Tag Archives: Alexander Technique for Musicians

This Change In Attitude Can Help You Play With Much Less Strain

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The main thing I look for whenever I’m giving an Alexander Technique lesson to a musician for the first time is preparation.

I want to see what my student does those brief seconds before she or he starts to play.

Playing music involves movement, and movement requires preparation, whether it is done consciously or unconsciously. In short, this preparation could be described as habit.

But before I observe my student play for the first time, I spend lots of time asking questions. I want to get an idea not only of the challenges that have led this student to seek my help, but also, the thinking involved in playing music. It is this thinking that is often the foundation of the habits.

These musicians will have a large array of preparation habits, and I’ve never yet encountered two musicians who share identical habits.

Having said that, I can say that all of the musicians who come my way for help have one habit in common: They begin preparing to play by tensing themselves up.

In other words, the movement organized to play that first note involves lots of muscular contraction. A good deal of this muscular contraction is not only unnecessary to sustain  the act of playing the instrument, but it is also unnecessary to begin  the act of playing.

Much of this muscular organization can be attributed to attitude and belief. If you believe you need to tense yourself up to play, then you certainly will, for better or for worse.

But here’s the thing about virtually all human movement: It can begin with release instead of tension.

That’s right, the movement can start by letting something go, but un-latching something in yourself.

For example, if you’re standing and you wish to begin to walk, you can tense your neck and shoulders as you pull yourself down into your pelvis onto one side of your body to de-weight the leg necessary to start the first step, then pull your leg up into your pelvis in order to bend your knee. (This is a fairly apt description of what many people do as they begin to walk.)

On the other hand, you can move from standing into a walk by having these three things coming into play:

1. The intention to walk.

2. A light, upward organization in your body from your feet to the crown of your head (which involves letting your spine lengthen by releasing up and away from the ground).

3. A release in your ankles to allow your upwardly directed weight to fall forward to begin the walk as you release your knee to bend a leg.

(Try this sometime, and notice the difference. You’ll most likely feel lighter, taller and freer as you walk.)

Now to be clear, this isn’t a matter of relaxing every muscle in your body before you move. Even if you were able to do so (you actually can’t), you would fall into a heap on the ground.

No, what I’m talking about is a very simple principle: By starting the movement from muscular release, the rest of your body is free to make the muscular contractions necessary to carry out the movement in a more efficient way.

You can take this model into other common activities. For example, to speak or sing, you can start by the movement by releasing your jaw to let your mouth open.

Even picking something up off of the floor, you can begin the movement by releasing the joints necessary to let you bend down to take hold of the object on the floor. And then as you take the weight of the object you, rise by letting your weight release forward and up over your feet as you also let your shoulders release and widen to accept the load. (Now the tension necessary to carry the load is in play.)

And so it can be with playing your instrument. All you need to do is observer and redirect. Here are few things to pay attention to:

  • You can start by noticing all the gestures you make as you go from a state of “not playing” to “playing” as you hold your instrument.
  • Notice in particular what you do with your head, neck and shoulders that brief moment before you begin to play. Do you brace yourself by tightening your neck and pulling your head downwards onto your spine? Do you begin to pull your shoulders down into your ribs? Or pull them up toward your ears?
  • Do you begin to lock your knees? Stiffen your ankles? Grab the floor with your feet? (instead of letting your feet release into the floor)
  • What do you do with your eyes? Does your gaze become intense and focused? Does your brow furl up?
  • Does your jaw begin to tense? How about your tongue? Your facial mask?
  • And how about your breathing? If you’re singing or playing a wind instrument, are you making noisy, gasping inhalations as you suck in the air by overly tensing your neck and back muscles? (And if you’re not playing a wind instrument, are you beginning each phrase by sucking in air?)

If you find yourself starting to play with any (or all) of these gestures of tension, start by changing your attitude. See where you can substitute muscular contraction  with muscular release.

For example, rather than tensing your neck and tightening your chest and shoulders to noisily suck in air before blowing that first note, think instead that the breath can come in as a quick and light reflexive movement made possible as a result of letting go of the muscles in your neck, shoulders, ribs and back. You might be surprised at how easily and how quickly and fully your inhalation becomes when this actually happens.

