Category Archives: Healthy Practice Habits

Advice For Improving The Speed And Accuracy Of Your Fingers

In my experience teaching the Alexander Technique to pianists, string and woodwinds players, I often encounter a similar kind of counterproductive thinking concerning the hands and fingers. Specifically, too much attention is placed upon what the hands and fingers are doing.

Not only does this divide the musician’s attention, often cutting off the awareness of what’s going on in his/her body as the music is being played, but also, it interferes with hearing pitch, timbre, and perceiving time clearly.

And sadly, all this attention on the fingers doesn’t even make them work better. Quite the contrary.

Here are a few examples of the kinds of problems with hyper-awareness of the fingers that I’ve come across with my students:

A saxophonist who is consciously trying to keep his fingers very close to the keys (in an effort to not “waste” movement and play more “efficiently”). In doing so, he makes his entire body stiff and his fingers sometimes can’t move in response to the demands of the music. He’s stuck.
A pianist who stares constantly down at her hands as she plays, making sure her fingering is “correct” as she plays an unusually high percentage of wrong notes on a piece that she knows quite well.
A violinist who can’t keep his eyes off his fingers for fear of playing out of tune. (Ironically, as soon as he takes his eyes off his hands, his pitch improves dramatically.)

The simple truth is that if you want to improve how your hands work as you play, you have to leave them alone, so they can do the right thing without interference. To do this you have change your thinking. You have to replace the thought of your fingers “doing the right thing” with a broader kind of thinking.

First, start with the aim of being free in your body as you play. In particular, ask yourself for freedom in your neck, shoulders and back. This alone will not only change the quality and quantity of muscular tension as you play, but also, will calm and center your mind and improve your breathing.

Make this a top priority as you practice. The freer you are in your head, neck and back, the freer your fingers are to move and create the stability necessary to play your instrument. This is something you’ll need to practice as you practice (yes, I meant to say that). Here’s a previous article I’ve written about practicing paying attention to help you with this.

Next, rather than trying to feel how (or what) you think your fingers need to feel, think instead of where your fingers need to go as you play from one note the next.

By taking your attention from what you feel to where you are going, you increase your spatial awareness (and improve your sense of time, as well). Your brain organizes the music making task in a fundamentally different way, allowing your fingers to move freely, easily and quickly. In the simplest sense, you get out of the way of your brain’s ability to organize and control complex movement, so it can do what it needs to do unimpeded.

This is something that can be practiced gradually, using simple visualization:

For example, if you’re a saxophonist, practice a very easy, familiar pattern (arpeggio, scale, intervals, etc.) at a slow tempo as you think, not of what your fingers are doing, but what keys need to be pressed and/or released as you go from note to note. Think ever so slightly ahead to the next note to be played as you land on each note. If you practice this regularly, you’ll learn that you can play rapid passages that you couldn’t play before with stunning ease and clarity. (Same general idea if you play piano, strings, etc. Think where on your instrument you want your fingers to land, not what your fingers have to do.)

Finally, replace the thought of fingers with tonal imagination. Practice singing passages or patterns that you find difficult on your instrument. First, sing the passage slowly and very precisely, making sure the sequence of pitches and the rhythms are crystal clear in your mind. Once you’ve accomplished that, play the passage by following your ear. Really hear the passage clearly in your mind, and don’t worry about what your fingers have to do.

Most of the chronic technical difficulties musicians struggle with are a result of tense anticipation. Hyper-awareness of the fingers is akin to driving a car on the highway at top speed with your eyes planted downward on the road in front of you. Scary and stiff. Same thing on your instrument.

So change how you think about your fingers. Practice consistently shifting your attention from your fingers to your broader senses, and you’ll be surprised how limber and accurate your technique becomes.

The Most Essential Constant In My Improvement

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This morning I found myself reflecting upon the many ways my approach to practicing music has changed over the more than 35 years I’ve been playing. Many of the things that I used to believe were absolutely essential to my improvement now lie by the wayside in the realm of tested, yet ultimately unhelpful, ideas and procedures.

When evaluating the cause and effect relationship of improving through practice, time is always a good indicator for what’s working and what’s not. At a certain point (if we’re fortunate and mindful) we realize something just isn’t helping, and we move on.

That’s a natural part of the learning process. It’s not a straight line, but instead, a journey of exploration and discovery. Even with the best teachers, the clearest intentions, it’s still a step into the unknown. Persistence, patience and passion are the fuel for this journey.

