Category Archives: Practicing Music

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

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.

A Highly Effective (And Really Fun!) Way To Improve Your Ears

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There are so many resources available now for improving your ear, both for general musicianship, and more specifically for improvisation. One simple little device that can be immensely helpful is a drone. (I’m of course talking about a device that makes a continuous humming sound, not the aircraft.)

In the past few months, I’ve been spending a little time each day of my practice session using a drone. Besides the improvements I’ve gained in my harmonic imagination, intonation, etc., I’ve simply been having a blast playing with it, and wanted to share some of my ideas and experiences with you.

There are three main skills in which practicing with a drone will help you improve and expand upon:

Intonation
Harmonic recognition/imagination
Rhythmic imagination

Let’s look at these one at a time.

For intonation, playing long tones, melodies, overtones, etc., with a drone is far more effective than practicing with a visual tuner. Learning how to hear and respond immediately to the necessary changes in voicing is fundamental to any wind instrumentalist. (Notice that I said “hear”!)

By practicing long tones with a drone you rely completely upon your aural senses and let your brain know what to do to voice the note most effectively. It’s almost fail proof. All you have to do is play with the drone and cancel out the unpleasant waves you hear. You don’t even need to know specifically what you did physically to make the changes. Just trust your ear and your brain.

A great and really fun way to improve the accuracy of your harmonic ear (as well as to expand it!) is to practice simple improvisation explorations with a drone. By perceiving the drone as a particular point of reference, you can systematically (or randomly, if you prefer) give yourself the experience of hearing how different pitches relate to it.

Here are a few examples of how you can practice this way:

Use the drone pitch as the root of an assigned key center. For example, if your drone is a concert “C”, practice improvising simple melodies with the various tonalities of “C”: major, melodic minor, harmonic minor, Lydian, harmonic major (pentatonic scales, including major, minor and harmonic major), etc. Play around with changing key colors in your improvisation (e.g., going from major to Lydian; melodic minor to harmonic major, etc.) Listen, and enjoy, as you connect intention with aural precision.

Perceive the drone pitch as various degrees of a particular scale. So think of a “C” drone as the root, 2nd, 3rd, etc., as you improvise in a particular “C” tonality. You’ll learn to hear and imagine scale degrees in relation to your melodic statements.

Explore the drone as various altered tensions. You can do this with a scale or chord in mind. For example, you can perceive your “C” drone as the raised 11th of the key of F# major (as a B#, actually), or as the flatted 13th of an E7 chord. By playing around with these tensions this way, you’ll develop a more vivid harmonic imagination, turning “altered tensions” into an actual aural experience instead of a just a theoretical idea.

Drone over a standard song. Choose a tune that is both harmonically complex and enjoyable to improvise over, and set the drone as the tonic root note. Practicing this way will help you to really internalize the modulations found within the harmony of the song.

Have no specific key center in mind. Yes, just improvise/explore freely, noticing how certain combinations of notes work over the drone. Learn to get comfortable with (and recognize) various degrees of dissonance. Just let your mind run free and see what you discover. Or maybe make variations on a simple intervallic pattern.

Practicing with a drone can also really open up your rhythmic imagination. The constancy of the drone sound acts as a kind of support for you to push against, yet provides no specific rhythmic stimulus. At first, this can seem kind of challenging, as perhaps no kind of rhythmic movement comes immediately to mind.

But after even just a short amount of practice, you’ll find yourself imagining and playing multiple rhythmic pulses. As you spend even more time, you can explore various types of odd-metered groupings and time feels, modulating tempos and more. Practicing this way will make rhythmic variation much more available to you as you improvise.

And if you like, you can also practice with a drone and a time source (either a drum loop or metronome) at the same time. This is not only immensely helpful in opening up possibilities, but also, is very meditative, engaging and calming.

It’s not hard to get access to some good drones, these days. Here are a few resources:

I use two different smartphone/tablet apps. I have an iPad, and my favorite is RealTanpura, which simulates the four-stringed drone instrument used in Indian classical music. I like it because it has a beautiful sound, and I can change the pulsation of the drone, as well as choose various other modes (harmonic organizations), speed, pluck rate, etc.

The other app that I use from time to time is Scale-Master, which is a synthesized drone, but comes with various features that are useful, like being able to create specific intervallic drones, and a large range of frequencies.

Recently I’ve been using DroneTone, which has a sampled cello sound. Rich in overtones, it has been particularly helpful for dialing in my intonation/voicing on saxophone.

Whichever you choose, if you start daily practice with a drone, you’ll discover all kinds of new ways to think of and hear music. Your ear will improve, and you’ll have lots of satisfying, highly enjoyable playing experiences.

And if you know of, or use, an app that you think is particularly good, please let me know about it!

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.