You And Your Instrument: Three Simple Steps That Make Playing Easier

Step One: Start with balance

It all begins here. Whether you sit or stand when you play, how you maintain your upright balance has a significant influence on your comfort, safety and skill.

If you’re sitting, you need to be on top of your sitting bones, with your head poised lightly above. Think of your neck as being free and your spine gently releasing upward, as the weight of your torso releases downward to be supported by the chair.

It is this upward/downward opposition between the head and the pelvis that makes easy upright balance available to you. It is part of your human design.

Avoid trying to “sit up straight” (being stiff and rigid). Also avoid collapsing into the chair (make sure the chair you’re sitting in isn’t too soft, or you’ll be tempted to collapse.). Balance is the operative word here, not posture, postition or perfection.

If you’re standing, allow your weight to release evenly through your feet into the floor, as you let your head balance lightly above (just as in sitting). Again, think of your neck as being free, and let your back and shoulders release into width and elasticity.

Make sure you’re not locking your knees or distorting your pelvis by either pushing it forward, or tucking your tail. Think of your ribs as being very free to move, as you let yourself breathe easily.

Imagine yourself as mobile, dynamic and grounded, instead of stiff, fixed and planted.

Step Two: Bring the instrument to you (instead of bringing yourself to the instrument)

Once you’ve found an easy balance, bring the instrument to you (this obviously doesn’t apply to piano, drum kit, or other stationary instruments). It is much easier and more efficient to bring the instrument to you than vice versa.

Though this sounds somewhat obvious, If you were to observe yourself in a mirror as you start to play, you might be surprised to see that you’re pulling yourself out of balance toward the instrument instead of being the point of balance through which you integrate the instrument with yourself.

Understand that if your instrument is going away from your body, you must let your whole self be free to move very slightly in the opposite direction as a form of counterbalance.

Say for example, you play trumpet. As the instrument goes forward in front of you, your weight goes very slightly backward away from it. If you’re standing, this movement comes from your ankles; if you’re sitting, it comes from your hip joints (in this case because your base of support is at your sitting bones, not at your feet.)

You don’t have to try to actively move yourself backwards (in fact, doing so can actually take you out of balance). Your neuromuscular system does that on its own, as a sort of postural reflex. Just see that you’re not interfering with this reflex by stiffening your ankles (and/or hip joints).

And beyond this, you can notice how else you might be “over-preparing” yourself the instant before you actually start playing. For example, are you taking your head out of balance on your spine? Are you narrowing your shoulders as you reach for your instrument? Let the instrument come to you.

Bottom line, avoid distorting and compressing yourself before you start playing. Let yourself stay in fluid, upright, expansive and easy balance.

Step Three: Renew the thought.

This is the step that tends to get most neglected in the process. Once you are clear about your balance, and about how you bring the instrument to you in order to stay in balance, you need to regularly redirect your thinking so that you’re not falling back into habit. It is very, very easy to fall back into habit, if you’re not vigilant about this.

As I mentioned in a recent article, you need to be clear about two things each moment you begin to play: your intention and your use. Remember to take your time. Stopping to constructively redirect thought/effort is NEVER a waste of time.

So allow yourself to notice your habits with your instrument. Notice your balance (including any kind of excess holding or tension) without your instrument, as well. Observe how you make contact with your instrument. Are you free, or fixed?

Aim for free. Be patient and persistent, and enjoy your newfound ease and continued improvement.

One of the Things That Makes You Sound the Most Predictable When You Improvise

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Jazz writer Whitney Balliet famously called jazz, “the sound of surprise”. It is this thrill of unpredictable, yet cogent, musical communication that is the essence of jazz (and many other genres of improvised music, too!)

And to this day, there are those artists who are still consistently able to surprise us each time they play.

What makes their playing so surprising to us?

Well, many things of course.

But from moment to moment, the main thing that keeps us on the edge of our seats as we listen to a masterful solo unfold is the soloist’s use of rhythm.

Rhythm is a huge topic. It is vast and endless; there could never be such thing as a comprehensive “rhythmic thesaurus”.

Rhythm is also at the heart of our spoken language. Every language has a distinctive use of rhythm to nuance and emphasize meaning.

Yet rhythm is too often the most neglected sub-discipline within the larger discipline of jazz improvisation.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many exciting ways to use melodic sequence and harmonic substitution when improvising over chord changes.

But listen to even the most adventurously harmonic jazz musician express these harmonically novel musings with nothing but an unending stream of eighth notes, chorus after chorus, and the novelty soon wears thin.

It simply becomes predictable.

To stay adventurous, spontaneous, flexibly expressive, exciting and wonderfully unpredictable, you’d be wise to devote a serious amount of time exclusively to rhythmic study.

