Listening to Your Sound Differently: An Experiment in Perception

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There really is no such thing as truly hearing the “absolute reality” of your sound as you play. In part, that’s because your sound constantly changes as it is impacted by two fundamental things:

1. Environment

2. Perception

Environment has to do with such things as the acoustical qualities of the room you’re playing in, coupled with other variables, such as the other instruments you’re playing with.

Perception has to do with how you hear your sound.

More specifically, it has to do with how you pay attention to your sound as you play. Your perception includes not only the environment in which you are playing, but also how you’re sensing the bony structures inside your head (and close to your ears!) as they vibrate in response to your playing.

Your perception of your sound both shapes the sound itself and influences your experience of it. Perception and experience being inextricably connected. (If you’ve ever played in a particularly good or particularly horrible acoustical setting, you’ve probably realized this.)

Whenever I teach the Alexander Technique to musicians, we do lots of explorations with how they hear their sounds, and how that perception influences their coordination. This is often a question not just of “how” they’re listening for their sound, but also “where” they’re listening for it.

If I’m working with a musician who has serious problems with loss of skill (focal dystonia, for example), I find without fail that the musician in question is listening to his/her sound in a very inflexible, internally focused way.

More specifically, the sound is being felt (kinesthetically) almost more than it is actually being heard in the external environment.

An overly internal focus of attention is often the very thing that leads these musicians to seek my help. This quality of attention tends to exclude and divide, as opposed to include and integrate.

The motor mechanisms of the brain don’t work optimally this way, and problems with tone quality, attack, time, articulation and technical control can arise as a result of such thinking.

Striking a healthy, dynamic balance between the internal (what’s going on inside of you) and external (what’s going on outside of you) helps support optimal coordination and skill.

One of the tools I use to help musicians find this balance involves a very simple experiment with sound and perception. And even for musicians who don’t have any discernible problems, this little experiment can be eye-opening, and quite helpful. Here it is:

Choose something lyrical and highly familiar and enjoyable for you to play.

Then, play the piece (or passage, or whatever) as you make a conscious decision to hear your sound as close to you as you possibly can.

So if you’re a wind instrumentalist or a singer, you’ll listen for the sound right inside your head: in your oral cavity, nasal passages, etc. If you play a string instrument, you’ll listen for the sound right where your bow or fingers make contact with the strings.

Play like this a couple of times, until you’re reasonably sure that you carried out your intention to hear your sound so closely.

Now, play the same piece, this time bringing your attention to the room itself. Listen for your sound to the very far corners of the room (no matter how large or small).

What do you notice?

Is there a contrast between one quality of attention and the other in terms of how you experience your sound? (quality, color, volume, resonance, control)

Is there a difference in your effort? (more tension, less tension, better coordination, worse coordination?)

Play the piece yet again, this time bringing most of your attention to the feel of the sound inside the instrument itself (not in your body!) Take this attention to the feel of the sound in the instrument and with it, listen for your sound out into the far corners of the room.

How does this compare/contrast to the other two ways of paying attention? Which seems to help you most?

After experimenting this way a few times, giving yourself a chance to process and reflect upon the experiences, try doing all three experiments with some kind of recording device.

Do you notice anything different in your sound as you change your thinking? Resonance, volume, color, pitch? If you notice any differences, keep in mind that you’re noticing how your perception of your sound impacts its quality. (This reality can be very powerful, and working in accordance with it can be highly practical!)

You can also explore going back and forth from hearing the sound near you, and farther away all in the same piece (even in the same phrase).

So how do you typically listen to your sound as you play? Close to you? Away from you? (Somewhere in between?) Do you listen to yourself differently depending on the environment? The needs of the situation itself?

By becoming aware of how/where you listen to yourself, you can give yourself the opportunity to improve both your sound and your overall skill as you play.

Explore this process. See what you like. What seems to help most. What allows you to respond with the greatest availability and precision. Realize that, ultimately, your thinking can (and should) remain flexible and responsive, and generally be as outward oriented as is practically possible.

Take these “tools of thinking” into your practice, rehearsal and performance, honing your attention to best serve your intention and your expression.

Healthy and Efficient Practice: Aim for Wanting This at the End of Each Session

Skill and Coordination (They’re Not Necessarily the Same Thing)

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One of the aims of the Alexander Technique is to improve coordination.