So pay attention to yourself as you play. Find ways to initiate those first movements of playing your instrument with as much release  as possible. Then let the muscles in your body respond naturally and effectively to the task at hand.

By changing your attitude about movement in this way, you’ll gradually begin to redifine how little effort is actually needed to play your instrument. In doing so you can expect a lifetime of growth, improvement and increased satisfaction.

An Important Component of Effective Practice That Is Too Often Overlooked

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Whenever I meet with a musician for the first time to give a practice coaching session, I ask lots of questions about musical goals, as well as the procedures to attain those goals.

In essence, these questions fall under the category of two broader questions:

“What would you like to have?”  and “What are you doing to achieve that?”

From here we have a good starting point to look at things objectively and constructively. Both of these questions require clear and detailed answers in order to optimize progress and minimize frustration.

Often, the “What would you like to have?”  part is fairly solid. (If it’s not, we need to start there.)

But too often, the “What are you doing to achieve that?”  part is lacking. This is where the frustration flourishes.

Many things fan the flames of this frustration, but one of the most overlooked is very simple: Too much of what is being practiced is devoid of pleasure.

Pleasure is a component of practice that is sorely overlooked.

A good number of musicians come to me for help who simply dread  most of what they do as they practice. This makes it nearly impossible to get any kind of expansive, inspired growth.

The sad part is that many of these musicians think, to a certain degree, that if it’s pleasurable, it’s not really practice.

That’s just not true. Most of the great, virtuosic musicians love (or loved) to practice. For them it is not simply a means to an end. To a certain degree, practice is an end unto itself. It’s a form of meditation.

I look forward each day to my practice sessions. They are nourishing, satisfying, centering, calming, enlivening, challenging, fun, illuminating, somatically pleasurable…all at once.

And I continue to improve as a musician as I practice.

There are two main reasons way practice should be mostly pleasurable:

First, the obvious: If something brings you pleasure, you’re more likely to spend time doing it. It becomes less a matter of discipline, and more a matter seeking gratification.

Second (and this is less obvious), you simply learn better when you enjoy what you’re studying and practicing.

This is one of the reasons why skilled teachers use play (games, role-play, etc.) to enhance the learning experience for learners of all ages. (I often use play to great effect in teaching the Alexander Technique to college and conservatory students.)

Pleasure and learning work together well, as pleasure is a powerful motivator. Pleasure lights up and integrates different parts of your brain. It enlivens your senses. It makes you receptive to experience, to possibilities. It makes you curious. It makes you fearless.

Do these sound like good qualities to have while playing music?

Without a doubt they are.

Don’t misunderstand. You still have to work. Focused, intentional, productive work that you need to hold yourself accountable for. You must reflect and assess, and reassess and redirect, being constantly vigilant.

But you’ll do so much better if you learn how to do so pleasurably.

One of the things I encourage the musicians I coach to take responsibility for is altering how  and what  they practice in order to make it pleasurable for them.

Their job is to turn problem solving and skill acquisition into a primarily  pleasurable activity.

It’s a matter of transforming the activity. This calls for creativity and inspiration.

So let’s say holding sustained tones to improve your sound (long tones) is drudgery to you, try playing beautiful songs at very slow tempos. Play as if you’re really “singing” these melodies (like you really mean it!), with your finest, most personal sound.

By doing so, you engage your expressive consciousness while at the same time developing the motor skills necessary to cultivate and implement a beautiful sound in order to carry out your expression.

Don’t like to run scales mindlessly? Okay, organize the scale you’re practicing into a lovely sounding four or five-note melodic pattern and play it up and down the range of your instrument. (You can get lots of these kinds of melodic scalar ideas by looking at the music of Bach, Brahms, or even Cannonball Adderly; just follow the music you love.)

In the simplest sense, aim at making what you practice musical  as opposed to mechanical.

The whole idea of a written “etude” is to turn a particular pedagogical aim into a musically satisfying expression and experience. It’s to teach a particular lesson by telling a good story, so to speak.

See if you can think in this “etude” way to bring your practice into the realm of pleasure.

