Category Archives: Practicing Music

Optimizing Practice: Habit Versus Choice

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After teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians for a number of years now, one thing I can assert with confidence is that there’s never such thing as a “typical” lesson.

In fact, I usually have no idea what I’ll be working on with my student at the beginning of a lesson. My only agenda is to follow her/his needs, as I observe and ask questions.

But there is always one underlying theme to any lesson I give in the Alexander Technique: habit versus choice.

The subject of habit versus choice is always front and center in any Alexander Technique lesson. The musicians who seek my help do so because, in the simplest sense,  their (primarily unconscious) habits are creating difficulties for them as they make music.

It might be excess tension that is leading to pain and/or injury. It might be an issue of coordination that is interfering with their skills. It might be that they’re just stuck in their progress, no matter how hard they’re working to find a way forward.

Whatever the reason, it all comes down to habit. So often, what I work on with my students is teaching them how to replace habit with choice.

Because many habits are so deeply ingrained, they can tend to fall below the consciousness of even the most self-aware musician.

This is partly out of necessity. I mean, after all, a habit is really just a response pattern that you learn in order to make a particular movement/gesture/posture immediately available. In a sense, it’s your nervous system’s attempt at efficiency. For example, you wouldn’t get very far if you had to completely reinvent how to hold your instrument every day. You can rely upon habit to do that for you.

Yet “how you hold your instrument” might be the very thing that is causing some of your problems, especially if you have chronic pain, or get easily fatigued as you play, or struggle with your technique.

This is where choice comes into play. Through choice, you can learn that there is a better way to hold your instrument, a way that is not only in agreement with your desired musical outcome, but also, with your human structural design.

This begins by bringing the unconscious (habit) into consciousness (choice). In fact, once you bring habit into your consciousness, you bring it into the realm of choice.

For the practical purposes of a musician, I categorize habits in two ways:

1. Reactive

2. Strategic

Reactive habit is what you do with yourself immediately, and unconsciously, as you begin to play your instrument, or sing (as I’ve explained above). It starts the instant you think  about playing, and manifests itself into a set of bodily reactions (posture/movement).

Many of these reactions are necessary to the act of playing.

Yet many others are not…

For example, if you stiffen your neck and pull your head down into your spine as you pull your shoulders up toward your ears as you are preparing to play, that’s an habitual response to the thought  of playing that will never  help you to achieve your desired goal (no matter your instrument).

What you’re doing in effect is interfering with your gross motor coordination as you attempt to carry out a skill of fine motor coordination. It’s simply counterproductive.

Many of the problems of pain, as well as coordination, that a musician struggles with are a result of their reactive habits (how they maintain posture and balance, how they move as they play).

A large part of my job is in bringing these reactive habits into my students awareness, and then teaching them a practical way to prevent them.

Strategic habit is how you steer your practice efforts in the long run, and in the moment:

How effectively do you choose, organize and carry out your work in the practice room? How well do you regress and progress an exercise to suit your need? How willing are you to explore being “wrong” to find the possibility of a new kind of “right”? How flexible are you in your practice process in general? In your daily practice routine?

Being habitually stuck with practice strategies is a huge source of frustration for many serious musicians. Bringing habit into the light can give clearer choices about how to proceed in a more productive and efficient way.

And of course, many “strategic” habits are supported by “reactive” habits and vice versa. (Rigidity in thinking goes hand in hand with rigidity in the body.)

So if you’d like to change, start by addressing your habits. Question things. Notice what you do with yourself as you start playing. What happens in your neck? What do you do with your balance? What happens in your breathing? What about your arms and shoulders? Your legs and feet?

Once you notice something you “do”, ask yourself, “Do I want to do that?” If the answer is “yes”, then ask yourself if what you do is helping you along, and is accordance with your human design (this is where a good Alexander Technique teacher can really help), and in support of your desired outcomes as a musician.

If the answer is “no”, you’ve just moved habit closer into the realm of choice by opening up the possibility of changing  how you respond. You can choose to rethink what you do.

When you choose, you make yourself free to improve, free to move toward optimizing your potential, free to believe in your ability to change and adapt, free to step with confidence into the unknown.

Practicing Music: There Are No Foolproof Exercises

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Musicians love to share advice in an attempt to help other musicians. (I’m no exception.) And it probably goes without saying that some of the advice is helpful, and some isn’t.

One of the most common forms of advice that I often take issue with is when a musician blindly prescribes a particular exercise to another musician to solve a particular problem.

It’s typically a generic, well-known standard form of exercise. Something like, “If you’re having problems with your intonation on saxophone, you need to practice overtones.”

Now, to be clear, as a saxophonist, I find great value in practicing overtones. Not only can regular overtone practice help with intonation, but also, it can help with tone color, control and resonance.

So you might ask, “What’s the problem?”

The problem is that unless you choose the exercise for the right reason (the most effective prescription) and carry it out with the right conception, it can actually create more problems than it solves. (Notice I said above that overtone exercises can help you; not will help you.)

Mindless, and/or misdirected practice is often more harmful than no practice at all.

Recently, I gave a Skype lesson to an excellent young saxophonist. He sought my help because of difficulties he was having with tone production and endurance. In short, he complained of working really hard when playing, often feeling exhausted after playing a long phrase.

I asked him about practicing. He told me that he spent lots of time everyday practicing overtones (sometimes two hours per day!)

When I asked why he did this, the mystery of his problems came to light.

In essence, he had the wrong conception about what the aim of overtone practice was. He thought it was (primarily) about “strengthening” the airstream coming from the diaphragm, abdominal and back muscles.

For that reason, he was pushing the air forcefully (very forcefully) into the instrument in an attempt to change pitches in the overtone series. It was all this excessive pushing of the air that was wearing him out.

So we had to talk about what the main objective in overtone study on the saxophone actually is: voicing. (specifically, voicing in conjunction with airstream)

Voicing entails the necessary changes in the oral cavity (soft palate, tongue, etc.) to accommodate the vibrations from the reed and mouthpiece. When a saxophonist has good intonation, a powerful and colorful sound, voicing is playing a major role.

When practiced with this aim  in mind, overtones help a saxophonist cultivate a responsive, flexible, well-coordinated oral cavity/vocal tract/ airstream combination.

But all this overtone practice was making this saxophonist work harder and less efficiently. His conception was that overtone exercises are about increasing strength, when in reality, they are about improving coordination.

So why did he spend so much time on overtones? Because that was the conventional advice given him by many well-respected saxophonists. To them, it was foolproof. “Work on overtones, solve your problem.” It’s a no-brainer.

Not necessarily, so it seems.

By clarifying the aim  of overtone practice, this saxophonist gave himself a chance to change his habits: less jaw tension (his jaw was doing the work of his vocal tract); less tension in his shoulders and back; better able to hear and respond to his actual sound.

And so it is with any exercise. As an Alexander Technique teacher, it is not unusual for me to encounter musicians who have religiously practiced exercises in a fundamentally misdirected way.

If you’ve been practicing the same type of “foolproof” exercise for many months (or even years), yet the problem you have that led you into choosing this exercise is not significantly lessened, you might want to reconsider your choices. Here are three things to keep in mind when considering an exercise:

1. Know why you’ve chosen a particular exercise. Try not to blindly trust the advice of others. Make it a point to understand cause and effect: “This will help me improve because…” You should be able to fill in the blank because you understand the physiological as well as the mechanical principles being brought into play. Is it an issue of strength? (it rarely is, by the way); Is it an issue of coordination? Hearing? Air flow? Time and/or rhythm?

2. Make sure you know what the specific aim of the exercise is. See that your conscious intentions (i.e., the desired outcome) is in line with your efforts as you practice. You should have a clear idea of what a successful attempt and outcome is as you practice the exercise. For example, “my resonance increases”, “my pitch becomes more stable”, “my execution of sixteenth notes becomes more even and balanced”, etc.

3. Pay attention to how you use yourself when you carry out the exercise. Don’t stiffen yourself in an over-efforting manner as you carry out the exercise. Let your head, neck, shoulders and back be free and mobile. No exercise in music should make your entire body exhausted from just a few minutes of practice.

Keep these things in mind, and remain a healthy skeptic when it comes to advice. In the end, it’s not so much what  you practice, as it is why  and  how  you practice it.

Rethinking A Well-Meaning Saying About Practicing

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Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice it until you can’t get it wrong.

This saying is common among athletes as well as performing artists.

In essence, this sounds like a good reminder of how committed you must be, how faithfully and tenaciously you must practice something to do it consistently well. I’ve heard many accomplished musicians express some version of this sentiment when giving advice about practicing.

But in my experience as an Alexander Technique teacher, I’ve also seen a downside attached to this sentiment.

Let’s start with the upside.