And I would say more specifically for musicians, the aim of the Technique is to improve the quality of overall coordination that you use to implement your music making skills.

A misapprehension that many musicians have is that skill and coordination are one and the same thing.

Though they are certainly closely related, they’re not exactly one and the same.

How so?

Allow me to clarify by offering my working definitions of the two terms.

Your skill is your ability to carry out your desired task (for our purposes, playing music). It is manifested in tangible, sonic results: pitch, time, articulation, tone color, technical control, expression, etc.

Your coordination is what you do with your entire self to carry out your skill. It is manifested in muscular effort, or more specifically, the quality of movement you apply to the task. (This includes balance, posture, breathing….everything you do!)

So it is possible to be a highly skilled musician (and yes, this does mean having highly cultivated fine motor coordination skills), yet have less than optimal overall, gross motor coordination.

You can witness this in many instances, if you take time to notice.

Some musicians make it look easy, don’t they?

Truth be told, for most of these musicians, it is easy. They typically appear effortless because their efforts are so singularly integrated into the skill of their performance. Virtually nothing they do interferes with their artistic intentions, with their desire of self-expression, nor with the acoustic and physiologic components involved in playing.

(I look upon classical pianist Artur Rubinstein as a glowing example: free neck, strong and flexible back and arms, moving easily, fluidly and naturally with the music. It is this beautiful, efficient coordination that is at the service of his skills.)

And I think we’ve all seen/heard virtuosic musicians who look like they’re fighting an imaginary foe as they play music: head compressed into the neck, raised (stiff) shoulders, rigid ribs and back, hard narrowed gaze, noisy breathing.

Yet they still deliver the goods. They still play devastatingly beautiful music. (No, I won’t point my finger at any one musician here, as a gesture of respect. But I so easily could!)

So should these musicians even bother with improving their overall coordination? Should you?

Yes. And for three main reasons:

1. Your overall coordination impacts your skill. When you are working in a less than optimally coordinated way, you are interfering with your brain/body’s ability to carry out your skill in the most efficient manner. In essence, you’re working against your human design, and not in accordance with it. You might be able to do so. But you do so despite of, not because of, your coordination. Improving your overall coordination invites greater skill. Or, as F.M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technque) said, your improved coordination creates “the ideal conditions” for your skill to manifest itself through your bodily mechanism.

2. By improving your overall coordination, you reduce your risk of injury (and fatigue). This is why many musicians seek my help as an Alexander teacher in the first place. I have volumes of stories of very highly skilled musicians I’ve encountered who have career-threatening health issues that are related to the poor coordination they apply to their skill. As their coordination improves, so does their health, comfort, endurance and satisfaction.

3. By improving your overall coordination, you open yourself up to other expressive possibilities. This is the hidden gem of all this. As you improve your overall coordination, you also discover different ways to experience the music you play. You become less stereotyped (less “stuck”) in your interpretive choices, which, believe it or not, are highly conditioned by your bodily reactions. (This is especially true for improvising musicians!)

Our tendency as musicians is to sometimes become overly concerned with the parts that seem most pertinent to playing our instruments at the expense of neglecting the rest of ourselves. (For example, a flutist thinking perhaps too much about the formation of the embouchure at the expense of not noticing neck and shoulder strain.)

If this sounds even remotely familiar to you, consider including the quality of how you “use” your entire self (your overall coordination) into the consciousness of playing your instrument.

Let your head be poised freely atop your spine (and of course, let your jaw be free). Let your shoulders release and widen. Soften your gaze. Let you knees unlock. If you’re standing, let your ankles be free and mobile (feet, too!) as you permit the ground to support you. Let your breathing be elastic, easy, reflexive and expansive.

Think balance, mobility and expansion, instead of position or posture. A nice, lively, upward organization of your whole organism is the wish. Notice how these things impact your skill.

And of course, if you need any help in this area, consider finding a skilled Alexander Technique teacher. Allow your coordination to support your skill, and your expression.

Is Improvisation Really Just “Spontaneous Composition”?

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Yes. (to answer the question in the title)

And no.

Yes, in that you are most certainly generating musical ideas. And yes, these ideas contain what can be referred to as “compositional elements and principles”. And yes, when you are a skilled improviser, you are often constructing a solo in a cogent, “compositional” manner.