For example, if there is a particular technical passage that give you difficulty, rather than just repeating the passage over and over as it is, see if you can play with it a bit. Make variations on it. Play games with the tempo as you work through it. Play it by ear in different keys. Use it in the context of improvisation (in fact, build and entire improvised solo based upon the technically challenging passage.)

If you work this way, you’ll help build a more expansive and flexible technique.

And it doesn’t have to be only because something gives you a direct musical pleasure to make it otherwise pleasurable. I have a student who loves holding long tones on the trombone because the resonance he feels in his face and chest give him pleasure. This Kinesthetic sensation is like a healthy narcotic for him. He loves to practice long tones!

Maybe it’s pleasurable because you love to be challenged. Maybe it’s pleasurable because it gives you a sense of ritual and routine. Maybe it’s pleasurable because it helps you imagine beyond what you can already do.

Or maybe it gives you pleasure because it reminds you of why you play music in the first place. All good.

There are so many resources these days to make practicing more enjoyable and efficient: backing tracks, smart phone apps, video tutorials, etudes…take advantage of these things!

And always remember to digress that which is out of your reach. If something is to difficult for you to play in the moment, transform it slightly to bring it back into reach, then raise the bar slightly once you’re successful doing so.

As a final thought, be good to yourself. “Use yourself well”, we’d say in the Alexander Technique. That is, aim to play with an easy, flexible balance and with a minimum of excess effort. And speak to yourself kindly. Be clear about what you want, and ask  yourself gently for it. Remember that music, even the most serious music, involves play. So play!

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

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Whenever I give a first Alexander Technique lesson to a musician, one of the things I’m most curious about is examining the relationship between instrumentalist  and instrument.

It is often this interfacing  of person with tool that begins to perpetuate many of the difficulties musicians have that led them to seek my help in the first place: chronic pain, excessive tension, inefficient breathing, poor coordination/loss of skill, etc.

But before I observe any new student with their instrument, I first observe their habits of general coordination: What do they do as they stand, as they sit, as they begin to move? Is their breathing free or fixed? How do they use their eyes? Where/how do they tend to compress/hold themselves? And so on.

It is this general, overall coordination  that will have a direct impact on the specific skill and coordination they use to play their instrument.

Once we begin to bring their habits of movement and posture to light, they have a chance to become more conscious of the unconscious  ways in which they interfere with the best use of themselves as they play.

I couple this new awareness with a new strategy to change these habits for the better. One of the most effective tools I get them to work with is a simple, three-step process. I’d like to share it with you here:

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.

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:

  1. Intention
  2. 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.

One Of The Most Overlooked Elements Of Effective Sight-Reading

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Screen shot 2015-07-14 at 3.54.16 PMOne of the absolute best sight readers I’ve ever had a chance to play with (a saxophonist by the name of David Hughes) had a saying about reading even the most difficult music at sight:

Sight-reading is as much an attitude as it is a skill.

And it is.

There is a good deal of agreement amongst highly skilled sight-readers that the most important thing to address as you read music for the first time is time and rhythm.

And I agree with this wholeheartedly.

If you play a few wrong notes, but “keep it going” (maintain that forward motion of the time as expressed through rhythm) you’re not only going to help the music along, but also, you’re going to increase your chances of playing the correct pitches.

Learning from a master

I can remember playing with David Hughes, as he would single-handedly hold an entire saxophone section (of good players!) together by his sheer will and his powerful sense of time.

But there was something else that he held in his attitude that made him such an effective and highly musical sight-reader.

It wasn’t so much what he did, as it was what he didn’t  do when the rest of the saxophone section was struggling with a beastly new composition:

He didn’t interfere with the flow of his sound energy.

No matter how far he was stepping into unknown territory, no matter how daunting, no matter how complex (and even unfamiliar) the rhythms, no matter how dense the ink on the paper, he simply never lost the intention nor the intensity of his sound.

The rest of us, on the other hand, would sometimes just sort of fumble with our sound, lose the strength of our intentions, lose our presence. We would do this by interfering with the production and flow of our sound as we read the music.

We four saxophonists would shrink  (so to speak) while we played, as David Hughes would continue to expand. 

Now, don’t misunderstand. It’s not as if the bottom would drop out of our collective dynamic volume. Truth be told, there wouldn’t be that much of a noticeable change in volume.

