Tag Archives: Alexander Technique for Musicians

Optimizing Resonance: You and Your Instrument

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Resonance (in physics): The reinforcement or prolongation of sound by reflection from a surface or by the synchronous vibration of a neighboring object.

-The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language

Whether playing pianissimo, or fortissimo (or anything in between), an optimally resonant sound is complex and colorful, as well as nimble and flexible. When your instrument is resonating optimally, you have better technique, better intonation, and a wider dynamic and expressive range.

And whether you’re improvising or playing interpretive music, optimum resonance allows you to most readily access your creativity. Nothing gets in your way.

In a word, optimum resonance yields satisfaction.

There are lots of musical instrument makers, as well as manufacturers of musical equipment (such as saxophone mouthpieces, violin bows, etc.) that design and market their products with optimum resonance in mind. (Or, at least with their conception of what that means!)

And there are no shortage of conversations between musicians about how a particular instrument or piece of equipment can impact resonance (for better or worse) .

Virtually all pedagogical methods (for any instrument) that address resonance take into account the effect of the player’s actions upon the resonance of the instrument.

And of course this makes sense. Because, truth be told, when you are playing your instrument, you become a part  of that instrument. (I don’t mean this just metaphorically, but also, physically.)

But let’s start with looking at equipment.

For an instrument (or other piece of equipment) to vibrate or resonate freely, its material and/or parts need to be able to move freely  in response to the energies exerted upon them (by you!) This ability to “move freely” is the “synchronous vibration” part of the definition above.

With respect to my saxophone equipment, for example, playing reeds that don’t vibrate freely and evenly interfere with my ability to get a balanced, resonant sound. (Same with a ligature that doesn’t allow the reed to vibrate optimally.)

Non-responsive reeds and poorly designed ligatures have one thing in common: they don’t allow for the movement  necessary for optimal resonance.

So of course it makes sense to seek out, experiment with, and use, the kind of equipment that creates the best conditions for optimal resonance.

Now let’s look at ourselves.

One thing that many musicians don’t take fully into account is the fact that, not only do they need to resonate their instrument, but also, they need to allow the instrument to resonate them.

(Again, I’m not just speaking metaphorically here.)

It is this “exchange of energy” between the user and the instrument that has a profound impact upon the quality of resonance.

You’ll notice I said “exchange of energy”. That’s a fairly apt description of what’s happening when you play your instrument.

When playing saxophone, I’m sending energy by moving an airstream into the instrument. That focused air stream has an effect upon the instrument, for sure.

But that effect comes right back to me instantaneously. Without going too far into the acoustics of playing saxophone, suffice it to say that energy is returning to me (specifically, to my oral cavity) from the saxophone.

This act we call “voicing” in playing wind instruments (how we shape our oral cavity/air stream) is in response  to that energy returning to us from the instrument itself.

So in a sense, the instrument is resonating us. It’s a two-way street, so to speak.

In playing wind instruments, voicing problems are a leading cause of problems with resonance (including response and intonation).

If I’m not allowing the optimal movements  in my voicing mechanisms, I’m going to have less than an optimally resonant sound.

So of course, if my jaw is clenched, or my soft palate is collapsed (or overly rigid), I won’t get the resonance I desire, in part, because I’m  not resonating optimally.

But there’s more to it than just what’s going on inside my mouth. Our human design works as an integrated whole.

So yes, the components of my oral cavity (soft palate, tongue, jaw, nasal cavity, etc.) need to be free to move.

But their freedom is largely dependent upon the relative freedom of my head/neck relationship. If I’m compressing my head downward into my neck (or holding it too rigidly upward), my voicing components are not going to be free to move optimally.

And that head/neck relationship both impacts, and is impacted by, what I’m doing with my ribs, torso muscles, legs, arms….everything.

So if my knees are locked, for example, that will negatively affect the functioning of my “voicing mechanisms”. Will I still be able to get a decent, resonant sound?

Yes, most likely. Just not as optimally resonant as it could be. It’s simple physics.

And even if you don’t play a wind instrument, you are still part of this “partnership of resonance”, as I sometimes describe it to my students.

What you do with yourself as you hold and play your violin, for example, has a measurable impact on the quality of your sound. Just as your strings and bow need to have just the right amount of tension to produce your best sound, so does your body.