And in this journey, we discard those ideas and practices that clearly don’t help us. That’s not to say we’ve wasted time on these things; that’s just the reality of our own learning process. We have to experiment and be open and creative in attempting to solve our problems.

I have thrown away many more ideas, techniques, approaches, attitudes, procedures, and skills than I have kept.

But the one thing that I have kept, the one skill that has most continually evolved and grown in relation to my improvement as a musician is this: the ability to stop. In particular, knowing when and how to stop.

In my previous posts I’ve written about the value of stopping. Today I’d like to talk more specifically about the ways this “when and how” stopping skill has helped me.

It’s important to keep in mind one of the most important objectives of a constructive practice session: to give yourself the experiences of control over your instrument and the elements of music. This might involve slowing tempos down, analyzing and deciding upon fingerings, directing breathing in a particular way, etc. To achieve these experiences, the pursuit of quality must be put squarely in front of the pursuit of quantity.

Yet it is often this pursuit of quantity that makes a practice session far less productive than it should be.

How often have you practiced something over and over again just to make the same mistake in the same way? Perhaps you practice a particular passage 25 times, and out of 25 times, you played it to your liking maybe twice (not a very encouraging percentage). And how often have you had the experience of practicing something difficult, and actually making it worse as the practice session continues?

In both these cases, the inability to stop has hamstrung your progress. Tension, frustration and dissatisfaction follow when this happens.

Whenever I’m having a less than productive practice session, it is more often than not because I’ve lost touch with my ability to stop and redirect my efforts. Fortunately for me, I can recognize this fairly early into my practice session and change course.

Here are some of the specifics of when and how I stop that help me the most:

In the moment-For a large portion of my practice time I give myself permission to stop at any moment and for any reason. It could be because I’m sensing an old habit of tension arising, which I’d like to prevent. It could be because I’m rushing the tempo in the same place in a particular passage. It could be because I just don’t like my sound in a particular passage. I allow myself to stop, investigate, and clarify my perception and intentions. (I also practice a certain amount without allowing myself to stop, which helps me deal with the flow and demands of a real performance.)
Between takes-Whenever I’m practicing a particular melodic pattern or exercise, I consciously stop between takes. I do this to use my awareness of how I might be tensing in my body, as well as to redirect my intentions and energy for the next take. This is most challenging when the quality of the take I just played is less than I’d hoped for. My impulse is to jump right back into “trying again”. Yet if I don’t pause, I tend to “try again” with the same misdirected efforts as before (which yields the same results and starts a downward spiral of frustration). By stopping for a moment, I hugely increase the odds that my next take will be even better.
Knowing when “enough is enough”-One of the most challenging decisions to make is when to stop working at a particular exercise, pattern, tune, etude, etc. I’ve grown rather cognizant of finding what could be called a “point of diminishing returns” with respect to the amount of time I spend in each practice session on a particular thing. It’s important to stop while I’m still on top (playing each take with the best quality possible), and to be able to peacefully step away from the work. By doing this, not only do I accumulate a large proportion of “correct experiences” (good quality), but also, I finish feeling optimistic and enthusiastic about approaching the work the next day.
Making rest an essential part of my practice time-I now make a calculated aim in determining the work/rest ratio of each practice session. I spend no more than about 15 minutes on any one thing without taking at least a 2 or 3 minute pause, maybe to stretch or have some water. For every 50 minutes I practice, I lie down in constructive rest for 5 or 10 minutes. This enables me to spend long hours at practice if I need to, with not only productive results, but also, feeling easy and comfortable. Avoiding anything that even remotely seems like fatigue is crucial to my decision making process with respect to my practice goals for the day. Stopping before I get tired.
Letting it go-After trying a particular idea, exercise, concept, approach, etc., for a particular, pre-determined period of time, I stop to assess the situation and make a decision about whether or not I’m helping myself with my choice. If there seems to be no improvement in a reasonable amount of time (I’m talking weeks or months, here), I just stop practicing it, and instead, re-think/explore other options. I’m still perplexed by the amount of musicians I encounter who are practicing things (often for years!) that clearly are not helping them. Yet they can’t seem to let these things go. That becomes a constant hinderance to their growth.

So consider the idea of stopping more. It takes wisdom to know when. It takes a clear conviction to know how. (It starts with you simply making a decision that you stay with.)

You can shift your priorities. Don’t just “allow” yourself to stop. Make it a deliberate objective of your practice. Instead of asking yourself, “How much did I practice today?”, or even, “How well did I play today?”, you can ask, “How successful was I at stopping today?” “How many times did I stop today where I might have not stopped before?”