No, it was more subtle than that. It would be as if the life force of our individual and collective sounds just became slightly imprisoned. As if all of a sudden it had lost its suppleness and color. Our collective sound became somewhat brittle.

It was the sonic manifestation of doubt, this doubt itself being manifested through our bodies.

Of course the sad irony here is that this doubt made the wrong notes and rhythms sound even more…well, “wrong”. Our mistakes became strangely amplified, whereas any mistake David would make became virtually insignificant. A beautiful illusion, of sorts.

How about you?

And that’s how your thinking can impact your functioning in any given moment, during any activity.

Whatever you do in your body as you play music (or do anything else, for that matter), is a result of your thinking. In the case of sight-reading, it’s your response/reaction to the thought  of playing the music in front of you.

Learning how to change  your response to better serve your wishes is at the heart of the Alexander Technique. A large part of my work when giving Alexander lessons to musicians is to help them notice their habitual reactions from moment to moment as they play.

As they learn to respond with clearer, more constructive choices, they simply play better (and feel better, too!), as they interfere less and less with their own sound energy.

To be clear, when I’m talking about “sound energy” I’m not talking only about “airflow”, as in the case of a wind instrumentalist or singer.

I see instrumentalists of all instruments reacting in ways that interfere with their sound energy as they fall into doubt: violinists who lose their luster; pianists who lose the warmth in their touch; guitarists who lose the color and resonance of their plucked strings.

And so on.

No matter what instrument you play, there is always something that happens, when you lose your sound energy: You begin to stiffen and tense yourself unnecessarily.

Sometimes this stiffening is strong and easily noticeable, but just as often, it is subtle and almost imperceptible.

But all your habits of stiffening, whether mild or violent,  have one thing in common: They are some form of you holding on to yourself. Holding onto yourself instead of letting yourself be pliant, balanced, free and constructively responsive.

In holding on to yourself like this, you are also holding on to your sound, not letting it release into the air.

This “holding on” is the essence of what interferes with your sound energy, with your intention, and with your expression as you are reading something at sight.

So what can you do to address this?

Here are a few ideas/tips for you to consider:

  • Observe yourself-Notice how you respond when you are sight-reading something difficult. In particular, notice what you do with your neck, shoulders and jaw. No matter what instrument you play, if you tense and compress your head into your neck, narrow your shoulders and/or clench your jaw, you’ll interfere with not only your sound, but also, your technical facility. See if you can notice this pattern of tension as it manifests itself through your whole body.
  • Practice saying “no”-Once you’ve noticed your habits of tension, work on gradually attenuating them. Think to yourself, “As I play, I’m not stiffening my shoulders and neck. I’m allowing myself to be free and present.”
  • Find your weak spots-What kinds of things make you tense up most when you sight-read? Complex rhythms? Extreme ends of your range? Awkward and/or unfamiliar keys? What are the kinds of reading challenges that invite you to “go wrong” in your reactions? Find out what they are and work systematically to improve. By doing so, you’ll weaken the temptation to react unconstructively.
  • Work on your sound energy everyday-No matter which instrument you play, conscious work on tone production is essential daily practice. Long tones, slow, melodic phrases, overtones, etc. Your ability to get your most resonant and expressive sound needs to become second nature, without any thought to how it is done mechanically.
  • Practice sight-reading everyday-As obvious as this sounds, I’m still amazed at the amount of musicians who seek my help with this who do the vast majority of their sight-reading while playing in ensembles. While this experience is excellent, spending time every day reading something new is absolutely essential, not only for your ability to read the notes, but also, so you can direct yourself in such a way as to keep your habitual tension in check. Here are some specific things you can do to improve your sight-reading.
  • Practice keeping your sound energy front and center as you sight-read-Besides working on long tones, etc., also practice reading simple to moderately difficult music every day as you shift your focus to your sound energy.

By noticing your response, by being intimate with your sound, and by developing strong time and rhythm, you’ll help transform you attitude and your ability as a sight reader. Instead of shrinking when you step into the unknown, you can learn to expand. I’ll leave you with another quote by sight-reader extraordinaire, David Hughes:

When in doubt, shout it out!

Let me know what you think.