But to describe improvisation as “spontaneous composition” is an incomplete (and sometimes inaccurate) description of the improvisational process.

In the most fundamental sense, the difference between improvisation and composition comes down to a matter of conscious deliberation.

Take human speech, as an example. The vast majority of the time you are speaking (talking with friends, explaining something to someone, etc.), you are actually improvising.

Sure, you might have a “theme” that you’re working with (maybe talking about where you’d like to eat lunch, for example), but you really aren’t planning, word for word, what you’re going to say. You’re simply following the immediate need to communicate. In essence, you’re reacting in real-time.

Now contrast that with writing something, let’s say for example, writing an essay. Writing gives you a chance to choose your words more carefully. You can take your ideas out of “real-time”, and consciously craft them with the kind of nuance that best suits your intentions.

Musical improvisation and composition have a similar relationship. When you improvise, you are reacting, moment to moment (whether you think you are, or not).

Sure, there might be some kind of narrative going on in your mind as you do so, perhaps guiding and shaping what you play. Nonetheless, it’s still a question of reaction.

And of course, musical composition is similar to composing with words, in that it is more calculated, more pondered upon, more deliberate.

In truth, improvisation involves a largely different neurological process than composing. As neuroscientist and amateur jazz pianist Charles Limb discovered in his research, the main parts of the brain that “light up” for a skilled improviser are the parts that have to do with immediate communication.

Think about that for a moment. The skilled improviser is largely in the realm of attempting to communicate something. More specifically, to connect with the other musicians with whom he or she is playing.

Communication involves not only taking into account the ideas that you have an impulse to express, but equally important, that which you are hearing and reacting to.

Listening is at the heart of it all.

The best, most sought after improvising musicians are those that listen deeply, and respond in accordance to what they hear. (The late, great jazz bassist Charlie Haden comes immediately to mind here!)

And of course, listening is a very active thing to do. To listen deeply is to be fully present. And being fully present in this way provides the wind beneath the wings of the improviser.

And it’s not just about listening to the others with whom you’re playing. It’s also about listening deeply to yourself. It’s about not being stuck in the “deliberation” of your musical ideas at the expense of losing your improvisational consciousness and flow.

Even if you’re playing with backing tracks, or a drum loop, or a metronome (i.e., things that don’t respond to what you’re doing), you need to be listening and reacting to what you hear. This is absolutely primary.

We can sometimes hear the novice to intermediate improviser string one “pre-fabricated” idea into the next seemingly unrelated prefabricated idea. This kind of improvising lacks cogency. There is no “story” being told (as many accomplished jazz musicians might complain).

Again, this is largely (but not exclusively) the result of not really listening in a coordinated and constructive way, of not actually getting into that beautiful realm of communicating.

It’s a matter of getting “stuck in your head”, and not being truly available to hear what you just played, and how the rest of the ensemble is reacting to what you just played. It’s much like holding a good conversation. You listen, to yourself and those with whom you’re speaking, and you say something that has a logical connection to the conversation. (It’s also part of the learning curve as an improviser, so if this describes where you are now, that’s fine; it will only get better!)

But I’ve also heard some highly accomplished improvisers try a little too hard to tell their story.

This often gives them what sounds like a “well-crafted” solo, but perhaps not the most spontaneous expression. It can come off as sounding a bit too compositional (and somewhat self-conscious), as the emotional “arch” of the solo builds with more than a small amount of predictability.

Maybe it’s a matter of balance here, but to me, to “plan” an entire solo seems antithetical to the deeper, neurologic process of improvisation. (I realize that I’m talking here about what my values are in improvisation. I don’t wish to challenge or offend those that disagree or hold other values.)

To paraphrase Charlie Parker: “Learn your instrument. Learn the scales and chords. Learn the tunes. Then forget all that shit and just play.”

I think part of the reason why many of us still get excited when we hear these old Parker recordings, is because that is precisely what is happening. We’re not so much hearing a deliberate “composition” (though it is most certainly, cogently compositional!) as much as we are hearing a highly disciplined musician who is spontaneously following his muse, is listening deeply, and is expressing himself freely and personally.

And so many other great improvisers have expressed similar sentiments. (Sonny Rollins talks about aiming to access the “subconscious” when he improvises.)

