Category Archives: Healthy Practice Habits

You And Your Instrument: Three Simple Steps That Make Playing Easier

Step One: Start with balance

It all begins here. Whether you sit or stand when you play, how you maintain your upright balance has a significant influence on your comfort, safety and skill.

If you’re sitting, you need to be on top of your sitting bones, with your head poised lightly above. Think of your neck as being free and your spine gently releasing upward, as the weight of your torso releases downward to be supported by the chair.

It is this upward/downward opposition between the head and the pelvis that makes easy upright balance available to you. It is part of your human design.

Avoid trying to “sit up straight” (being stiff and rigid). Also avoid collapsing into the chair (make sure the chair you’re sitting in isn’t too soft, or you’ll be tempted to collapse.). Balance is the operative word here, not posture, postition or perfection.

If you’re standing, allow your weight to release evenly through your feet into the floor, as you let your head balance lightly above (just as in sitting). Again, think of your neck as being free, and let your back and shoulders release into width and elasticity.

Make sure you’re not locking your knees or distorting your pelvis by either pushing it forward, or tucking your tail. Think of your ribs as being very free to move, as you let yourself breathe easily.

Imagine yourself as mobile, dynamic and grounded, instead of stiff, fixed and planted.

Step Two: Bring the instrument to you (instead of bringing yourself to the instrument)

Once you’ve found an easy balance, bring the instrument to you (this obviously doesn’t apply to piano, drum kit, or other stationary instruments). It is much easier and more efficient to bring the instrument to you than vice versa.

Though this sounds somewhat obvious, If you were to observe yourself in a mirror as you start to play, you might be surprised to see that you’re pulling yourself out of balance toward the instrument instead of being the point of balance through which you integrate the instrument with yourself.

Understand that if your instrument is going away from your body, you must let your whole self be free to move very slightly in the opposite direction as a form of counterbalance.

Say for example, you play trumpet. As the instrument goes forward in front of you, your weight goes very slightly backward away from it. If you’re standing, this movement comes from your ankles; if you’re sitting, it comes from your hip joints (in this case because your base of support is at your sitting bones, not at your feet.)

You don’t have to try to actively move yourself backwards (in fact, doing so can actually take you out of balance). Your neuromuscular system does that on its own, as a sort of postural reflex. Just see that you’re not interfering with this reflex by stiffening your ankles (and/or hip joints).

And beyond this, you can notice how else you might be “over-preparing” yourself the instant before you actually start playing. For example, are you taking your head out of balance on your spine? Are you narrowing your shoulders as you reach for your instrument? Let the instrument come to you.

Bottom line, avoid distorting and compressing yourself before you start playing. Let yourself stay in fluid, upright, expansive and easy balance.

Step Three: Renew the thought.

This is the step that tends to get most neglected in the process. Once you are clear about your balance, and about how you bring the instrument to you in order to stay in balance, you need to regularly redirect your thinking so that you’re not falling back into habit. It is very, very easy to fall back into habit, if you’re not vigilant about this.

As I mentioned in a recent article, you need to be clear about two things each moment you begin to play: your intention and your use. Remember to take your time. Stopping to constructively redirect thought/effort is NEVER a waste of time.

So allow yourself to notice your habits with your instrument. Notice your balance (including any kind of excess holding or tension) without your instrument, as well. Observe how you make contact with your instrument. Are you free, or fixed?

Aim for free. Be patient and persistent, and enjoy your newfound ease and continued improvement.

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

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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.

Ask Yourself These Four Questions To Make Your Practice Time More Effective

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One of the things that many highly accomplished musicians have in common is the ability to practice in an efficient and effective manner. This is a skill that is cultivated and improved upon over a lifetime.

As a practice coach, my main aim is to connect my client’s desires with their actions. In other words: “What kind of musician do you wish to become?”, needs to be connected to, “What are you doing every day to become that kind of musician?”

As simple as this sounds, I’m still struck by the number of very good musicians who’ve come to me for help who aren’t as clear as they need to be about this. Some are quite frustrated that they’re spending lots of time practicing, but don’t seem to be getting anywhere through their efforts.

Effective and efficient practice comes down to two simple things: prescription (what you choose to practice), and implementation (how you practice what you’ve chosen).

Though there are many variables to consider here, I’ve come to realize that virtually any musician’s practice can become more effective if she/he keeps four simple questions in mind. Here they are:

1. Why am I practicing this? It’s not uncommon for me to ask this to one of my clients and have them struggle to find an answer. This should never be the case. You are either practicing something because of a short-term, “closed-ended” goal/obligation (I need to have this piece ready by next Thursday), or a long-term, “open-ended” one (I’d like to improve my sound). Of course, most of the problems with respect to this lie in the realm of long-term, open-ended goals.

Whatever you’re practicing, make sure you have the end in mind. In the short-term, this is not too difficult (mastering the piece, the chord changes, etc.). In the long-term this means that you need to be always mindful of the musician you are aspiring to become (in as specific detail as possible) and that everything you’re practicing is clearly leading you toward that goal. This means lots of self-reflection, assessment and modification.

2. What would I like to achieve today as I practice this? Have a clear aim in mind every time you set out to practice something. For example, “Today, I want to be able to play this at quarter note equals 142 with the precision and clarity that I know I’m currently capable of.”

Bear in mind that you might not achieve your goal. And that’s absolutely fine. Don’t feel bad about aiming low, either. It is okay to have small, easily attainable goals in your practice session (in fact, I prefer it). Giving yourself a chance to improve in even the smallest degree on a daily basis , not only encourages you, but also, helps you keep things under control and at the highest quality.

3. How am I practicing this? This goes to the core of the Alexander Technique principles of “use”. What are you doing with yourself as you practice this particular thing? Are you allowing your neck and shoulders (and the rest of yourself) to be free and mobile? Is your breathing mobile, expansive and quiet? Are you letting the floor (or chair) support you as you let your neuromuscular system suspend you lightly upwards? The more efficiently you use yourself as you practice, the more effective the thing you practice becomes. It’s a matter of good overall coordination supporting fine motor skills.

Also, you need to give yourself ample time and opportunities to stop. Stop and redirect your thinking. Bring it back to your intention and to your more conscious, improved use of yourself. I’ve seen far too many musicians jumping right from one attempt to the next as they practice a particular thing, with no chance for redirecting their efforts. This tends to bring them within the realm of Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing something the same way over and over, but expecting a different result. Get better at stopping. You’ll be glad you did.

4. Have I finished practicing this? This is the one that most of my clients struggle with the most. When have you done enough work in this practice session to move on to the next thing? It’s time to move on either because: you’ve reached your goal for the day; or, you’ve done as well as you can reasonably expect for the day.

Learn to move on when the time is right. If you find yourself getting more and more frustrated as you practice something, it’s time to stop and redirect your thinking (see number 3, above). Regress the challenge of whatever your practicing to bring it back into your reach. All you need are a few good experiences each day with a particular skill to improve it. You don’t need to repeat that same scale pattern thirty times over and over in one practice session. Aim for four or five (or even fewer) good, consciously directed takes on a particular piece, then move on.

The clearer your aims are, and the more conscientious you are as you go after them, the more likely it is you’ll improve. These four simple questions can help keep you on track.