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The “Other” Essential Skill You Should be Consciously Cultivating in Your Daily Practice

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Your sound.

The sound you imagine and create on your instrument is the defining element of who you are as a musical artist.

I’ve yet to encounter a serious musician who doesn’t consciously  dedicate a certain amount of time daily exclusively  to the exploration and cultivation of their sound.

A beautiful sound is perhaps the  essential skill for any musician. It’s your voice.

A very wise bit of advice I’ve often encountered goes something like this:

Make everything you practice a study in producing a good sound.

In other words, consciously  play everything you play with your best possible sound. (The word “consciously” being key.)

I couldn’t agree with this more. (In fact, here’s a post I wrote about daily “sound meditation”.)

But I encounter far too many musicians who are not, on a daily basis, consciously  cultivating what I consider to be the “other” essential skill in playing music:

Time.

Specifically, your sense of time and pulse as you play your instrument.

Your perception of time (and how you interpret that as a continuous “pulse”) is not only an immensely important musical component (some might say most  important), but it is also foundational to your skill and coordination in playing your instrument (yes, even in producing your sound!)

And ultimately, your technique is only as good as your sense of time.

In my Alexander Technique teaching practice, I’m still taken aback by the percentage of musicians who come to me for help who don’t devote a specific amount of time in their daily practice toward the cultivation of their sense of time and pulse.

Many times, it is this lack of “vivid time imagination” (as I sometimes think of it) that is at the heart of the problems that brought them to see me in the first place.

Any coordinated effort (or intention) is dependent upon a sense of time  in order for it to be carried out. (As I mentioned above, even how you produce your sound.)

And the foundation of a vivid musical imagination is time and rhythm. Whether you’re improvising or playing composed music, the more vividly you conceive of pulse and rhythm, the freer and deeper your musical expression will be.

To be clear, I’m not just speaking here of the importance of making sure you’re playing with a good sense of time whenever you’re practicing (or performing) whatever you’re practicing.

I’m speaking of setting side a certain amount of daily practice time with the specific intention of challenging  and improving  your sense of time. (A “time meditation”, if you will.)

So if you’re not already doing this, but would like to start, here are a few things to aim for and/or keep in mind:

  • Address your specific needs-Take time to develop exercises for yourself that take you out of you comfort zone. What presents a challenge for you? Look for the things that give you trouble. But…
  • Keep it simple-Use melodic patterns (for example, scale or arpeggio patterns) that are very familiar to you as you challenge your time skills. Don’t get distracted by the sequence of pitches.
  • Work only with a metronome-Don’t use a drum loop or backing track. (See below for why I suggest this). Just the simple (but make sure it’s loud!) click of a metronome is the only tool you’ll need. (Drum loops and backing tracks are great practice tools, by the way, just not the best for our purposes here.)
  • Aim toward minimum clicks-This is the essential tool for improvement. In order to develop an accurate sense of time and a lively sense of pulse, you need to develop your “temporal imagination” (as I call it). This means increasing the “notes-to-clicks” ratio with the metronome. I rarely get my metronome over 40 beats per minute when I’m working on my time. If I’m playing eighth notes in 4/4, for example, I’m going to have the metronome click only on the first beat (i.e., eight notes per click). As I progress the tempo upwards, eventually the eighth notes are “transformed” into sixteenth notes (i.e., sixteen notes per click), and so on. Always be listening for (aurally imagining) where the next click falls. (See below!) When you’re playing with a drum loop or backing track, it is the loop or track that is “feeding” you the time and feel, rather than having you imagine it.
  • Imagination is key-What you should be working toward is “hearing” (aurally imagining) the rhythmic component of whatever you’re playing (continuous eighth notes, for example) as an even  “pulse within a pulse” (i.e., your eighth notes as a pulse that lines up with the slower pulse of the metronome). The better you get at accurately anticipating  the metronome clicks, you’ll find that you’re rhythmic pulse (i.e., the continuous eighth notes, in this case) becomes more uniform and even. (Really!)
  • Work daily to address and challenge yourself with these three components time:

1. Perception of time (as stated above, how accurately and vividly you “imagine” time passing  and how you  feel  “pulse”)

2. Rhythmic complexity (placing ever-increasing demands upon rhythmic combinations as you feel these combinations against the pulse of the click, including simple and complex polyrhythms).

3. Meter (increasing your capacity to conceive of and hear various metric subdivisions within a given metric frame , for example, learning how to “hear” 3/4 over 4/4; as well as displacing the click of the metronome to the other beats in the measure).

  • Pay attention to your reaction-(This is me being the Alexander Technique teacher.) When you challenge your perception of time, it can be tempting to stiffen and compress your body. Make a conscious choice  to check in with yourself frequently so that you’re not compressing your head onto your neck, or stiffening your shoulders, or locking your knees, etc. You’ll find that if you stay in a relatively fluid state of balance and mobility, your perception of time will noticeably improve.

Here’s a simple exercise you can begin with to challenge your sense of time. (It’s also a useful way to discover where you are with your “temporal imagination). Take a simple major scale pattern in eighth notes and play it with the metronome clicking on beat one (the “X” above the first note signifies the metronome click:

Aim for playing this pattern as slowly as you can, completely legato. Start with the metronome set at 40 bpm, and begin by listening  to the clicks for a while without playing. Practice imagining precisely and vividly where the click falls amongst the silence, then try to “hear” the space (the silence) between the clicks. Think of the metronome and your imagination working together to form a sort of “rhythmic drone”.

Next, imagine the sound of the pattern (again, without playing) as it lines up with the clicks. When you’re able to do this with a reasonable amount of consistency, pick up your instrument and play.

Start working your way downward on the metronome to at least 20 bpm, or slower. Listen to each note  you’re playing as you repeat the pattern, as you also anticipate in your imagination where the “C” and the “D” line up with the click. Don’t go to a slower tempo until you can play it with considerable precision, consistency and confidence.

Once you’re confident you can do that at the slowest tempo possible, play the pattern I’ve presented below (sixteenth notes) at 40 bpm and work your way down to as slow a tempo as possible, aiming for evenness, vivid imagination of sound and pulse, and precise matching with the metronome click:

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t play the double-time pattern right from the start. Just stay with the eighth notes until you gain more skill and confidence. Keep things within your reach.

After you’re able to play these patterns accurately at as slow a tempo as possible, you can add a new challenge by playing the pattern with the metronome clicking on beat “2” (again, the “X” signifies the metronome click):

as well as:

And so on…

If you’d like to work more specifically in challenging your sense of time, meter and rhythmic imagination, I’ve made available for purchase two e-books:

Rhythmic Dissonance: Exercises to Improve Time, Feel and Conception, is a methodical approach to challenging your perception of time, as well as expanding your ability with polyrhythms. It starts off easy and gradually gets very  challenging. It’s like strength training for your “rhythmic muscles”.

Essential Polymeter Studies in 4/4 for the Improvising Musician, is a methodical approach to “hearing” and understanding the basic subdivisions of 3 (3/8 and 3/4), 5 (5/8 and 5/4) and 7 (7/8 and 7/4) against 4/4. If you’re an improvising musician, working from this book will liberate your improvisational concept and expression.

So here’s to encouraging you to find time in your daily practice routine to delve specifically into building your rhythmic skills. Exploring time and rhythm is a vast, interesting and edifying universe. Enjoy the journey!

Teaching and Learning Music: Being Mindful of Metaphors

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Whenever I give a first Alexander Technique lesson to a musician, it is not uncommon that certain misconceptions about playing music come to light.

It is ofttimes  an anatomic and/or physiologic misconception specific to the physical demands of playing the particular instrument.

It can also be a misconception about the acoustical principles involved with the instrument itself.

In both cases, these misconceptions invite lots of misdirected energy, preventing the musician from effectively growing toward his/her optimum potential.

There are many reasons these misconceptions arise and develop  (as I have sometimes written about in previous blog posts).

But today I’d like to address this specific one: confusing metaphor  with physical reality.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition of metaphor  is:

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.

The definition goes on to use the metaphor, “drowning in money”, as an example. (The operative phrase from the definition being “figure of speech”.)

Metaphors can be very effective in both creating visual (concrete) images about abstract things, as well as broadening one’s perception of a particular concept or object.

Sometimes a powerful metaphor can be the exact thing that fuels those “aha!” moments we all cherish (teacher and student, alike).

Yet, in learning and teaching music, metaphors can sometimes  be a “double-edged sword” (speaking of metaphors!), creating as many problems as they solve.

When a metaphor helps you convert an abstract idea into a palpable and positive psycho-physical experience, then yes, metaphors are wonderful.

But when a metaphor obscures the actual physical reality  of what is happening, then it can have limited usefulness (at best), and can even interfere with your progress (at worst!)

So many metaphors for playing musical instruments…

“Your fingers ‘dancing’ on the keys”…

“Your sound ‘bouncing’ of the walls”…

“Your arms ‘floating’ out of your back…”

Below are a couple of examples of some fairly common metaphor’s I’ve encountered in my teaching/learning experience as a wind instrumentalist that have produce mixed results, at best. The first involves anatomy/physiology, the second involves acoustics. Let’s examine them:

1. “Breathing from your belly.” (or the “belly as lungs”  metaphor, as I call it). First off, there is no air to be put in your belly, because your lungs aren’t located there. This metaphor is often given as an encouragement to engage more of the muscles in your abdominal region, as well as to prevent “shallow”, clavicular compression in the upper part of the torso.

So what’s the problem?

When so much emphasis is put upon getting the air “down there”, it invites you to misuse your entire head/neck/back mechanism to do so. This will usually get you to compress and distort your spine,  limiting the free, elastic and expansive movements of the thoracic cavity that are necessary to efficient breathing.

Whenever I work with a student on breathing, I demonstrate and explain to them (through images and videos) the actual coordinated movements involved in respiration, as well as giving them some hands-on help to have an experience of this natural and efficient coordination.

Rather than getting them to “breathe into their bellies”, I encourage them to invite the three-dimensional expansion and contraction of their torso that more accurately describes the reality of their physical mechanism. (I encourage you to do the same.)

2. “Your tongue is a valve that starts the sound”. Again, this is not indicative of what is actually happening acoustically. No matter which wind instrument you play, your tongue doesn’t start the sound. Ever. Your focused airstream  starts the sound. This “valve” metaphor is often used to call upon a more precise use of the tongue in articulation.

So what’s the problem?

Now to be sure, your tongue can be used to great effect to give precision to how your airstream is being used to start and stop your sound. But it doesn’t do that which only your airstream can do. If you think of your tongue as the “valve” that begins tone production, it can invite you to get too internally focused in producing your sound.

This can lead to lots of embouchure “micromanaging”, which can manifest itself into excessive jaw tension and misdirected “preparation” when attacking a note at the beginning of a phrase. In turn, it can also keep you from fully realizing and relying upon the voicing mechanisms as they need to work in relation to releasing air into your instrument.

Rather than getting my students to think of their tongues as “valves”, I encourage them to think of articulation as part of their sound.  And sound production on a wind instrument involves conception (imagination) and the movement of air (amongst other things).

So instead of thinking so specifically about your “tongue-valve” when articulating, try to imagine more vividly and precisely the sound  of your desired articulation (your expression!) If it’s clear enough, your brain will efficiently coordinate your physical mechanisms to realize your expression. That’s what you learn through practice.

So I’m not here to tell you to get rid of the metaphors. I use metaphor to positive ends in both my teaching and in my learning. I’m just suggesting to be mindful when using them (in both teaching and learning).

A metaphor (like any other thought) gets us to react in a specific way. If you (or your students) react in a constructive, flexible and exploratory way that invites better coordination, better understanding and better music, then great! By all means use it!

But even then, make sure you’re clear on the reality of what is actually happening. (In short, make sure you know that the metaphor is a metaphor!) Take the time to understand and learn the anatomy/physiology and/or acoustics that pertain specifically to what you do when you play your instrument.

Understanding the distinction between metaphor and physical reality can help you and your students continue to grow, improve and remain curious. All good things.

Improvising Music Is…

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…a beautiful human phenomenon.

It is as equally complex as it is immediately expressive and natural.

I’ve been seriously studying improvisation for over 45 years, and consider the process of improvisation to be one of the greatest blessings of my life.

As a musician, I see myself as an improviser first and foremost, and secondarily as a tenor saxophonist. (I take my role as saxophonist quite seriously, just so you know!)

And though I enjoy playing jazz (and many of the sub-genres within and associated with jazz), I have also studied and enjoy lots of other types of improvisation, from open-ended time-based improvisation, to purely textural, “out-of-time” modern classical expressions, to a variety of other musical traditions that are improvisation-based (like the music of the Roma from the Balkans, for example).

My “definition” of what improvisation is continues to change the more I study, and the older I grow.

After reflecting upon it this week,  I thought I’d share what I currently consider musical improvisation to be (for me, that is) in the simplest sense of the word :

Improvisation is the act of spontaneously discovering melodies, and experiencing how these melodies relate to one another, across time.

Spontaneously discovering  melodies. That, for me, is something that is at the same time thrilling  as it is reassuring.

Thrilling, because…well, there is virtually nothing more energizing to me than my (subconscious) muse manifesting itself to my conscious self. It’s a process of self-discovery that expands and integrates me as a whole being.

Reassuring, because it is a true principle that I can rely upon to bring me these thrilling experiences.

And I say that this is my current definition in the” simplest sense”, because when playing with other musicians, this definition must expand, by design.

It then becomes a matter of “discovering” these melodies as they manifest themselves in communicating  with the other musicians with whom I’m improvising.

My muse both impacts, and is impacted by, a beautiful process of sub-verbal communication with these other human beings. (The similarities between music and speech are stunningly obvious here!)

And I also have a very clear aesthetic principle (an aim, as it were) that seems to arise within me whether practicing improvisation, or actually purely improvising, no matter the context or style:

I aim for freely melodic play.

Freely authentic, freely melodic (as defined, ultimately, by me) and always playful and curious, no matter how “serious” the music may be.

And of course the process of “spontaneously discovering melodies” is (and continues to be) the result of lots and lots of conscious study  and intention  as an improvising saxophonist. Lots of focused, well-organized study and explorations of the “materials of music”: rhythm, harmony, form and meter, to be most specific.

(In fact, the e-books that I’ve made available are really just documentation of some of the areas I’ve put serious study in as an improviser.)

To move in the direction of allowing my subconscious to speak freely requires lots of regular practice in order for me to be able to immediately call upon the materials of music I’ve spent so much time working with.

This is of course necessary in order to transcend any kind of self-conscious “agenda” when improvising. Being “freely available” to follow and release my muse is my wish.

But being freely available to my muse also requires lots of reflection, listening (to myself and legions of  great improvisers and interpretive musicians) and reassessment and redirection of effort.

Trusting my ears, and learning how to “move” around my instrument as I utilize the materials of music to take me there…

If you’re new to improvising, you (like me when I started) might be approaching the study of improvisation as a process of acquiring lots of licks and patterns that you can memorize and call up as you blow over a tune.

That’s a fine place to start. And making choices about when and how to use your memorized licks is certainly within the process of improvisational expression. (You are making spontaneous, in-the-moment choices.)

But at a certain point, you’ll discover yourself playing things that you’ve never played before. Maybe only slight variations on a lick that you’ve memorized. But most decidedly different from the actual lick. (Or maybe something that you’ve never even heard before!)

Where do these things come from?

They’ll be coming from a very deep and natural place within yourself. That’s your music. That’s your melody. That’s you. Uniquely you.

Once you discover that, there’s no turning back.

But wherever you are along the path in studying improvisation, I encourage you to trust yourself, warmly invite your muse, welcoming whatever comes out of you when you play. And study, listen, question (be confused sometimes, even!), and enjoy your continued journey of self-discovery and expression. Such a gift, improvising is!

Tone, Imagination and Skill

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After several remote consultations in the past few weeks with various wind instrumentalists, I’m reminded again about a pervasive misconception that many musicians who work conscientiously on growing and improving their sound tend to cling to. (I’m thinking most specifically about wind and string players, but this applies to any instrumentalist.)

Put simply, improving and cultivating one’s sound is a”physical” process.

I put the word physical  in quotes in order to emphasize the way some musicians understand and approach the concept of tone production.

To be sure, there are many physical components that must be addressed to producing your best sound. But thinking of how to produce your sound in a way that is satisfying to you, expressing that which you wish  to express, is much more than a mere physical process.

It’s a whole person  process (or as we’d say in the Alexander Technique, a psychophysical  process).

This means that acqiring the skills  necessary to obtain your best sound involves all  of you: body, mind and spirit. (Here, I define spirit as the “non-physical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character”.) This whole you  is one, functionally integrated being.

And in expressing your sound, it all begins with imagination.

If you were to ask the right questions to the best wind instrumentalists in the world about how they get their beautiful sounds, you might hear some conflicting answers, where pedagogy is concerned:

Do this with your soft palate (as opposed to that, which is what another great musician does to get his/her sound)

Do that with your tongue (as opposed to this, which is opposite of what another great musician says about getting the best sound)

And so forth…

But one thing all of these world-class instrumentalists can agree upon about producing their best sound is also the one thing they all have in common:

A vivid, detailed imagination of how they would like to sound.

The fine motor skills involved in producing a beautiful sound, with all the nuance, shading, subtleties, power and reliability is a response (which is cultivated over the long-term) to how you imagine  your sound.

That’s how your brain works.

It’s not really that different from how a child learns, not only the words of his/her mother language, but also the prosody, pronunciation, accent, constituencies, etc.

The fine motor mechanisms of speech come into play to fulfill the child’s imagination and conception of of the sound qualities of language. He/she doesn’t need to consciously direct these mechanismsin order to make that happen.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that I encounter as I coach musicians who have come to me for help in improving their sound, is that all the work to produce their sound has been reduced in their minds to a mechanical concept. For example:

Me: What do you think of as you aim to produce your sound?

My client (a French Horn player): I think of holding my corners in and starting the sound as if my tongue were connected to my diaphragm.

Me: What about the sound itself? How do you imagine it?

My client: I imagine it being supported by my breath and controlled by a clear, focused airstream.

These are all good things to wish for.

But I asked this particular client to consider them as being of secondary  importance.  Secondary in that they are things that should be in support of, and responsive to, how vividly she actually imagines her sound. What she wishes to express  in the sound itself.

Because the truth of the matter is that though these things are vital, they in of themselves don’t produce her best sound, if they are not called into play by her imagination and desire.

(I’ve yet to encounter a musician who as sought my help in tone production related matters who isn’t markedly lacking in the kind of aural imagination I’m advocating here.)

Embouchure muscles, as well as the other muscular mechanisms involved in producing and voicing sound, can adapt much quicker than you might think they can (this is especially true where strength is concerned).

And you’ll have a much better chance of “strengthening” these muscles in the most specific way possible if you place your imagination first.

Here are few things to keep in mind to help with this:

  • Listen deeply-Spend lots of time listening to other artists who play your instrument whose sound you deeply admire. Not so much to copy what they do, but to really ignite your curiosity about what makes their sound so wonderful, what makes it touch you so deeply. Take this kind of listening into the practice room with you as you work on your own sound.
  • Imagine explicitly-If you spend lots and lots of time listening to great artists, see if you can hear and describe in detail the things you like about their sounds. The attack, the color, the release, the shading…put it into language that makes sense to you. Bring those words to mind as you wish for your own sound.
  • Transcribe-Find a recording of somebody that epitomizes the beauty in tone you aspire to (or are inspired by). Let it be something that is simple, lyrical, and clearly executed. Take out your instrument and aim toward emulating it one phrase at a time. Make it as specific a copy as you can. In learning to imitate another artist this way, you’ll learn tons about how to hear and produce the sound you imagine.
  • Listen outside of your instrument-This ties into the other processes of listening mentioned above. Learning to recognize, describe and imitate tonal beauty in an instrument other than your own not only grows your imagination, but it also deepens and clarifies the concept you already have of your own sound.
  • Sing-To sing you must first hear and imagine clearly. To paraphrase the great improvising pianist and music educator Ran Blake, “…when you hear a singer, you are hearing the purest form of their aural imagination…” So practice actually singing the kind of sound you’d like on your instrument. It will help in a multitude of ways.
  • Hear and accept-No matter where you are in your journey with your sound, accept it and love it for what it is. Just like your own child, you already love them as they are, even though you know they will continue to grow and develop. Be the same with your sound.

So continue to work on the mechanical components of getting your best sound, but put imagination first, and see how your brain and body (all of you, actually) come into play to serve your desire.

Deepening Improvisation: Do This Every Time You Learn a New Melodic Pattern

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Part of the work in studying improvisation is what I call “feeding” our ears and imagination. In essence, this involves learning and practicing new patterns and sequences.

These patterns can be anything from simple, diatonic melodic movements, to more harmonically complex polytonal statements that you’ve discovered in a jazz etude book, to very particular “licks” that you’ve transcribed from somebody’s solo.

All good.

And all things that will ultimately increase your improvisational vocabulary.

Whenever I give a lesson to any intermediate to advanced improvisers, I typically find that they are already practicing patterns on a regular basis. (I can hear it manifest itself as part of their improvisational “vocabulary”.)

Yet far too many of them are not  doing one very important thing each time they learn a new idea, lick or pattern:

They’re not singing it first,  before playing it.

As simple as that.

I begin to suspect this based upon what I hear in their playing, which in general, sounds like they are somewhat disconnected to the notes they are playing. In short, it sounds like they’re not playing so much from their aural imagination, as from mechanical memorization.

As I start asking questions, I often find that they also don’t do much singing in general as they practice improvisation.

And that’s where we begin to change their practice aims and procedures.

You see, there is a very good reason all the legendary jazz artists would learn so much of their vocabulary by ear (and why this learning tradition is carried on by today’s great artists and educators).

It all comes down to how you think and react.

When you think of a melodic idea in a mechanical  sense (such as, “root, to flat 5, to 4, to flat 3, to natural 3, to root”, for example), your brain organizes how  you’re going to play that idea (your reaction) in a fundamentally different way than if it emerged from your aural imagination.

When you practice patterns from this more “mechanical” organization, it not only takes a good deal of time to “get the notes under your fingers”, it also takes a long time to find its way into your natural, organic improvisational expression.

On the other hand, when you are able to hear clearly and precisely how a melodic pattern sounds, you will not only get the notes under your fingers in a shorter amount of time, but you’ll also be able to access the pattern more readily as you improvise.

And here’s the bonus part:

When you learn patterns primarily by hearing and imagining them, you become much more flexible with how you use them. This means that you easily learn to make variations on them in the moment when you improvise (which, in many ways, is the essence of improvisational variation).

By using you ears in this way you turn patterns into components of aural imagination and impulse. This becomes the fuel that privides energy and movement for your improvisations.

When you first start learning patterns by ear, it can seem daunting. It might take a lot of time to learn even the most rudimentary melodic patterns (like 1,4,5, 3 in major keys for example).

Keep in mind that you get better and better at doing this (meaning faster and more accurate) the more you practice it. And also keep in mind that you can start simple, building upon your skill.

But here’s the bottom line:

No matter whether you discover a new melodic pattern (or lick, or sequence, or idea, or fragment, etc.) that you want to learn from a recording, or from a notated source (such as a transcription or jazz etude book), get in the habit of doing this one very simple, very important thing:

Take the time to sing the pattern with 100% accuracy before  you take it to your instrument to work on it. Don’t just approximate the general “shape” of the pattern. Know it from note to note in its entirety.

Sing it in at least one key, but sing it until you have confidence that you imagine and hear it with vivid clarity. Let it go deep inside of you.

It is never time wasted.

And even if you’re practicing patterns from a book that presents a particular melodic pattern in all 12 keys, take time to sing the pattern in an iteration that fits within your vocal range. Then start wherever that is on the page and work each of the other keys of the pattern using your “singing key” as a starting point.

Doing this regularly will help you to play and absorb the pattern in the other keys more readily and more deeply.

It’s a matter of turning the somewhat abstract (the notes and sequence of the pattern, lick, etc.) into something a bit more concrete (your expression).

And when that happens, you’re on your way to expanding and personalizing your own unique improvisational voice.