If you cultivate the wisdom and skill in stopping, you’ll love what happens in your practice.

This Simple Shift In Attitude Can Yield Great Rewards

Clarify A Few Misconceptions About Your Body To Make Better Music

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In my experience as an Alexander Technique teacher, I find that a significant contributing factor to many musician’s problems is a misunderstanding of how their bodies work with respect to playing their instrument.

I’ll see, for example, flutists who strain as they try to bend fingers where there are no joints. I’ll see pianists trying to use their necks to lift their arms. I’ll see brass players trying t0 “push the air from the diaphragm” even though this is physically impossible (the diaphragm, which is a muscle, releases on the exhalation).

These are examples of what F.M. Alexander (founder of the Alexander Technique) would call erroneous preconceived ideas about the use and the functioning of the body.

Your brain actually creates a representation of the size, structure and functioning of the muscles, bones and joints in your body. One thing that many postural scientists assert is that this representation always trumps reality.

In essence, this means that you will try to move in accordance to how you believe your structure works, whether that belief is based upon truth or fallacy. (Again, you’ll strain trying to bend at joints that don’t exist, for example)

Of course, much of this “belief” (or misunderstanding) is on an unconscious level, and has been cultivated by a lifetime of habit. Equally unfortunate, some of this belief is conscious, due to misinformation. Too many times I see musicians creating excess strain as they try to carry out some bad (anatomically counterproductive, if not impossible) advice given to them by their music teachers.

But whether below the level of consciousness or not, the unfortunate truth for musicians is that this misconceived sense of self, multiplied by thousands of repetitive movements everyday (practice), leads to strain, injury, poor coordination and inconsistent technique.

The good news is that you can change your misconceptions about how your body works. You can learn to move more in accordance to the design of your structure as it relates to gravity.

How? Start by gaining some knowledge. Get a basic understanding of the structure and functioning of your musculo-skelatal system. Look at pictures from anatomy books and study the structures. Experiment with your own body to find where your joints are and how they work.

I’ve come across a tool that is highly useful for helping you to gain a clear and accurate understanding of how your body functions as you move and maintain posture. It is a marvelous DVD produced by Barbara Conable (edited and narrated by Amy Likar) entitled Move Well, Avoid Injury: What Everyone Needs To Know About The Body.

Barbara and Bill Conable are both Alexander Technique teachers, and have developed a method they call Body Mapping to help musicians (and non-musicians alike) to gain a practical understanding of how their bodies work in movement and stillness. Amy Likar is an Alexander Technique teacher and a professional flutist.

This clearly narrated, logically organized presentation has 2 hours of absolutely essential information. Each chapter has lively animations and images that give you an easy way to understand, visualize and clarify your own body map.

It is organized in chapters covering such important topics as:

Balance-the physiological components that help us maintain our upright stature
Arms-thorough explanation and demonstration of how your arms (including your wrists, hands and fingers) work in relation to the rest of your body
Legs-besides examining the structures of the legs (pelvis, too), this chapter helps you to understand your legs in relation to your arms in moving and maintaining balance
Breathing-really demystifies so much of the conflicting information about this too often misunderstood function
Inclusive attention-how your other senses are integrated and impact how you move and maintain posture

The other chapters are equally interesting and helpful, addressing specifically the issue of how our body maps become flawed, and how we can correct them.

Here is a sample video demonstrating the rotation of the lower arm:

If you’re a musician, you will be nothing but helped by viewing and studying this video. If you teach music, you owe it to your students to have a reasonably clear understanding of the type of functional anatomy and physiology presented in this program. Not only will you give them accurate information, but also, you’ll be able to help them to prevent many of the harmful habits that come from these misconceptions.

I own the DVD, have spent many hours with this material, and highly recommend it.

Clarifying your body map won’t guaranty that you’ll solve all your movement and coordination problems as you practice and play music. Because your habits often feel “right” to you, it can be difficult to sense the misdirected energy and tension that comes with a poor body map (this is where a skilled Alexander Technique teacher and/or Andover Educator can help).

But just gaining the right information, studying it and applying it to what you do can make a huge difference. As I said, it’s a great place to start. I’ve seen some of my students improve instantly and significantly just be rectifying a particular misconception about their bodies as they play their instrument.

And that reminds me of this “oh, so true” aphorism by F.M. Alexander:

“We can throw away the habit of a lifetime in a few minutes if we use our brains.”

No doubt.

Keep This Aim In Mind When Practicing Slowly

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One of the things that many great musicians and music teachers seem to agree upon is the value of practicing slowly. Whether working on technique or improvisation, it is now almost cliche (yet true!) to say, “If you want to speed it up, you first have to slow it down.”

Slow practice really can prove quite beneficial. Here’s a few reasons why:

It gives your brain a chance to process information more precisely and lucidly.
It gives you a chance to become more conscious of any habits you might have that interfere with your ability play (so you can prevent them).
It strengthens your emotional connection to the music (even if you’re “just playing scales”) so that your ability to express yourself becomes second nature.
It allows you time to make aesthetic decisions that you might otherwise overlook at fast tempos (this is especially true in improvisation).
It increases your rhythmic precision.
It deepens your kinesthetic experience of making music.

All good stuff. Here’s a really nice video by clarinet virtuoso Eddie Daniels talking about how he uses slow practice to increase the precision of his technique at fast tempos:

But as an Alexander Technique teacher specializing in working with musicians, I sometimes encounter students who actually make their technique worse rather than better by practicing slowly. They do so because they lose sight of the main aim of slow practice: to learn how to move from note to note through release and balance.

When I encounter such a student, I see lots of tension and holding as the tempo slows down. Often, I see more strain and imbalance at the slower tempos than at the faster ones.

This is usually because the student’s aim of self-awareness (a good thing) has morphed into self-consciousness (not such a good thing). Self-awareness is about discernment (observing objective information), whereas self-concsiousness is more about judgment (going straight to assigning value to what you’re doing).

With self-consciousness comes a sense of needing to do things “absolutely right”. With this attitude comes fear. And with fear comes tension and holding (an unwillingness to explore, move, or take chances).

What I typically notice in these cases is that the students are dividing their attention in such a way as bring far too much awareness to one part (the fingers, for example) at the expense of excluding the rest of themselves. Lot’s of “forcing” the fingers into control. Too much expectation, not enough exploration.

Part of my job with these students is to help them redirect their thinking as they practice slowly (or at any tempo, for that matter). They learn to notice themselves in a broader light, expanding their awareness of themselves, and clarifying the conception of how their entire body (including their senses) is integrated and involved in the music making process.

With this expanded awareness (along with a diminishing self-consciousness) comes a complete shift in the aim of slow practice. The old aim being to “control” the fingers. The new aim being (as I mentioned above) to move from note to note through release as they maintain an easy, upright balance.

When this shift of intention occurs, marvelous things begin to happen: Technique becomes cleaner. Velocity increases with ease. Rhythmic accuracy improves. Self expression deepens. Confidence increases.

So if you devote some of your practice time to slow, mindful work (or would like to start), here are a few things to aim for to help you optimize your endeavor:

Start in balance-Notice how you’re maintaining balance. Are you stiffening and holding, or releasing and returning to an expansive, elastic, natural poise? Let your neck and shoulders stay free and easy as your head balances on top of your spine. Allow your hips, knees and ankles to be free. Let your weight pass into your feet. Breathe easily, quietly and naturally.
Move by releasing-Going from note to note means releasing muscles first. Think about where you can release as you change notes. When raising your fingers, think about them as releasing away from the keys as you play, as opposed to “lifting” your fingers by creating tension. When attacking a note, think about releasing your neck and your breath.
Broaden your awareness-Don’t get stuck putting all your attention onto one part (e.g. don’t place all your attention on your fingers). Let your awareness expand to the rest of your body, and your environment. Notice how your entire self is involved in playing the music.
Give yourself a chance to deepen your kinesthetic experience-Take plenty of time to stop and sense what’s going on as you play. Really embrace the experience of starting from release. Let yourself know deeply, where and how you “land” on the notes (see the video, above).
Listen to the clarity of attack, tone and time-There is always a temptation to rush the tempo when playing slowly. Avoid this trap by really listening and waiting. Use a metronome and let the time carry you forward easily and precisely. Be still but mobile and fluid as you wait for the click of the metronome. Let the clarity and consistency of your attack and tone be your guide.
Keep unnecessary effort in check-Return frequently to the question of effort and tension. “Am I beginning to stiffen myself as I go from one note to the next? Am I pulling myself out of easy balance? Am I letting my breath flow freely? Am I waiting for the metronome?”, etc.

Practicing slowly has been a staple of my routine for some time now. The benefits are tangible and ongoing. I highly recommend it. If you aim for release, ease and balance as you practice this way, you’ll also significantly change how you perform. You’ll learn to deal with fast passages and tempos with grace, confidence, and even joy.