Practicing with this kind of commitment can bring you deeply into the music. Spending long periods of time as you aim towards mastery, gives your brain a chance to more fully process the aural and motor components necessary to execute the music more readily.

Plus, holding yourself to higher standards is fundamental to improvement. It can fuel your path toward continued growth.

All good.

So where is the downside?

Well, let’s start with the fact that it is an impossibility.

No matter how much you practice any fine motor skill, there is no guarantee that you will never make a mistake carrying it out. Go to any concert of even the most virtuosic musicians, and, if you’re listening for it, you’ll hear what I sometimes euphemistically refer to as “unintended events” (more commonly referred to as “flaws”).

Besides, no matter how diligently you’ve prepared, no matter how hard you practice, there are things that are beyond your control: everything from weather conditions affecting your pitch, to unwanted physiologic responses, to mechanical issues with your instrument, to the unpredictability of other musicians. (I’m speaking mostly about performance as opposed to practice here.)

Perfection is a human construct. It is an ideal, not a universally quantifiable reality.

Unfortunately, the pursuit of absolute perfection tends to make many musicians frustrated, perpetually unsatisfied, and even somewhat resentful and fearful about practicing and performing.

Some of the students who seek my help are hamstrung by their impossible pursuit of perfection. They are nearly paralyzed as they play, holding themselves stiffly, their eyes intense and glaring, their breathing noisy and forced. They more closely resemble warriors than artists.

Their music-making lives are nearly devoid of any kind of love or joy. It is mostly about fear, demand and unreasonable expectation.

As they relentlessly practice the same thing over and over, day after day, they often lose touch with what they are actually doing with themselves as they pursue this tense kind of perfection.

This, unfortunately, leads to a variety of problems: chronic pain, injury, coordination issues, anxiety and more.

Another pitfall for some is that this “practice until I can’t get it wrong” work ethic can morph into a sort of mindlessness about performance and practice. It can tempt you to rely upon a mechanical and unconscious “auto pilot” to take care of everything.

This not only deprives you of the thrill of being in the moment as you play, but also, it can invite and cultivate habits of unnecessary tension (which can cause chronic pain and some of the other problems I mentioned above.)

It needn’t be this way.

A more practical and constructive saying might be something like:

Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you know it intimately.

(Yes, I know it’s not as catchy as the original, but it’s more doable. And it’s certainly more healthy.)

Knowing something intimately doesn’t mean you’re beyond making errors. It means that you can always find your way back if and when you do. You can self-correct. You can stay present. You can stay connected with your muse, your desire and the overall meaning of the music. You become responsive, inspired. In the moment.

How do you know when you know the music intimately?

It starts with your ear. Can you sing it with reasonably detailed accuracy? If you can sing it, it’s deeply wired in your brain (your ear, your imagination). If you get off track, it’s easy to quickly find your way back.

Second, make sure you are crystal clear about any technical choices that best support the music: Fingerings, voicing, articulations, breathing, dynamics. Take time and be mindful with these choices. As you sing the music, review in your mind these details of technique. Merge technique and imagination seamlessly together, and let your desires be clear and lucid in detail.

Finally (as I’ve mentioned above, as well as in several of my other articles) create your music from a place of love and desire. Love cultivates the best kind of intimacy. Aim high, remain flexible, be present and enjoy the unknown mystery and magic of playing music.

Standing And Sitting To Play Music: Two Important Mechanical Principles

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Practically without exception whenever I give a musician an Alexander Technique lesson, I witness habits of imbalance and tension in the acts of sitting and standing that sharply impact the musician’s coordination, comfort and sense of control and satisfaction.

Because they are so deeply ingrained, the sensations of these habits fall below the kinesthetic “radar” of the musician (i.e., they don’t feel “wrong” at all.) In essence, there is general lack of an accurate body awareness involved in the music making process.

This lack of awareness is usually accompanied by a misconception about how their bodies function best in gravity. This is where I usually introduce two concepts (which are actually related mechanical principles):

support, and suspension

Support

Whenever I give an Alexander Technique lesson to a new student, I ask, “What is supporting you as you stand?” I get a variety of answers:

“My feet.”

“My legs.”

“My hips and back.”

“My entire body.”

(And sometimes, after some reflection by my student, I even get, “I have no idea.”)

But the truth of the matter is that when your standing, the ground (or the floor) is supporting you. Yes, that’s right. Gravity is drawing the mass of your body downward, and the ground is accepting and holding that mass.