This is where the Alexander Technique (the teaching/learning tool that I use to help myself and other musicians) is so effective and practical.

The Alexander Technique helps you to become aware of some of the habits of movement and posture that you bring into your playing (often unconsciously) that interfere with your ability to move freely. The habits that interfere with your  resonance.

The next time you practice, see if you can notice where you might be blocking the resonance within yourself. Start by noticing the relative freedom (or lack of) between your head and neck (no matter what instrument you play), and go from there:

Are you shoulders, arms and hands  freely mobile and spacious?

Are your ribs moving freely and fluidly as you breathe? (again, no matter what instrument you play!)

How are you doing in your hips/pelvis?

How about your knees?

Are you well-connected to the ground? (allowing your weight to disperse evenly as you organize yourself lightly upward)

Take notice of how you “use” yourself when playing. Observe your habits. Aim at facilitating the “synchronous vibration of a neighboring object”, and enjoy the difference!

Language Matters: Optimizing Effort by Modifying Word Choices

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One of the key things I take notice of when giving an Alexander Technique lesson to a musician for the first time, is the language my student is using to describe what they are doing when playing their instrument.

Words are necessary, of course, to help inform me about their needs, as well as to bring to light how precisely (or imprecisely) their thinking is impacting their playing.

I often encounter two  sets of words as students begin to describe the perceived problem(s) that brought them to me for help:

One set of words describes what the student thinks she/he is doing while playing that is causing the problem(s).

The other set describes what the student would like  to happen instead.

It is this second set of words in particular I’d like to address here, as trying to embody these words can sometimes bring about unintended (and unwanted!) consequences for the musician.

“How can that be?”, you might ask.

Well, the short answer is that the words may not accurately describe what the musician actually wants.

In fact, sometimes these words are counterproductive, in that they are describing an impossible event.

For example, when I hear a musician tell me she/he would like to be “completely relaxed” while playing, I feel compelled to gently call this into question.

For starters, if relaxed means “no muscular tension”, than that in itself would be impossible for two reasons:

First, we need a certain amount of muscle “tonus” (the constant low-level activity of a body tissue) just to function in the most essential way (breathe, maintain balance, etc.)

Second, muscular tension is actually necessary to play music. In fact, it would be impossible to play without it. (I won’t digress here on optimally directed, versus mis-directed  muscular tension.)

And because we function as psychophysically whole beings  (our thoughts condition our movements),  being “relaxed” might also mean being in a state of attention that is too  under-engaged to play music optimally.

So I must ask more questions of my student to find out more specifically what the word “relaxed” means.

Often it means simply working with a more optimally  directed amount of muscular effort, while being calmly alert.

When I describe what I  mean by being “calmly alert” (fully engaged and present in an activity, while being freely mobile and flexible in my body) , my student usually says something like, “Yes. That’s what I mean. That’s what I want!”

When a musician thinks “relaxed”, sometimes there is a “should” attached to it. Most specifically, “relaxed” should feel  a certain way.

And if it doesn’t feel that certain way, something must be wrong. With that feeling of “wrong”, often misdirected effort and a divided attention follow (not to mention frustration)!

Here are a few more “loaded words”, as I call them, and some of the ways I modify them in my own thinking:

Instead of saying:

“Loose” (as in, “I want to be ‘loose’ when playing.”), I think instead of being “mobile” (as in, “I’m free to react constructively to my desires, and free to move in cooperation with my with my human design.”)

Instead of having “good posture” (which can encourage a rigid, immobile and uncomfortable way of being), I think instead of having “good use” (which means I’m neither collapsed, nor overly stiffened into uprightness, but moving easily in and out of balance in a dynamic and expansive way).

Instead of being “focused” (which implies a forced, narrow, reactive, divided and exclusive  field of attention), I think instead of being “easily present” (which implies an easy, expansive, responsive, integrated and inclusive  field of attention).

Instead of doing things “perfectly”, where pedagogy is concerned (which can lead to a rigid and inflexible approach that can stifle improvement), I think instead of doing things “optimally” (which allows room for inquiry and flexibility, and takes into account my human design, as well as my specific skill level and challenges; optimal is the best  that can be done in the present moment, all things considered).

Instead of “my body”, where movement, posture and breathing are concerned (which can dis-coordinate my thoughts to my actions; as in “What am I doing with my body?”), I think instead of “myself” (which helps me to work in a holistic, constructive manner; as in “What am I doing with myself?”

And there are many more such loaded words…

So how do you use words when thinking about practicing/playing your instrument? Is it possible that just changing a few of these words can lead to a better experience, to even greater efficiency of effort?

It sure has been possible for me and my students.

Keep in mind that my words are not written in stone. These are words (thoughts, or “directions”, as we might call them in Alexander Technique lingo) that work best for me and for some of my students, and they change over time as understanding deepens and need dictates.

I’m constantly exploring and expanding how I speak to myself as I play music, as well as how my Alexander students think to themselves. It’s a work in progress.  Just as it should be.

Resonance, Time and Ease (A Warm-up Meditation)

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Just as my practice goals and strategies evolve over time, so does my conception and implementation of warming up to practice.

Recently, one of the musicians that I coach asked me to elaborate more specifically how I’m currently warming up. So I thought I’d share my thoughts here with you all.

In the past few months, I’ve given myself a specific warmup project: playing one-octave modes from various scales (major, minor and harmonic major) legato, in slow sixteenth and thirty-second notes (half note equals 12 to 15) bpms).

I started out doing this as a way to challenge and improve my sense of what I call my “temporal imagination” (how vividly and accurately I perceive  time and pulse). As I continue to work daily on this, the components (or objectives, if you will) of my daily warm-up have become distilled into the integration of these three things:

1. Optimal resonance

2. Perception of time

3. Psychophysical ease

Allow me to elaborate a bit on each of these components.

Optimal resonance

As a saxophonist, this has a very specific meaning to me. It involves finding the “balance” (or “exchange of energy”)  between my air stream and my instrument. (Some of you saxophonists might notice that I simply said my “instrument” and not “the mouthpiece and reed”. I find this to be a more accurate description of the acoustic reality of the sound making process.)

In finding that balance, I’m looking for a consistently responsive  and  flexible  breath support, coupled with an awareness/allowance for my voicing mechanisms (soft palate, tongue, jaw, nasal cavity, etc.) to “come alive”, so to speak.

I aim to feel the sound resonating gently inside my head (particularly, my nasal cavity), as I connect that feeling to the sensation of the sound inside my horn. I connect all of this immediately to how I hear my sound out into the room.

So I’m calling into play both internal and external sensory awareness and sensations.

Perception of time

My coordination, my technique, sound, expression…virtually everything I do is conditioned by my sense of time.

As I play each of these modes slowly with the metronome, my aim is to be present with each note.

What that means specifically is that I am connecting my “optimal resonance wish” with my internal perception of time, and how that internal perception of time relates to the reality of the metronome (an external cue for time) and my sound in the room.

When the metronome clicks so slowly, it becomes tempting to try to “play each note in time” by imagining how “evenly” each note should sound.

But as I try to play that way, I virtually always end up rushing just a bit. I tend to try to manage what my fingers are doing as opposed to truly listening and responding. It’s as if I’ve lost the sense of the wholeness of the phrase I’m playing.

So what I do instead is aim for optimum resonance on each as it moves in time to the next , while I hold in my imagination the anticipation  of where the next click will fall on the metronome. This helps me integrate my internal consciousness (my intention and imagination) to the external world (hearing my sound; hearing the sound of the metronome).

Whenever I do this, my time instantly becomes lovely and easily precise. I can hear the evenness of not just every note that I play, but also the entire phrase as a whole.

Metaphrically, it’s as if I’m standing on top of a large mountain looking down on the whole valley. This is an immensely pleasurable experience, and it has significantly bolstered my confidence in my sense of time, as well as rhythm and meter.

Psychophysical ease

This is where my experience both teaching and learning (and applying) the Alexander Technique comes in handy. As I aim to integrate optimal resonance with my perception of time, I’m doing so through the foundation of a good “use” of my entire self.

(This is the central organizing principle of all my work as I warm up and practice.)

You might notice that I use the term “psychophysical ease” instead of “physical ease”. I do so because “psychophysical” is a more complete and accurate description of how we as human beings function in activity.

The “ease in my body” is incumbent upon my “ease and clarity in my thinking”. It is impossible to have one without the other.

So what I aim for as I’m connecting my optimal resonance to my perception of time, is finding the ease that is already there inside myself.

I notice my balanced connection to the floor through my feet, the mobility of my joints, the poise of my head on top of my spine (very important!) and the elastic quality of my ribs and torso as I breathe.

If I happen to notice something in my reaction (how I’m using myself) that I don’t  want, I simply make a decision to stop doing it, and bring my attention gently back to the ease in my body, and the calm but alert clarity in my thinking, as I stay present with my sound and with the time.

As I mentioned above, my aim in warming up is to integrate these three components into one, singular, omnisensory experience. I’m never sacrificing one component at the expense of another.

The challenge in writing or talking about this , is that it sounds much more complicated, slow-moving and cumbersome than it actually is. In reality, my thoughts are quick, quiet and thorough. Powerefully effective in helping me to react optimally.

After my warm-up (which takes me about 10-15 minutes) I’m ready to work on anything (psychophysically ready!), and the rest of my practice session, virtually without fail, goes along constructively, efficiently and pleasurably.

So how do you warm up? What do you aim for specifically? What do you do to get yourself there? How do you know if/when you are  “there”? If you’re not clear on the answer to these questions, I encourage you to investigate and experiment. (And please know that I’m here to help you if you need it.)

Optimizing Practice: Giving Consciousness Priority Over Repetition

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Anybody who knows me as an Alexander Technique teacher knows that I’m not a big fan of what is commonly referred to as “muscle memory”.

Besides the fact that the name itself is misleading and overly simple (it’s not so much your muscles “remembering”, as it is your brain changing how it communicates with your muscles), it tends to invite mindless repetition during practice sessions.

In following the “muscle memory” mantra too far, the best case scenario is that you just don’t use your time optimally  when practicing something (yes, even long tones!) Sure, you accomplish something (the ability to carry out a particular movement or activity below consciousness), but you get it in an imprecise and inefficient manner.

In the worst case scenarios, mindless repetition in the pursuit of muscle memory leads to poor technique, erroneously conceived pedagogy, misdirected effort, and even injury.

A good deal of my job as an Alexander Technique teacher is in helping my students learn to optimize their thinking when they practice.

This by definition means bringing consciousness and intention  into everything you practice.

Trumpeter, Alexander Technique  student, Tyler Pfledderer sums it up beautifully and succinctly here:

I do not repeat a passage of music because I want it to be ‘muscle-memory’. I repeat it after I first ask myself ‘where should I place my attention this time?’

“Where should I place my attention this time?”

I ask myself multiple variations of this question dozens and dozens of times in each of my practice sessions.

It is the essential  question to ask in the pause I choose to take between repeating anything I’m working on.

Asking this question brings consciousness into what I’m doing and clarifies my intentions each moment I practice.

And this helps me cultivate efficiency in time and effort, effective problem solving strategies, continuous improvement, and immense satisfaction.

Frustration is largely non-existent when I practice with this kind of mindfulness. Anything that rises as a problem can immediately be addressed in a most constructive way.

So where do I  “place my attention” when asking this question before repeating a particular passage I’m practicing?

The answer is quite simple:

It depends upon what I was conscious  of when I played that passage.

“What did I notice?”

“What did I like?”

“What didn’t I like?”

“What would I want more of?”

“What would I want less of?”

“How am I ‘using myself’ (this is an Alexander Technique concept) as I play this passage?” (the ‘more of’ and ‘less of’ mentioned above are absolutely called into question here!)

“How (where!) am I hearing my sound?”

“How am I conceiving of the time/rhythm/pulse?”

“Am I really ‘hearing’ this clearly in my aural imagination?”

Etc….

And finally:

“Am I finished with this passage, or should I repeat with my new, redirected  thinking?”

My challenge here in describing this thought process is that it truly does take more time to “describe” it than it does to “think” it.

The pause I take between “takes” when practicing something is, in reality, quite brief. Seconds, not minutes.

And those are some of the most valuable seconds of my entire practice session!

No matter how little time I have to practice, I always give “pausing for conscious thought” the highest priority. Pausing to redirect my thinking is never  a waste of time. (Though sometimes thoughtlessly repeating a particular passage in pursuit of “quantity” usually is.)

Even practicing things I’m highly familiar with, I will accomplish far, far more with three or four mindful takes of a particular item than I would with 20 mindless takes “in front of the television” (or with an otherwise divided attention).

Consciousness instead of mere repetition.

With this approach, practicing saxophone has become a form of meditation for me. Truly.

So how conscious are you  when practicing? How mindful are you each time you decide to repeat a passage or an exercise? How clear are your intentions?

Are you engaged with choice, or are you running on your unconscious “auto pilot”.

Work on being mindful, developing your own  questions concerning “where you should place your attention” between takes. Not only will you improve more regularly, but you’ll also develop confidence in your “process”, and in your problem solving skills in the practice room.

And as a bonus, you’ll finish your practice sessions feeling connected, integrated and satisfied.

I’ll leave you with something paraphrased from the trumpet virtuoso, Rafael Mendez, who was known for spending long, long hours each day practicing. It went something like this:

As a younger man, I used to practice 8 hours or more every day. Now I practice half that much in a day, but I really listen to myself as I do so.

So enjoy the pause. Think a bit more. Play a bit less. Continue to grow.

Physical Efficiency in Playing Music: A Question of Economy

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Many highly skilled and accomplished musicians have lots to say about efficiency in playing their particular instrument.

Whether it is about what the hands/fingers should (or shouldn’t do), or the arms and legs, or how any particular part of the oral mechanism involved in playing functions optimally, there seems to be no shortage of opinions about how to play without “wasting effort”.

And I have my opinions, too, of course, which are based upon my experience teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians, coupled with my growing knowledge and explorations of anatomy and neuroscience.

One of the ideas that can cause considerable problems for some of the musicians who come to me for help, is “economy of movement”.

In playing saxophone, for example (the instrument I play), there are those who advocate this concept: “To move your fingers with the greatest amount of speed, you need to move them as little as possible to raise and lower the keys.”

On the surface, this seems like a good idea. It’s kind of variation on the “shortest distance between two points is a straight line” concept. It obviously takes less time to move a shorter distance than a longer one, all other things being equal.

I describe this concept (in reference to what I’ve written above) as “economy of movement”.

So what are the potential problems with this?

Well, for many musicians, this attempt to limit movement can often begin to manifest itself as stiffness and rigidity.

Not just stiffness and rigidity in the specific parts of the body involved in carrying out the movement, but in the entire organism itself: stiff neck, shoulders, jaw, knees, ribs and more.

And with this comes yet another form of “stiffness and rigidity” as well. Specifically, in the cognitive functioning  of the musician.

I describe this as the “deer in the headlights” syndrome. In the focus to “limit” the movement often comes the narrowing of the focus of attention  in general. Not a good thing, as this tends excludes and disintegrate (rather than include and integrate) the various experiential elements necessary to play optimally.

So instead of thinking “economy of movement“, I encourage the musicians I work with to begin to think more in terms of “economy of effort“.

Now, to be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating less  effort (as that in itself can have the same negative unintended consequences of “less movement”).

More specifically, what I am advocating is the “optimization of effort”. That simply means that the effort applied to the task of playing is directed in a way that is most conducive to the task itself.

It means that the effort you use to play your instrument is best directed when it’s based upon what you want (sound, time, articulation, etc.) in cooperation with design. 

Design includes your human structure (and how it optimally functions), the acoustic principles of your instrument, as well as how your brain works to bring it all together to make music.

Playing with optimum effort means not forcefully using your neck muscles to do the work most suitable for your arms, for example. Or to not strain your jaw in doing the work better suited for your soft palate (when playing a wind instrument).

And sometimes you actually have to let something move more than you might think it needs to in order to optimize effort. Try walking sometime as you limit the movement of your ankles, and you’ll immediately realize that less movement isn’t always better movement. (This is analogous to not allowing your “MP”, or, “knuckle” joints to bend the way they need to if you try too hard to limit the movement of you fingers.)

One of the things I love most about the Alexander Technique is that it employs a clear set of principles that teach you how to recognize misdirected effort as you play music, or do anything else.

As you learn to recognize and prevent your habitual pattens of misdirected effort, you simply play better (and feel better, too!)

So consider replacing the idea of “economizing the movement” with “optimizing the effort”. Really explore the contrast between these two concepts. In doing so, you’ll open up a marvelous new world of possibilities for yourself.