imprisoned. As if all of a sudden it had lost its suppleness and color. Our collective sound became somewhat brittle.

It was the sonic manifestation of doubt, this doubt itself being manifested through our bodies.

Of course the sad irony here is that this doubt made the wrong notes and rhythms sound even more…well, “wrong”. Our mistakes became strangely amplified, whereas any mistake David would make became virtually insignificant. A beautiful illusion, of sorts.

How about you?

And that’s how your thinking can impact your functioning in any given moment, during any activity.

Whatever you do in your body as you play music (or do anything else, for that matter), is a result of your thinking. In the case of sight-reading, it’s your response/reaction to the thought of playing the music in front of you.

Learning how to change your response to better serve your wishes is at the heart of the Alexander Technique. A large part of my work when giving Alexander lessons to musicians is to help them notice their habitual reactions from moment to moment as they play.

As they learn to respond with clearer, more constructive choices, they simply play better (and feel better, too!), as they interfere less and less with their own sound energy.

To be clear, when I’m talking about “sound energy” I’m not talking only about “airflow”, as in the case of a wind instrumentalist or singer.

I see instrumentalists of all instruments reacting in ways that interfere with their sound energy as they fall into doubt: violinists who lose their luster; pianists who lose the warmth in their touch; guitarists who lose the color and resonance of their plucked strings.

And so on.

No matter what instrument you play, there is always something that happens, when you lose your sound energy: You begin to stiffen and tense yourself unnecessarily.

Sometimes this stiffening is strong and easily noticeable, but just as often, it is subtle and almost imperceptible.

But all your habits of stiffening, whether mild or violent, have one thing in common: They are some form of you holding on to yourself. Holding onto yourself instead of letting yourself be pliant, balanced, free and constructively responsive.

In holding on to yourself like this, you are also holding on to your sound, not letting it release into the air.

This “holding on” is the essence of what interferes with your sound energy, with your intention, and with your expression as you are reading something at sight.

So what can you do to address this?

Here are a few ideas/tips for you to consider:

Observe yourself-Notice how you respond when you are sight-reading something difficult. In particular, notice what you do with your neck, shoulders and jaw. No matter what instrument you play, if you tense and compress your head into your neck, narrow your shoulders and/or clench your jaw, you’ll interfere with not only your sound, but also, your technical facility. See if you can notice this pattern of tension as it manifests itself through your whole body.

Practice saying “no”-Once you’ve noticed your habits of tension, work on gradually attenuating them. Think to yourself, “As I play, I’m not stiffening my shoulders and neck. I’m allowing myself to be free and present.”

Find your weak spots-What kinds of things make you tense up most when you sight-read? Complex rhythms? Extreme ends of your range? Awkward and/or unfamiliar keys? What are the kinds of reading challenges that invite you to “go wrong” in your reactions? Find out what they are and work systematically to improve. By doing so, you’ll weaken the temptation to react unconstructively.

Work on your sound energy everyday-No matter which instrument you play, conscious work on tone production is essential daily practice. Long tones, slow, melodic phrases, overtones, etc. Your ability to get your most resonant and expressive sound needs to become second nature, without any thought to how it is done mechanically.

Practice sight-reading everyday-As obvious as this sounds, I’m still amazed at the amount of musicians who seek my help with this who do the vast majority of their sight-reading while playing in ensembles. While this experience is excellent, spending time every day reading something new is absolutely essential, not only for your ability to read the notes, but also, so you can direct yourself in such a way as to keep your habitual tension in check. Here are some specific things you can do to improve your sight-reading.

Practice keeping your sound energy front and center as you sight-read-Besides working on long tones, etc., also practice reading simple to moderately difficult music every day as you shift your focus to your sound energy.

By noticing your response, by being intimate with your sound, and by developing strong time and rhythm, you’ll help transform you attitude and your ability as a sight reader. Instead of shrinking when you step into the unknown, you can learn to expand. I’ll leave you with another quote by sight-reader extraordinaire, David Hughes:

When in doubt, shout it out!

Let me know what you think.

Something You Do When You Practice That Is Always A Good Use Of Your Time

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If you practice patience in one moment of anger, you will escape one hundred days of sorrow.

-Chinese Proverb

Serious, daily musical practice is something that is loaded with speculation and second-guessing. Lots of “should’ve, would’ve and could’ve”, as my father would say.

Whenever I’m giving a practice coaching session to a musician, the topic of practice efficiency is always punctuated with concerns of “wasted time”:

“Maybe I should’ve spent more time on this, instead of that.”

“If I would’ve done this, instead of that, I could’ve achieved my goal sooner.”

And so on…

And this is a fair concern to have, for obvious reasons. Aimless, misdirected practice neither satisfies nor improves a dedicated musician.

But practice efficiency is, in of itself, a lifetime quest. It’s not something you master. It’s something you just get better and better at (if you’re dedicated to improving your process).

I would say that I practice with a high degree of efficiency these days: clearly defined goals, with an effective prescription and implementation of work to attain these goals. I can accomplish a good deal in a relatively short time during my practice session.

Yet I still occasionally find myself, if not “wasting my time” on certain things, at the very least, not working as efficiently as I could and would like to.

Having said that, there is one thing I do in every practice session that is always a good use of my time. I do this many, many times during any given practice session, yet I still don’t do it often enough.

What is it I do?

I stop.

Yes, I simply stop. I pause.

I practice (as the Chinese Proverb above states) being patient.

Now, to be clear, I don’t hesitate. I pause. There’s a difference.

Hesitation is not a choice. Pausing is. Hesitation is usually accompanied by doubt, tension and restriction. Pausing is accompanied by clarity, release and freedom.

What do I do when I pause? Mostly, I redirect my thinking. This redirection can take shape in a variety of ways.

Sometimes, I just need to take the saxophone out of my mouth, and to put my entire self back into neutral for a moment.

I do this when either:

I sense myself accumulating more tension than I’d like to have as I practice a particular thing. Or, when I’ve lost the clarity of purpose, the clarity of thinking, that I know is necessary for me to gain something useful from whatever I’m practicing.

Just letting go of the instrument, letting my arms fall lightly to my sides and asking for my shoulders and neck to release back into length. Very simple.

It’s absolutely amazing how easily I can get back on track, and get right back to constructive, mindful effort during my practice segment by taking time to do this.

So how long to I stop for? However long it takes. Usually it’s a matter of just a few seconds.

But whenever I choose to stop, I always keep the promise I made to give myself time. To not jump right back in without redirecting myself. To bring myself back to choice, instead of reaction.

I’m not talking about taking breaks here in your practice routine. You know, 20 or 30 minutes of practice, punctuated by 5 or 10 minutes of rest. That’s all good, too. And that is a big part of my practice strategy/process.

What I’m talking about is the ability to pause many, many times during, let’s say, a 20-minute practice segment.

As an Alexander Technique teacher, learning to stop and choose is a fundamental skill that I encourage and teach to all my students. It’s essential for change.

I too often observe musicians making a mistake (or another unwanted response) as they are practicing something, and then jump right into again without any change in thinking. When this happens, they tend to just do the same thing they did before that led to the unwanted result.

Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind here:

Doing the same thing over and over again, the same way, but expecting a different result.

As you can discern, that’s not exactly the most efficient use of time and effort.

Whenever you pause to release unnecessary tension, to refresh your thinking, to reaffirm your intention, you are cultivating the conditions in yourself that are most ideal to learn and to play music. You are moving back into the heart of practice efficiency.

I’ve never gotten to the end of a practice session and said to myself, “I shouldn’t have stopped so much.”

But I do sometimes get to the end of a practice session and say to myself, “I probably should’ve stopped more.”

Often when I stop, I realize, too, that I’ve done enough work for the day on the particular thing I’m practicing, and that it’s time to move on. It’s safe to say that as I get better at stopping, I make fewer and fewer repetitions of any particular exercise. I wouldn’t be able to realize this without giving myself the choice to pause and check in with myself.

And it’s not unusual for me to observe a new client practice for the first time and see all the unnecessary, mindless repetitions that are being made.

Rather than 20 or 30 unclear tries at an exercise in order to develop the elusive (and often misleading) idea of “muscle memory”, replace 30 inefficient, mindless tries with 5 clear and well-directed tries. Not only will you save time, but also, you’ll optimize your efforts.

But a big bonus for me is that all the work I’ve done in getting better at stopping has significantly impacted how I improvise.

Just knowing somewhere in the background of my consciousness that I can stop at any moment if I wish, fundamentally changes my phrasing, as well as my note choices. I discover the music as it flows through me, instead of trying to force it to go somewhere. This always allows me to find surprise and delight as I improvise. A beautiful thing, indeed.

So give yourself a chance to pause more. Work on it consciously. Make it a skill that you dedicate yourself to developing. It’s always time well spent. Let me know what you think!