Now, this is an important concept to grasp, because if you’re not allowing the ground to support you, you’re most likely tensing your body unnecessarily in an unconscious attempt to hold yourself up: stiff ankles, knees, hips, back, shoulders, neck…even your jaw.

It’s important that you let your weight pass through your bones into the floor (if you’re standing) or through your sitting bones (if your sitting). Let the stable surface of the floor or chair support you.

Suspension

But you need more than support to stay upright and in balance. You need an “anti-gravitational” energy source to counter the pull of gravity. This is where suspension comes into play.

Wired inside of you is a neuromuscular response to go up against the pull of gravity. (In fact, all organisms on the face of the earth have an anti-gravitational response system; even plants rise up from the ground, defying the pull of gravity.)

The muscles in your spine, from your pelvis to the top of your neck, and the muscles in your legs, are sending you lightly, yet powerfully upward you up as you stand.

If you let them. And this is where habit comes into play.

You see, you were born with (and cultivated in your earliest days after birth) this upward tendency: your head releasing at the top of your spine, your back lengthening and widening, your legs releasing out of your pelvis extending you upward, and your feet spreading out onto the floor. All of this upward suspension is  expansive, springy, flexible and responsive by design.

Yet, many of us lose this dynamic suspension as we get older through habits of bracing and/or collapse. When we un-learn these habits, our upwardly mobile suspension system returns to functioning optimally.

Why is this important?

No matter what instrument you play, if you are perpetually out of balance, you are creating tension that interferes with the freedom and functioning of the parts most directly involved in playing your instrument.

As an example, If you’re saxophonist (as I am) and you stiffen your legs as you play, you’ll also stiffen your pelvis (in an unconscious attempt to compensate for the lack of mobility involved in balance.) If you’re stiffening your pelvis, your shoulders will stiffen for the same reasons. If you’re stiffening your shoulders, your arms (because of their structual relaitonship with your shoulders), are stiff as well. If you’re stiffening your arms, you’re interfering with the freedom in your hands.

And so on. If you doubt this at all, as an experiment, stand on a very wobbly surface as you play your instrument (an Airex pad, or Bosu ball, for example). You’ll experience the above mentioned responses of tension immediately, and will have a noticeable loss of control over your instrument.

All this doesn’t even take into account the effect this has on your breathing. Can you play well with these habits of tension and imbalance? Sure. Skilled musicians do all the time.

But you’ll play better without them. I can vouch for that, both as a teacher and as a musician.

Integrating and optimizing

Support and suspension work best as an integrated system. Here are few things to keep in mind to help you take advantage of how your bodily design functions best in gravity:

  • Begin by thinking of yourself as being light. Seriously. There is a powerful connection between how you perceive yourself and your neuromuscular responses and organization.
  • Allow your weight to release into the floor (if you’re standing; if you’re sitting, allow your weight to release directly through your sitting bones onto the surface of the chair), as you imagine your head releasing lightly upward off the top of your spine.
  • If you’re standing, let your weight pass directly through your legs and through your ankle bones and heels into the floor. Think of your legs as releasing out of you hips. As you shift toward balance, your weight might shift slightly toward your heels. Let that happen as you also allow your feet to gently spread out onto the floor. Give yourself a moment to notice the stability of the floor.
  • Allow your ankles to be free and mobile to accept the support of the floor. The same with your knees and hips. No need to lock joints . Think that you have lots of space in your joints and lots of mobility (whether you’re sitting or standing).
  • Imagine each of  your feet as a three-legged stool (heel, base of your large toe, and base of your small toe). Ask yourself if you are putting too much of your weight into any one of these legs.
  • Think of your shoulders as widening, as they release one away from the other in response to your lengthening spine.
  • Don’t try to lift, or hold yourself up. Remember, “up” is already there in your body as a response to the pull of gravity. This is true, whether sitting or standing. Imagine unlatching yourself to release upwards.
  • Remain mobile, both in thought and movement. Don’t try to maintain posture. Instead, renew the wish for this springy, light upward organization in your body

It may seem counter-intuitive, but you’re allowing the weight to pass through your body as you direct your thinking in the opposite direction. In the simples sense, your weight goes downward, but your head releases your spine upwards. Two different directions, working together to integrate support and suspension, so you can play your best!

As a final thought, keep in mind that there is a difference between being grounded (supported, suspended, mobile and free) and being planted (held, stiffened and/or collapsed and immobile). Aim for being grounded, and you’ll improve your chances of success.

The Difference Between A Good Method And A Good Teacher

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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.