In playing and studying jazz, rhythm actually encompasses these four things:

Feel (including articulation)
Rhythmic content (whichever rhythms you’re using at any given instant)
Space (the silence that is in contrast to the sounds you create, which becomes part of your “phrasing”)
Subdivision (how your choice of rhythmic content and space are used to imply meter, also another component of your phrasing)

Most moderately skilled jazz improvisers already have a good use of feel: clear, solid articulation and time feel (it swings!), all wrapped within an expressive sound. It is obvious that some conscious effort has been spent developing this very important component of skill.

Yet it is still confounding to me that so many of these same musicians seem so underdeveloped with their skill in using the other three things I’ve mentioned:

Rhythmic content is often 95% eighth, sixteenth and quarter notes/rests. Polyrhythms (with the exception of the ubiquitous eighth-note triplets) rarely, if ever, appear, other than by pure accident. Quintuplets, septuplets (both which can be used to great effect to create tension against a swing feel) are virtually non-existent.

The consciousness of space (silence) in creating a solo is often lacking to a point where it is considered novel when used to great effect. (I’m thinking of Miles Davis’ playing here.)

The other thing that makes a solo sound highly predictable (besides a highly homogenous rhythmic content) is subdivision. Just because a composition is in 4/4, and the chord changes fit nicely within the 4/4 form, doesn’t mean you have to play everything as if it were emphasizing both the time signature and the form. If you listen to Lester Young (his solo on Lady Be Good is a great example), you’ll hear how he shifts the meter within the form, sometimes implying 5/4 and 3/4. This use of polymeter not only adds to the swing feel, it also keeps the listener in an engaged state of surprise.

So what can you do to make your playing more exciting, more spontaneous, and less predictable? Well, you can’t go wrong by devoting lots of time to developing your rhythmic conception and skills. For starters, become more conscious of the four skills I’ve mentioned above. Then, get to work.

Here are some specific things you can do:

Expand your time feel-Even if all you like to do is swing, there are so many different ways to do this. Listen to how differently Art Farmer plays eighth notes in contrast with Coleman Hawkins. As an exercise, try to imitate both. Then explore different ways to swing the eight notes when you improvise.

Study polyrhythm-There are so many great resources available to increase your rhythmic vocabulary these days. I’ve written an e-book that I think serves as a simple, yet highly practical method to feel/imagine/hear triplets, quintuplets, septuplets and their syncopated subdivisions. Also, when you do learn new melodic patterns/sequences, make a point of doing them with a wide variety of rhythms, not just as a slew of continuous eighth or sixteenth notes. Use your imagination.

Listen (and study) outside of your discipline-I studied Balkan music some time back (lots of odd meters, like 7/8, 11/8, etc.), which significantly expanded my rhythmic conception and skill in playing jazz. Find a kind of music you like that is rhythmically exotic and unfamiliar. Listen, study, analyze and apply.

Explore silence-Practice improvising over a song form as you consciously let lots of time go by between phrases. It’s harder than it sounds at first, and will probably seem unnatural and awkward. But if you persist, you’ll find that you “hear” silence just as clearly as you hear sound. This will profoundly change the way you improvise. I could (and just might!) write an entire blog article about how best to approach this topic alone.

Study polymeter-Learning to hear odd-metered subdivisions within even-metered song forms opens up an entire new universe of phrasing possibilities to you. (I’ve also composed another e-book that methodically addresses this discipline specifically for the jazz musician.)

You’ll rarely play beyond what you can imagine and what you’ve practiced. By making the study of rhythm a daily, conscious (and conscientious!) discipline, you’ll keep your listeners (and band mates) more consistently and joyfully surprised and engaged in what you do.

And speaking of the “sound of surprise”, I’ll leave you with this masterpiece of rhythmic/thematic development by the great, always unpredictable, Sonny Rollins. Enjoy!

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

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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.

Improvisation: Discovering And Defining Your Voice

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What is it that makes a particular jazz artist sound so immediately recognizable?

Is it tone? Phrasing? Rhythmic conception? Time feel? Articulation? Harmonic vocabulary? Melodic sensibility? Something else entirely….? Perhaps even something undefinable?

Truth be told, it’s probably not one single thing.

Though there certainly are distinctive qualities some artists possess that immediately stand out to the listener (John Coltrane’s sound on tenor saxophone is a good example), in reality, it is a seamless integration of various musical and artistic qualities that make an artist sound so unmistakably like him/herself.

I call this easily identifiable quality the “voice” of the improviser.

Just like you have a singularly unique voice when speaking, so too, can you have one when improvising. It’s a matter of making a commitment to finding who you are (what you want to say!) through improvisation.