So study and think like a composer. Aim to master solid compositional principles. Work with the materials of music constantly, as you find new ways to move musically, and to express your ideas.

But when it’s actually time to improvise, just remember to be open, to listen and react without second guessing yourself. Let your voice emerge and manifest its unique, beautiful truth.

Two Main Reasons Inefficient Practice Advice Gets Perpetuated

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One of the things I usually discover early on when teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians, is that part of the problem that led them to seek my help has to do with counterproductive pedagogy.

With a wind instrumentalist, for example, I might observe what appears to be a forced, tense, noisy, unnatural-looking inhalation before playing a note or phrase.

When I ask about this breathing habit, as often as not, I learn that it’s something that has been deliberately cultivated. In other words, it is something that they do consciously as they play.

When I ask, “So why do you do it that way?”, the answer is usually something like, “Because that’s the way ‘so and so’ (insert name of highly respected musician here) says it should be done.”

Then I ask a second question: “Why do you think he/she does it that way?”

The answer that follows usually falls into one of two categories:

Either:

They don’t know why this great musician does it that why, but it obviously works best for them.

Or:

They “know” why this great musician does it that way, but the explanation they provide isn’t in accordance with the acoustical principles of the instrument and/or with the design of the human mechanism.

And so yet more misinformation by well-meaning experts gets perpetuated. Some of it benignly inefficient, some of it downright harmful (and everything in between).

So why/how do these “myths” get perpetuated?

Two reasons:

Trusting without testing.
It works (to a certain degree).

Let’s look at this first one, trusting without testing:

No matter what we might think about how our bodies work, or about how our instruments work, there are certain solid, measurable, scientific realities about how they really work.

As a serious musician, it is your responsibility to continually improve and broaden your understanding of these things.

The more clearly you understand the real “hows and whys” of your organism (including how your thinking impacts this organism!), the better your sense of cause and effect becomes when being introduced to any new pedagogic principle and/or procedure.

If you comprehend the science behind playing your instrument, you’ll see that “some musicians do well (in part), not because of what they do, but despite what they do.” (All of my students, and some of my readers, will recognize this as one of the recurring themes in my teaching.)

It is not enough to trust and expert. You must also build a solid faith in the efficacy of a particular pedagogic element because it stands the test of actual, measurable fact. Cause and effect.

The second reason these inefficient practice ideas get perpetuated sounds contradictory to the point I’m trying to make here:

They work (to a certain degree).

It’s the “certain degree” part that opens the door to trouble. The reason for this is actually fairly simple.

Let’s go back to my earlier example about inhaling when playing a wind instrument. If you believe that you need to noisily suck in air as you try to force the air down into your abdominal region, in order for you to get a sufficient breath, you are simply working against nature.

You can’t put air “down into your gut”, because you have no lungs there. (And don’t talk about pushing the diaphragm outward to “make space for the air”; it doesn’t work like that, either.)

Yet the noisy, gasping, overly energetic breathing often accomplishes one thing: It creates a more “active” inhalation that engages more muscles (not necessarily in the most efficient way, mind you!), and that does seem to draw in more air than when you inhale in a more passive, unintentional way.

But there is some unwanted baggage attached to this way of breathing.

To begin with, all this effort creates undue strain in your jaw, glottis and facial muscles. Not to mention the strain it puts on the rest of your body. I’ve had musicians come to me for help with chronic neck and back pain that is clearly related to these poor breathing habits.

Equally important, you lose touch with what it is like to have a free, naturally reflexive inhalation.

It’s the free movement of the ribs, the diaphragm, the pelvic floor, and other muscles in the body that creates the kind of necessary expansion to draw in a deep breath. Combine this with the intention of the musical phrase and expression, and you’re good to go.

Yet, as long as you need to “feel” this forced inhalation as a “complete and full breath”, you will continue to work in this inefficient way.

And unfortunately, you’ll likely pass this advice onto your students. In Alexander Technique slang, we sometimes say that this is a case of “specifically focusing on a part, while neglecting the whole”.

So stay clear about these two things as you practice, explore and expose yourself to new ideas about playing your instrument. You’ll be better off (and so will your students!)

I’ll leave you with a quote from F.M Alexander, the founder and developer of the Alexander Technique: