Category Archives: Practicing Improvisation

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.

Improvising: What To Play When You Can’t Think Of Anything To Play

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Nothing.

That’s the short answer to the question posed in the title of this post.

Seriously. If you’re improvising a solo, and can’t think of what to play next, play nothing.

You’ll notice I said, when you “can’t think of what to play next…”

Can’t think. So what to do instead?

You wait.

If you wait, the music will come to you.

Now, to be clear, you won’t need to wait long. You won’t have to. But by waiting, instead of calculating and planning, you’ll shift your consciousness from the mechanical and mundane, to the creative and mystical. This shift in thinking makes all the difference. You move from a place of effort and anticipation, to one of receptiveness and responsiveness. You call upon your intuition.

Of course, if you’re a novice improviser, you certainly need to work through lots of the mechanical, self-conscious, “this note on this chord” stuff. That’s part of the learning curve. But you’ll do best if you aspire toward being guided by your intuition, impulse, sense of movement, rhythm, imagination…

It’s not uncommon to find  jazz musicians who learn a plethora of licks and patterns for the express purpose of  “having something to fall back on” in case they’re not being “kissed by the muse” and “can’t think of what to play next.”

I, too, practice and study scale and arpeggio patterns, interval patterns, as well as transcribe and study other improviser’s solos (all with the aim of becoming a better improviser).

But I don’t do any of it to give me something to fall back upon if I can’t think of what to play, if I get “stuck”. Rather, I work on these things to feed my ear and imagination. To give me an experience of feeling, hearing and moving sound in a particular way.

But when I’m improvising, I never think of the things I’ve practiced. To do so would sound obvious and predictable (at best) and would sound stammering and disconnected (at worst). I’ve learned this over the years through direct experience.

It’s important to understand, and to cultivate, the very thing that really drives your muse when you play: Movement.

Time, feel, rhythm. These are the elements that fuel, that provide impetus to, your tonal imagination when you improvise (if you let them). It’s like you’re dancing inside, pulsating, and just letting the pitches (from all the studying, practicing, and listening you’ve done) fall into your dance. It’s an intuitive process, and a beautiful expreience.

Now, to some degree, this involves a leap of faith, and a bit of practice. But if you give it a go, you might be surprised to discover four important things:

1. You don’t have to fill every second within a solo with your sound.

2. When you learn to wait, you also learn to listen better.

3. When you listen better, you respond more naturally and creatively within the context of the group making the music.

4. When you hear yourself more clearly within this group context, you’re also able to hear (and appreciate) what you’re actually playing (instead of what you’re thinking).

All good things, for sure.

You can start practicing this today with any kind of play along backing track, or even a metronome. See what it’s like when you wait for your muse (give yourself time to understand what this even means!)  See what it’s like to let time pass in an improvisational form (tune, chord changes, etc.) without your sound. Notice how differently you can respond (how spaciously!), moment to moment, as you improvise.

The great improvising saxophonist Lee Konitz said that he once let an entire chorus of the tune on which he was improvising go by because he couldn’t think of what to play. He next said, very sincerely, “It was the best chorus I’ve ever played.” (He went on to say how that “empty chorus” fit into the larger context of improvising his entire solo.)

And to quote another great improviser, saxophonist Sonny Rollins (from a recent interview about practicing solo, unaccompanied saxophone improvising) the aim in his practice is, “moving toward the subconscious.”

Indeed. It is this subconsciousness that is the true home of our creativity, because it exists without the filter of the calculating and judging mind. So rather than thinking of what to play, next, wait. Listen to and follow your inner impulse, your inner voice. And enjoy being surprised by what comes to you.

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

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Everything that I write on this blog, whether it’s about practicing more efficiently, improvising with greater skill and expression, or about how to avoid injury and strain, is based largely upon the ideas of a person who didn’t even play music.

Yet his ideas continue to serve me well, both in helping me to help my students, and in helping me explore more deeply my own process of growth and development as a musician.

The person I’m referring to is F.M. Alexander, known as the founder of the Alexander Technique.

In solving his own problems with using his voice (he was a stage actor), Alexander discovered several fundamental principles about how thought and movement are inextricably linked (in any and every human activity). And though he wasn’t a musician, his ideas are highly applicable (and highly usefu!) for any musician.

As a certified Alexander Technique teacher, I can say with great certainty that his ideas not only helped me to solve my own serious problems as a musician, but also, continue to influence how I approach teaching and practicing music.

So I thought I’d offer up six fairly well-known quotes  (well-known in the Alexander Technique world, that is) attributed to Alexander that exemplify some of the most essential ideas that I keep in mind as I do my work. Here they are, with a few brief elaborations beneath each one:

1. “You translate everything, whether physical or mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.”

There is an inextricable relationship between what you think and how you move (how your muscles react). The extra strain and effort you put into playing your instrument is a direct result of how you choose and organize your thoughts as you play your instrument. Improve your thinking, and you’ll improve your playing.

2. “Change involves carrying out an activity against the habit of life.“

The most powerful force (for better or worse) in playing your instrument is habit. Most pedagogical problems (especially for advanced musicians) end up calling for the subtraction of counterproductive habits. The only way this can happen is to come to the stimulus (the thought) of doing a particular activity (for example, singing  or playing a high note), and reacting differently. Most of this “reacting differently”, in the Alexander Technique, involves keeping ineffient movement/thought responses in check as you proceed in playing your instrument.

3. “Everybody wants to be right, but no one stops to consider if their idea of right is right.”

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that keep many musicians from  improving, is an almost religious reverence for the advice of a so-called expert, no matter how flawed the logic is in this expert’s advice. Unless you understand the measurable cause and effect relationship involved in any pedagogical principle, you can’t make an accurate assessment as to the  efficacy of the principle. Therefore, it’s a good idea to study and understand both the acoustical science of playing your instrument, AND, your anatomical and physiological makeup (and how these things work together). The better your understanding, the clearer you are about why things work the way they do.

4. “When people are wrong, the thing that is right is bound to be wrong to them.”

Alexander wrote about a faulty sensory appreciation, meaning that, because of habit, the wrong thing (e.g., excess tension, imbalance, etc.) often feels right (i.e., “familiar”) to the person with the habit. In fact, some musicians don’t even feel like they can play their best unless they “feel” all this excess tension and misdirected energy. For this reason it’s not such a good idea to be guided exclusively by what something feels like if you want to improve your playing. To experience change (to experience something new and more efficient) you must be willing to accept that you might  feel wrong (at first, anyhow). 

5. “When you stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing does itself.”

Much of my work as an Alexander Technique teacher is getting my students to stop doing the thing (their habit) that is interfering with their beautiful and efficient playing (the right thing). Rather than adding more “doing”, we’re primarily aiming at undoing (unlearning) these old habits. The results are consistently remarkable.

6. “The experience you want is in the process of getting it. If you have something, give it up. Getting it, not having it, is what you want.”

It’s not unusual during a lesson that a student has a wonderful new experience  of lightness and ease, and then wants to “hold on” to the experience, almost trying to “memorize” the feeling. This often leads to just another type of stiffness,  rigidity, and counterproductive expectations. I remind my students that rather than chasing the feeling, it’s more helpful to follow the process of thinking that led to the better result  (because ultimately, it was this change in thinking that produced the result). Our work is about examining and cultivating this new thinking. Pay attention to the quality of process, and the end result will take care of itself (as stated in number 5, above).

I hope I’ve given you some things to consider as you strive for improvement. The longer I stay with Alexander’s principles, the more amazed I become at what is possible. Just by changing my thinking.

Deep Mastery: One Project At A Time

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I had the good fortune some years back to study the saxophone with Los Angeles woodwind doubler guru, Bill Green. The older I get, the more I appreciate (and put into practice) the things he taught me.

Bill played all of the instruments in the traditional woodwind family: the saxophones, clarinets, flutes, as well as oboe (English horn, too) and bassoon (including contra!) His ability to move from one to another and play with considerable ease, confidence and skill was his calling card. (He played on countless television and motion picture recording sessions.) Needless to say, he was a highly disciplined musician, who practiced a great deal.

One of the things Bill always had going on was a “project”, as he called it. This was his way of describing the ongoing, dedicated work that he applied toward developing (or improving upon) a very specific skill.