The beautiful thing about studying improvisation is that you can endlessly explore, discover and cultivate your voice through genuine curiosity and disciplined work. Defining your improvisational voice can be a highly satisfying life long endeavor.

Defining your voice has two components:

Becoming more aware of what’s already there; i.e., how you’re already playing.
Aiming for how you’d like to play. (Understand that this will be in a constant state of change.)

Let’s start with what’s already there. How aware are you of your current voice? How well do you actually hear yourself as you improvise? If you listen to yourself whenever you record, are you rather surprised by what you hear? (for better or for worse…)

If the gap between how you imagine you sound, and how you actually sound whenever you hear yourself on recordings is significant, you might want to bridge that gap.

Start recording yourself fairly regularly (easy and inexpensive to do these days with smart phone and tablet technology). Then listen carefully, as objectively as possible, to what you hear. In this case, I’m not talking about hearing flaws or weaknesses in your musicianship (like pitch and time, for example).

Rather, I’m talking about some of the things I mentioned above: your sound, your articulation, your phrasing and use of space, your use of dynamics, your voice-leading sensibilities (or lack thereof), your time feel, your rhythmic language, harmonic choices, etc.

Become intimately familiar with what you like, and what you don’t like about your voice as it currently is (but be kind to yourself about the “don’t like” stuff). Become a stickler for details. Listen as if you were listening to somebody else. Really take in your playing completely.

When you’re clear about what you do like, keep that dear to your heart as the foundation of the voice you wish to develop.

Which brings us to aiming for how you’d like your voice to be. This could come from an internal source (your own imagination), an external source (your favorite players), or a combination of both. It really is a question of what you like, of what you want to express…of who you are.

If you want to sound just like your favorite artist, so be it. Go after it with all your heart. Listen and transcribe, emulate, play along, etc. Lose yourself (in the best sense of the word!) in the world of this particular artist. Let that emerge through you.

On the other hand, if you wish to find your own voice, start by becoming intimately familiar with what’s already in your imagination.

A great way to do this is by singing improvisations along with a backing track or other accompaniment. Record and transcribe yourself. Play your transcription on your instrument. Analyze what you hear. Again, keep what you like. It’s truly yours.

As you get clearer and clearer about how you’d like to cultivate your own voice, you’ll continue to more readily know when you’re moving in the right direction. You’ll even get a sense of when you’re really embodying the voice you seek, when what you’re feeling/hearing and you’re playing are inseparably linked.

Make that embodiment the standard you aspire to as you study and practice.

When I practice improvisation, I’m always aiming for my voice, for how I want to sound. This may seem obvious, but it is easy for a skilled improviser to fall into what I call the “task” of improvising (flowing along in time, “making the changes”, sounding “cogent”, etc.)

While that might be fine for some musicians to get by on a gig, it is not satisfying to me as an artist. My love for, and my commitment to, improvisation is about going ever deeper into how my voice unfolds and reveals itself to me.

It is for this reason that I do these four things every day that I practice:

1. Sing-I sing with and without a backing track to hear how I’m hearing (yes, I meant to say that). I often record, sometimes transcribe, and typically become edified and guided by what I sing.

2. Improvise slowly-This is the bulk of what I do. I improvise over tunes, modes, or melodic themes at very slow tempos (quarter note equals 40-60), listening carefully to what I’m playing, but not trying to force my playing to go anywhere. My aim in doing this is to get in touch with my voice. As I begin to increase tempo, I never go faster than my ability to maintain my desired voice allows. No auto pilot, no muscle memory, no patterns.

3. Rhythmic study-For me, so much of my voice depends on my flexibility with time and rhythm. As I work on specific skills (like polymeter and polyrhythm), my voice gets clearer, as well as closer to what I wish to express.

4. Free improvisation-I work with drones, thematic fragments, drum loops, a “general feeling”, time or no time, but no bar forms or no chord changes…all kinds of different ways to help me find the immediacy of that which I’d like to express. This kind of work not only further defines and clarifies my voice, but it also helps me to play with greater freedom and confidence over chord changes.

Keep in mind that when I speak of my voice this way, I’m speaking of a never-ending discovery and evolution. As I grow, so grows my voice. It is dynamic, not static.

So what is your voice? How would you like to play? What do you imagine for yourself? Are you already satisfied? Or do you want more?

I’ll leave you with a wonderful recording by pianist Lennie Tristano playing over his composition, Line Up (based on the chord changes to All of Me ). This is a beautiful example of somebody who was deeply and endlessly committed to finding and expressing his voice. It’s hard for me to believe this was recorded in 1954, as it is still very “modern” sounding, even by today’s standards. (Notice in particular his extraordinary use of rhythm and phrasing in relationship to the form.) Hope you enjoy!

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.