One of the biggest challenges that arise when I teach the Alexander Technique to musicians is to get them to consider ideas about playing their instrument that seem to be contrary to what they believe to be absolutely true. Some of these ideas were imparted to them by well-meaning teachers.

Unfortunately, a certain amount of those  ideas are adding to (or causing!) the problem that motivated the student to seek my help in the first place.

I try never to directly contradict the advice that they’ve taken from their teachers. Rather, I aim at helping them have a different kinesthetic experience by not following that advice. (I of course am using my hands and words to direct them into a more efficient, natural use of themselves. This helps significantly.)

After they’ve experience this different, seemingly new way to play, I usually tell them something something like this: “So now you have a chance to go home and experiment. You can do it the way you’ve been doing it, or try it this other way. Then you can choose which you prefer, which way seems to help you the most.”

And that’s pretty much it. Far more often than not, the student chooses this newer, clearly less strenuous way to play. But it’s the student’s choice, not my insistent command.

For us as musicians, it’s natural to seek out advice from someone who has already solved the problems of playing our instrument that we still struggle with. And to be clear, most of the advice that master musicians give their students regarding pedagogy is immensely helpful, often saving the student years of misunderstanding and frustration.

But you always have to come back to this one question when taking advice from a great instrumentalist: Is this musician playing well because of what he or she is doing, or despite  what he or she is doing? (I ask my regular visitors here to forgive me for raising this question so often, but it really is fundamental.)

For example, you can play saxophone quite well if you curl your toes and grip the floor with vise-like effort. But this doesn’t help you play well. It doesn’t help you produce your sound. It’s not necessary at all to playing the saxophone. (In fact it actually interferes with your ability to play your best.) It’s a simple matter of the principle of cause and effect. Curling your toes is an effect  of your habit, not a cause  of your good sound.

But if you believe that you need  to do that to play well, it’s likely you’ll pass that advice on to one of your students as gospel truth. And this is often how bad advice is passed on from teacher to student.

Here are three guidelines you can follow when given advice about playing your instrument (from me or anyone else) to help you make better decisions for yourself:

1. Does it make sense with the laws of nature? Part of my job when I teach is to help my student better understand the music making process with respect to their bodily structures, and basic principles of physical science (mechanics, gravity, acoustics). I want them to have a clearer and more accurate body map, and want them to understand how their overall general coordination affects the specific coordination of playing music. I also want them to understand what it takes to produce sound on their instrument from an acoustic point of view, then always ask themselves if, or how, their habits might be affecting the production of sound. Again, the “because of/despite of” question. So many myths of pedagogy can be dispelled by simply cracking a book on human anatomy, or reading up on the acoustical princples of your instrument.

2. Does it mostly involve adding, or subtracting strain? This is an important question to ask, especially if you feel pain or fatigue after carrying out the advice you’ve been given. I’ve never yet taught a student who wasn’t creating enough  muscular effort to play. In fact, it’s usually a matter of getting them to stop working in such a strenuous, misdirected way. So when advice has lots “doing” words, as in, “pull  your shoulders down”, “grip  the floor with your feet to ground yourself”, “push  from your diaphragm”, “tuck  your chin in”, etc., go back to asking if, and how, these kinds of things work with respect to the laws of nature. Many times, well-meaning teachers are describing the perceived effect of what good playing looks like, as opposed to the bigger picture of what the cause of that visible bodily change is. For example, as a saxophonist, if I let my neck release my head into an upward balance off the top of my spine, my chin will appear to move inward toward my throat. But here’s the thing: muscular release is what is causing the change. That’s something entirely different than me trying to tuck my chin in toward my throat (muscular tension). Generally speaking in my experience, the more the pedagogical advice has to do with release and expansion (as opposed to added effort and contraction) the more effective the result.

3. Do you clearly understand the advice in the same way the advice giver does? This is quite often where things start to go wrong. I’ve many times encountered students who are not understanding and carrying out the advice the way the teacher understands it and carries it out. This has to do with the limits of language. I often find myself saying to my students as I teach, “You’ve just done what I’ve asked you to do, but it’s not what I want you to do. So, let’s see if I can ask again in a different way.” There’s no such thing as one ideal way of expressing your own movement experiences so that another person will experience them in the same way you do. This is where the art of teaching becomes fundamental. If you get advice and it seems to defy the laws of nature, and/or mostly involves more muscular effort, make really sure (in the most respectful way) that you ask your teacher to help you better understand.

This probably sounds crazy, but the best saxophone lesson I’ve ever taken was from somebody who didn’t even play the instrument. It was given to me by Frances Marsden, my first Alexander Technique teacher. How is it possible (you might ask) that somebody who knows nothing about playing the saxophone could help me become a better saxophone player?

Ironically enough, it is precisely because Frances knew nothing about playing the saxophone that she was able to help me so much. She did something very simple, but immediately practical: She observed what I was doing as I played, then asked questions about it.

She would ask, for example, “Is it necessary for you to tense and raise your left shoulder as you play?” I would stop for a moment and think, then reply, “No, it’s not at all necessary. It doesn’t help my sound or my fingering technique.” She would continue, “Let’s see what would happen if you don’t do that.” And of course, I found that if I didn’t do that, I would play better.

We went on and on like this. She, rather innocently asking questions and I, stopping to observe and reconsider my technique. You see, Frances didn’t know what was necessary to produce sound or create technique with the saxophone. She was just observing the tension I was creating as I played, and asking me if it was necessary. Sometimes it was, but more often than not it wasn’t.

She became fascinated by the whole process as well. With a childlike curiosity, she would observe and ask based upon a genuine desire to understand what was involved in playing the saxophone. She acted as a sort of a mirror for me: I was able to change many of the habits of unnecessary tension I was bringing into my saxophone playing. 

By the time I’d take this remarkable “saxophone” lesson, I’d already taken about 10 Alexander lessons from Frances. I came to her because of some serious coordination issues I was having at that time that forced me to take time off from professional performance. In the first lessons we didn’t even look at how I was playing the saxophone. Instead we dealt with my general coordination: How I sat, stood, used my arms, maintained balance, breathed, walked, etc.

It was in these first lessons that I gained a much clearer understanding and kinesthetic sense of how my habits of tension were manifesting themselves. This was a good strategy, because had we started right in on the saxophone, I would have been so emotionally tied up into my own playing (and my beliefs about playing!) that I wouldn’t have been able to be truly open to seeing what my habits were.

But after significantly refining my skills of self-observation through my lessons (and making noticeable improvements in my overall coordination and balance), Frances thought it was time we addressed the saxophone directly.

Now, mind you, my saxophone playing was already beginning to improve quite measurably just from improving my overall coordination. I was finding a great deal more ease, consistency, and most important: optimism.

This is no small point. You see, many “saxophone specific” problems are really just problems of balance and coordination. Improve your balance and coordination, and indirectly, you improve your saxophone playing.

Here’s what I learned in that Alexander/saxophone lesson about my saxophone playing habits:

• I tighten my neck as I jut my face forward (especially when playing altissimo)
• I tighten across my chest as I lift my left shoulder up towards my ears
• I pull my right shoulder downward toward the left side of my pelvis, and pull the left side of my pelvis upward toward my right shoulder
• I hyperextend my right leg, throwing my knee backwards into a “lock”.
• I throw my head back as I open my mouth, gasping noisily as I inhale
• I over-extend my left wrist (bending it backwards), especially as I play up in the palm keys.