The need for these “micro” skills was constantly revealed to him through his work. He loved to find technical demands that “put him in the wrong”, and find a way to master them.

For example, some of his projects were things like: slurring rapidly between high ‘E’ and high ‘A’ on the flute; double tonguing in the first octave of the English horn; playing secondary minor triads in all keys on the soprano saxophone up into the altissimo register.

He went deep into these projects, was very methodical in his approach to them, and was entirely mindful and disciplined in his pursuit.

He told me that no matter what he needed to practice on any given day, he made a commitment to spend a predetermined amount of time on his project until he achieved his objective. For some projects this was maybe 10-15 minutes per day, and for others, as much as an hour.

By practicing this way, he developed three very valuable assets:

1. A continuously growing set of skills that expanded his capabilities as a studio musician, effectively increasing his chances to work more frequently, and express himself more readily.

2. A sense of self-efficacy. (He developed an iron-clad confidence in his ability to analyze and effectively prescribe and carry out the work necessary to deal with any pedagogical difficulty that might come his way.)

3. The intrinsic reward of solving problems. (He didn’t avoid the “impossible”; he actively sought it out and welcomed it with joy.)

For many years I have applied this approach to deepening my own skills, both as a saxophonist and as an improviser. I tend to balance the regular, daily work of my practice (tone production, technical studies, eartraining, Improvisational work, etc.) with some kind of a project.

Of course, these projects are often specific elements nestled into the above mentioned “daily work”. (For example, this last week I started a project involving slurring overtones on the saxophone in ever-widening intervals using the octave key; really helpful for adding complex color and resonance to my sound!)

Many of my projects are to develop specific improvisational skills, whether it be aural familiarity and control of specific tonalities (forming diatonic triad pairs from the 6-note augmented scale was a recent project), or of time, rhythm and/or form (playing “Giant Steps” in 7/8 was a project from about two years ago).

Here’s something very important that I learned from practicing this way: I never lose the skill I’ve acquired. I just keep building upon what I have. The skills become part of who I am as a musician, become integrated into what I do, and readily available.

So if you don’t have a project, I heartily suggest that you find one and dedicate yourself to carrying it out. Here are some guidelines that might help you:

  • Start with your need, and turn that into genuine interest. What would you like to improve upon? What sparks your interest? What would the possibilities be in your musical expression with this new skill?
  • Examine  your motivation?  Does your wish for this new skill come from inspiration or fear? It’s best if it comes from inspiration, from a place of love and positive energy  (see my point above).
  • Balance addition with subtraction. Keep in mind that not all improvement means adding things. Lots of pedagogy is aimed at subtracting things: bad habits to be specific. If you’re struggling with certain things technically, ask yourself, “What do I need to stop doing to improve in this area?” (For example, are you stiffening your fingers, needlessly tensing your facial muscles and/or jaw?) Then aim at playing with greater ease and control by subtracting the excess tension.
  • Work as specifically as possible. Define not only your goal, but also, how you can best carry it out. Sit down with pencil and paper and think your practice strategy and prescription through. (It’s worth the time to do so, I promise you!)
  • But don’t be too specific about time. Aim for a clearly defined goal (for example, “to play this particular scale in sixteenth notes at quarter note equals 120 in all three octaves”). Carry out the work in daily sessions (with predetermined time allotments for each session), but don’t get too hung up on how long (weeks, months) it should take. If it’s taking more time than you think it should, reassess (and then see below:)
  • Smaller is better. Make sure your project is attainable in a relatively short period of time (one week, to let’s say, three months). Anything that takes longer is not really a project but is either an ongoing skill (a daily practice habit) or it is several projects needing to be separated out and defined. When in doubt, cut it in half. You’ll stay motivated this way, as you keep your effort in close proximity to the desired result.
  • Aim for ease in yourself. No matter what the goal of your project is, one of the requirements should be that you cultivate a natural and efficient use of yourself as you carry it out. If you’re adding tension to what you do, you’re most likely moving in the wrong direction.
  • Always have a project. Get in the habit of not only knowing what you’re current project is (and where you are in reaching your goal with it), but also, what your next project might be.

One of the things I notice with many musicians who don’t seem to improve (despite their daily practice) is a “maintenance” approach in their practice, addressing only the very general pedagogical skills, but with little (if any) deliberate work toward specific skills that are outside of their reach.

If you continue to work on the basics every day, yet always have a project that brings you into a deeper, more specific set of skills, you can’t help but improve. It worked for the maestro, Bill Green, it’s been working for me, and it can work for you, too.

Ear Training For Improvisation: Three Skills To Develop

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No matter how much you study, analyze, understand or memorize, you still need good ears to improvise music with fluidity and authentic self-expression.  You have to be able to imagine and carry out your internal aural impressions in real-time.

Developing your ear is of prime importance, and is something that a serious improviser spends a lifetime cultivating.

As I reflect upon how I work on my ear, I’ve come to realize that no matter what I’m working on, I’m always developing one of three skills:

1. Recognition

2. Retention

3. Sensation

I’d like to talk a bit about each one of these skills, and what you can do to improve them. Keep in mind that the they are inseparably connected, and work together to help you to turn imagination into sound.

Recognition

This is where it starts for many musicians: learning to recognize intervals, scales (and their modes), chord qualities and inversion, chord sequences, harmonic tensions, melodic patterns, etc.

I cannot stress the importance of this foundational work enough. The better able you are to connect the various elements of music to your ear and intellect, the more melodic possibilities you’ll find when you improvise.

It’s best to start from the simple, and build your skills toward the more complex:

  • Intervals-Melody is nothing but a series of intervals, so mastering intervals is essential. You should be able to recognize any interval in all forms (ascending and descending melodic, both within the octave and beyond the octave; and the notes of the interval played simultaneously). You need to do this work to the point where you don’t even have to think about which interval you’re hearing. Prepare to spend a good deal of time working with this, and allow periods of review, even after you think you can easily hear, sing, or play back on your instrument any interval. (It’s crucial that you practice both singing back and playing back the intervals you test yourself with.) There are lots of great resources to help you with this now, including some terrific smart phone apps that are very thorough and inexpensive (or even free!)
  • Scales-The material of much of the intervallic sequences that constitutes melodies comes from scalar material. To start, you need to be able to recognize and sing, major and minor scales in any key and from any inversion (mode). Then work towards the same competency with symmetrical scales: diminished, augmented, whole tone, as well as any other scales that either strike your fancy or challenge your ears.
  • Chord qualities-Much of the structural and melodic impetus of improvised melodies in the jazz tradition comes from the harmonic form. Therefore, it’s a good idea to master not only understanding the theory of chord construction and harmonic movement, but also, to be able to sing and recognize the various chords in their inversions. Again, start from simple (major and minor triads) and move toward complex (seventh, ninth, eleventh and thirteenth chords, sus7, altered chords, etc.)
  • Tension qualities-This is related to the skill above. Specifically, learning to recognize and sing the various notes of of any given chord relative to the chord itself. For example, hearing/recognizing/singing the 7th of the dominant seventh, or the raised 11th over a major 7th chord. Tasting Harmony, A New Approach To Ear Training, by Greg Fishman, is an excellent resource for this.
  • Chord sequences-Going from the smaller picture of hearing chord qualities to hearing and recognizing chord sequences is fundamental to your freedom of expression. Learning to recognize ii-V-I movement, with all its modulations and voice-leading resolutions, will help you memorize (and retain what you’ve memorized) when you learn standard songs or other harmonic forms. It will also significantly help you play by ear when you have no idea of the chord changes. A simple but effective way of working on this is to take chord changes off of a recording by ear. Use your instrument, your voice, a piano…anything to help you. Connect what you hear, sing and play back, with your intellect (theoretical understanding). Start with easy songs (could even be simple, children’s songs) and move on to standards, bop tunes, into modern jazz compositions.
  • Melodic patterns-Learning to recognize and recall common melodic patterns and licks will shorten the road from your imagination to your improvisation. Transcribing jazz solos of master improvisers is highly effective practice for this. It’s also important (and very helpful!) to play as much as you can by memory when working on patterns of any sort. Once you understand the structure, or formula of a particular pattern, and can sing it clearly and easily, strive toward playing it by ear. (Don’t write it out to help you learn it.)

