Category Archives: Healthy Practice Habits

The Difference Between A Good Method And A Good Teacher

Most musicians that come to me for Alexander Technique lessons have a well-developed, highly detailed practice method that they follow. They have chosen this method deliberately, and typically follow it with an almost religious reverence.

And therein lies some of the problems that lead them to seek my help in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of a logical, purposeful, structured method of pedagogy based upon the principle of cause and effect (as opposed to anecdotal assertions by accomplished players that aren’t based upon repeatably measurable results).

But any method, no matter how sound, has one rather obvious limitation: It can’t respond to you. It can’t modify itself to best suit your needs.

A good teacher, on the other hand, is helpful precisely because he/she responds effectively to you.

It’s all a matter of the teacher’s sensitivity of perception and communication with you, moment to moment, week to week (and longer). How you learn, what’s helping and what’s not, what you are misunderstanding, where you need more practice (where you need less!), etc.

And most important, a good teacher can notice what you’re doing with yourself as you carry out your practice. Are you straining, stiffening, compressing? Are you creating an unnecessary struggle within yourself as you play? (This is where the skill of a well-trained Alexander Technique teacher can be of enormous benefit.)

You see, most of the musicians who come to me for help do so, in part, because they’ve become inflexible with their method of practice. Inflexible both in the details of the method itself, and in carrying it out on a day by day basis.

At the very least, this leads to a sort of stagnation in progress, a sinking feeling that, “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to get past this plateau in my progress.”

At worst, this rigidity with method leads to more serious problem, such as repetitive strain injuries, chronic back/neck/shoulder pain, and even focal dystonias.

I ask my students to ponder the differences between teacher and methodology. And because they are ultimately responsible for the choices they make as they practice and study, I encourage them to ultimately think of themselves as their own teachers.

I’m not telling them to ignore the advice of their teachers. I’m just telling them that it’s easy to turn their teacher’s methods into rigid, inflexible, unresponsive practice habits. It’s up to them to be vigilant, to grow into experts on themselves and their learning process as they practice each day.

To become your own teacher is a lifelong skill. It’s something you strive to get better at. It takes lots of reflection, discipline, honesty, discernment, love, commitment and great attention to detail. (That’s the same, of course, whether you’re teaching yourself, or somebody else.)

But the main thing you need is responsiveness. You need to see which component of your practice method needs modification.

I’m very well-organized in my saxophone practice, and most definitely follow a method of learning that I’ve designed largely myself. I always have a “to do” list of particular exercises and study. Typically, this list is based upon a weekly cycle.

But a day in the week doesn’t go by when I don’t modify something from my weekly plan in my practice session. Alter a tempo, spend more time on one detail of a particular exercise, reduce or eliminate the detail of another, sometimes throw out an exercise in its entirety. (In fact, by the end of the week, the routine I started with has morphed into something quite different.)

With each component (exercise, or detail of an exercise) of my practice routine on any given day, I’m either regressing (making it simpler and/or easier), progressing (making it more complex and/or challenging), or keeping it the same.

I make my decisions on modifying (or not modifying) the components on my routine by asking myself one simple question: “Is this helping me exactly the way it is?”

If the answer is yes, then I know to keep working on it until it needs to either be modified (progressed), or dropped, from my practice routine.

If the answer is no, then I have to ask myself, “What would I need to modify right now to make this more helpful to me”?

This is where creativity comes in. If it’s too complex and/or difficult, I need to find a constructive way to regress the exercise while still maintaining the pedagogical intention.

Regressing effort is a fundamental part of the art and science that any good teacher utilizes. The better I get with regressing effort for myself, the better I get with helping my students. And the better I get in helping my students, the more efficient (and satisfying!) my own practice continues to become.

Equally important is learning to either progress an exercise or to let it go entirely. I encounter so many musicians who are spending time needlessly on things that just don’t continue to help them improve.

So strive towards being a teacher as you practice each day. Go by principle, and follow a method. Just be observant, curious and flexible. If you do so, you’ll do nothing but improve.

A Technique To Help You Improve Your Odds

Practicing Music: Understanding The Difference Between Routine And Process

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There is a topic that seems to be finding its way into the books and blogs of several well-respected musicians and music teachers these days. It is about the importance of paying attention to the quality of process as you practice your instrument.

I’m pleased with this trend, and am in complete agreement with it.

In the Alexander Technique, we have a jargon term that we use, called “the means-whereby”. In essence, this is a principle which asserts, that, if you pay attention to the quality of how you do something (the “means”, i.e., your process), you’ll get the best results (to paraphrase F.M. Alexander, “the end will take care of itself”).

My experience, both as Alexander Technique teacher/student, and as a musician, has shown this to be true. Without fail.

Now, mind you, I’m not talking about your practice “routine” here. I’m talking about what you do with yourself as you implement your routine.

Many musicians who come to me for help do so, in part, because they’ve developed a process within their carefully planned practice routine that is counterproductive (if not downright harmful!) As they work with their instrument, they’re so focused on gaining the desired result (sound, technical demand, reading, etc.) that they’ve lost sight of what they’re doing with themselves as they strive to achieve these results. This often leads to a variety of troubles: from inconsistent and unpredictable results, to worsening technique (and coordination), to chronic pain and injury.

Yet, most of these musicians, after experiencing these negative outcomes, still think they need to find some kind of new, magical routine to solve their problems.

Your routine is a series of prescribed activities (exercises, etudes, etc.) that you carry out (in single or multiple practice sessions) aimed at improving your playing skills: tone production, scales, arpeggios, articulation, ear-training, repertoire, technical etudes, sight-reading, etc.

Your process is how you think as you work on these components of your routine (and how that thinking impacts what you do).

Truth be told, virtually everyone (including you, most likely) has a process that they adhere to as they practice and play music. The question is: Is your process constructive or not?

Counterproductive Thinking Habits

It’s not unusual for me to encounter a student whose carefully calculated, and faithfully executed practice routine (though once a reliable source of improvement) has seemed to become mysteriously ineffective. Whenever this is the case, I ask lots of questions. Not about routine and pedagogy, so much, but about thinking.

What I usually discover is a thinking process, gradually developed over the years, which has been making the routine inefficient (at best) and counterproductive (at worst).

In the simplest sense, it is a type of thinking that has become rigid, narrow, and over-focused on the mechanical details of playing, at the expense of the auditory/expressive component. The bigger picture, as it were.

The student is trying to hit his/her target (the desired result) with an ever-increasing sense of fear, tension, and over-efforting. I can easily see this manifested into bodily gestures as I observe them engage in their routine: stiff necks, narrowed shoulders, fluttering eyes, noisy breathing, etc.

What I’m seeing is their thinking.

When I ask them about what they think of whenever they play a particular exercise, the answer is never vague. They have a very specific “focus” in mind, a very specific intention. (This is part of their process.)

But it is this “focus” that has divided their attention, cutting themselves off from what they sense in their bodies, the feel of the sound inside their instrument, as well as to what they hear. And this divided attention is what’s rendering their practice routine ineffective.

As I ask more questions, I typically find that there was once a time when their thinking wasn’t so rigid and contractile as they practiced. There was once a time when their thinking was more flexible and responsive, and less anticipatory and anxious.

My job is to help them get their thinking back on track. I start doing this by helping them to become more self-aware, and then to help them soften and expand their attention as they play. In short, I help them to improve their process.

Improve Your Process

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you practice that will help you establish a more constructive process:

Notice how you react-What do you do as you prepare to play an exercise? Where do your thoughts go? What happens in your body? Do you contract? Tighten your neck and shoulders? Lock your knees? What happens to your breathing? Where do your eyes go? See if you can play with even a bit less of this unnecessary tension, and you’ll likely be surprised by the results.

Give yourself permission to stop-Get comfortable with stopping, whether in the middle of an exercise or the middle of a phrase. In fact, make it a point to stop more than you normally do. Not only can you use the pause to redirect your thinking, but also, by having an active willingness to stop, you’ll keep some of your excess tension in check.

Balance the internal and the external-It is easy to become too focused on what something feels like at the expense of what it sounds like and vice versa. There is a dance between what you imagine (your aural impression), what you sense in your body, and what you hear. Let that dance be flexible, dynamic and responsive.

Aim toward easy-Don’t make the exercise itself your target. Make playing it with efficiency be your goal. Think of reducing effort wherever and whenever possible. (This ties into my first bullet point, above.)

Aim toward flexible-In body and in thought. Rather than narrowing your focus, see if you can gradually expand your consciousness to integrate what you sense, think, and hear.

Always play with clear intentions-Never practice anything mindlessly. There is never any benefit in doing so, but can be some harm. If you find your thinking slipping away as you start and exercise, STOP. Reaffirm your aim and intention with whatever you’re working on, then continue when you’re clear and ready.

Reassess regularly-Not only your process, but each detail of your routine. Be willing to question, modify, or even throw out completely a particular exercise if it doesn’t seem to be fruitful.

So if you’d like to take your practicing to a new level, it might not be that you need a new routine. Maybe just an improved process.

Six Quotes About Learning (And Unlearning) That Inform My Teaching And Practice

Body Awareness And Music Making: Learning To Reinterpret Your Senses

So what is causing the problem?

In the simplest sense, it’s not a lack of awareness, but a misinterpretation of bodily sensation. You see, it’s not that most musicians have difficulty noticing these things (once they’re pointed out), it just that they often don’t perceive of these things as misdirected effort (the very thing that is causing their problems as they play!)

Instead they think of what they do is part and parcel of what it takes to play music. It’s a kind of “over-efforting” that not only feels right, but even seems necessary in order to play their instrument. Becoming aware of these tense gestures is the first step.

The next is to reinterpret them for what they actually are: unnecessary habits of misdirected tension. That’s not always an easy thing to do, as many musicians are quite attached to the physical sensations of playing their instrument. It’s not unusual for a musician to want to feel that they’re working hard (even though it’s creating difficulties). This sometimes becomes almost an addiction, an affirmation that they’re playing “well”.

And to make matters more complicated, my students will often have an almost religious reverence for certain points of pedagogy taught to them that they believe to be virtually indisputable (usually dispensed to them by another excellent musician/teacher).

My job is to connect the new experiences of playing without the excess effort, to my student’s reasoning, and (ever-increasing) knowledge. This is a matter of re-education: helping them to better understand the actual acoustical demands and principles of playing their instrument as it relates to the way their bodies can best accommodate these demands and principles.

I encourage my students to not believe what I say because I say it, but rather, because it can be tested and found to be true. I want them to know why they choose to do (or not do) something with themselves as they play. They need to own it. They gain this ownership through direct experience.

The next step in this process (once they’ve clarified their misconceptions about their bodies) is to learn how to play without going into their habit. This is where the real work (and real value!) of the Alexander Technique comes into play.

By design and necessity, this happens gradually. But the changes that take place can be absolutely remarkable.

Here’s the good news

Because you’re a musician, you already have the skill set to be able to notice many subtle (and not so subtle) things about yourself as you play. This is a HUGE advantage, and can really speed up your progress if you wish to change your habitual tension patterns. Whether you have problems with chronic pain, and/or coordination, being able to pay attention to yourself as you play gives you a definite leg up.

If you find a good, AmSAT certified Alexander Technique teacher, you can find how quickly you can learn to interpret what’s happening in your body in an accurate and more helpful way. You’ll learn that all that extra effort with your head, neck, back and shoulders, your locked knees, tense feet, noisy breathing and squinting brow don’t help you one bit when it comes to making music.

And of course, always feel free to contact me if y0u need help. I would be my honor and pleasure to do so!

Playing music can be much easier than you perhaps thought. Use your skills of awareness to help you discover how much easier it can actually be.