If this seems like a lot of work, understand that it is, and that it’s something that you work toward improving and growing for the rest of your musical life. Nobody has a “finished” ear.

Even Charles McNeal, who is arguably one of the most prolific transcribers of jazz solos (he has an AMAZING ear and is a tremendous jazz saxophonist!) will tell you that he can transcribe the more “bop-oriented” soloists much faster than he can the “modern cats”. Why? Because the language of bop is more familiar to him. (It is for that reason that Charles welcomes the challenge of transcribing more modern players. He wants to constantly improve his ear.)

Retention

Once you are able to recognize intervals, scales, chords, etc., you need to be able to keep the aural impression of these elements alive in your imagination as you play (this is especially crucial in transcription and memorizing patterns/licks by ear).

Neuroscientists call this ability “working memory”. Specifically, the capacity to keep multiple bits of information available to your thinking simultaneously. (As an example, it’s easier to hold two notes in your aural memory than it is to keep an entire unfamiliar melodic pattern.)

One of the frustrations with some students of jazz improvisation is with retention. They can recognize intervals easily; they can recognize scales and chord qualities and tensions, as well.

But have them play a simple melodic sequence back by ear and they sometimes fall apart. Why?

Well, it’s often because they are not continuously hearing the melodic sequence in their imagination as they try to recall it. Often they’re getting stuck on one interval at a time, and before they know it, they’ve completely forgotten what it is they originally heard.

If you get frustrated with this, here are three things you can do to help as you play back melodic patterns by ear:

First, make sure you clearly hear the entire sequence and can “repeat” it back in your memory. Listen, listen, listen, as much as you need! (Shorten it into smaller sections if need be and work with one section at a time.) It is absolutely essential that you can internalize the material and can hear it in your imagination without singing or playing your instrument.

Second, now sing the sequence several times to affirm the accuracy of your aural imagination. If it is part of a transcribed solo, make sure you are singing the inflections, articulations, dynamics, etc. Make it come to life in your imagination.

Third, play it back on your instrument (again, with all the inflections). If you know your intervals and have sung the sequence lucidly, you’ll have no problem.

This is a skill (retention through working memory) that you can (must!) continually develop. My guess is that somebody like Charles McNeal has a very highly developed working memory from all the transcription work he’s done.

Through regular practice, you can get so you can repeat entire phrases (and even sections of transcribed solos) back as easily as you used to be able to play back 3 or 4 notes. Practice working on longer and longer patterns, always keeping the aural impression within your reach.

Sensation

The ultimate aim of using your ears should be to use them instinctively. You want to follow your ear, not your intellect. (The great improvising saxophonist, Warne Marsh, would sometimes chide his students as they improvised by saying, “I can hear you thinking.”)

This is where being open to your sensory experiences can be very helpful. Learn to imagine the feeling of the sound in the instrument, of the resonance and color, as you move from one note to the next when translating something back by ear. For example, if you play a wind instrument, “taste” the sound from one note to the next.

If you play the piano, learn to sense how you move and where you go spatially as you play back what you’ve heard or imagined. I can often easily find something by ear on my saxophone just by fingering (not blowing) what I imagine the sequence to be. That feeling of movement (kinesthetic sense) is in support of my sense of hearing and makes my aural imagination that much quicker and clearer.

A very simple way for you to begin working on this skill is by playing lots and lots of simple melodies (again, highly familiar children’s songs are  a good place to start) in all twelve keys. Every day. As you do so, don’t try to intellectualize the melodic movement (interval to interval), but instead, play by instinct and sensation. Just let your fingers (and/or breath, etc., depending on your instrument) follow your ears, and other senses.

Sing as much as you can as you learn new melodic/harmonic material, not only to deepen the clarity of your aural imagination, but also, to give your brain even more of a chance to experience the music through your senses.

The more open and free you are with your body,  (as an Alexander Technique teacher, I work a lot with my students on this), the more information you’ll be able to experience through your senses. (Excess muscular tension can significantly interfere with your ability to sense and hear the music.)

So as you continue to grow your ear, please keep these three skills in mind. Make a decision to work everyday on improving and integrating them. The more you can transcend your intellect and connect with your muse, the more beautiful and expressive your music will be.