Tag Archives: Alexander Technique

The Difference Between A Good Method And A Good Teacher

1 Reply

Most musicians that come to me for Alexander Technique lessons have a well-developed, highly detailed practice method that they follow. They have chosen this method deliberately, and typically follow it with an almost religious reverence.

And therein lies some of the problems that lead them to seek my help in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of a logical, purposeful, structured method of pedagogy based upon the principle of cause and effect (as opposed to anecdotal assertions by accomplished players that aren’t based upon repeatably measurable results).

But any method, no matter how sound, has one rather obvious limitation: It can’t respond to you. It can’t modify itself to best suit your needs.

A good teacher, on the other hand, is helpful precisely because he/she responds effectively to you.

It’s all a matter of the teacher’s sensitivity of perception and communication with you, moment to moment, week to week (and longer). How you learn, what’s helping and what’s not, what you are misunderstanding, where you need more practice (where you need less!), etc.

And most important, a good teacher can notice what you’re doing with yourself as you carry out your practice. Are you straining, stiffening, compressing? Are you creating an unnecessary struggle within yourself as you play? (This is where the skill of a well-trained Alexander Technique teacher can be of enormous benefit.)

You see, most of the musicians who come to me for help do so, in part,  because they’ve become inflexible with their method of practice. Inflexible both in the details of the method itself, and in carrying it out on a day by day basis.

At the very least, this leads to a sort of stagnation in progress, a sinking feeling that, “No matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to get past this plateau in my progress.”

At worst, this rigidity with method leads to more serious problem, such as repetitive strain injuries, chronic back/neck/shoulder pain, and even focal dystonias.

I ask my students to ponder the differences between teacher and methodology. And because they are ultimately responsible for the choices they make as they practice and study, I encourage them to ultimately think of themselves as their own teachers.

I’m not telling them to ignore the advice of their teachers. I’m just telling them that it’s easy to turn their teacher’s methods into rigid, inflexible, unresponsive practice habits. It’s up to them to be vigilant, to grow into experts on themselves and their learning process as they practice each day.

To become your own teacher is a lifelong skill. It’s something you strive to get better at. It takes lots of reflection, discipline, honesty, discernment, love, commitment and great attention to detail. (That’s the same, of course, whether you’re teaching yourself, or somebody else.)

But the main thing you need is responsiveness. You need to see which component of your practice method needs modification.

I’m very well-organized in my saxophone practice, and most definitely follow a method of learning that I’ve designed largely myself. I always have a “to do” list of particular exercises and study. Typically, this list is based upon a weekly cycle.

But a day in the week doesn’t go by when I don’t modify something from my weekly plan in my practice session. Alter a tempo, spend more time on one detail of a particular exercise, reduce or eliminate the detail of another,  sometimes throw out an exercise in its entirety. (In fact, by the end of the week, the routine I started with has morphed into something quite different.)

With each component (exercise, or detail of an exercise) of my practice routine on any given day, I’m either regressing (making it simpler and/or easier), progressing (making it more complex and/or challenging), or keeping it the same.

I make my decisions on modifying (or not modifying) the components on my routine by asking myself one simple question: “Is this helping me exactly the way it is?”

If the answer is yes, then I know to keep working on it until it needs to either be modified (progressed), or dropped, from my practice routine.

If the answer is no, then I have to ask myself, “What would I need to modify right now to make this more helpful to me”?

This is where creativity comes in. If it’s too complex and/or difficult, I need to find a constructive way to regress the exercise while still maintaining the pedagogical intention.

Regressing effort is a fundamental part of the art and science that any good teacher utilizes. The better I get with regressing effort for myself, the better I get with helping my students. And the better I get in helping my students, the more efficient (and satisfying!) my own practice continues to become.

Equally important is learning to either progress an exercise or to let it go entirely. I encounter so many musicians who are spending time needlessly on things that just don’t continue to help them improve.

So strive towards being a teacher as you practice each day. Go by principle, and follow a method. Just be observant, curious and flexible. If you do so, you’ll do nothing but improve.

A Technique To Help You Improve Your Odds

Leave a reply

Without a doubt, the greatest tool I possess as a musician is the Alexander Technique.

By applying the Alexander principles, I’ve been able to not only solve a very serious problem that threatened my musical career, but also, continue to find growth, improvement and insights into the challenges that I, and many other musicians encounter.

After years of studying and teaching the Technique, I continue to be amazed at how potent it is.

But the Alexander Technique isn’t a fail-proof guarantee that you’ll play better, or that you’ll solve all your musical performance problems. Instead, it’s simply a skill you can learn that significantly increases the likelihood that you’ll play better. It improves your odds, so to speak.

In essence, the Alexander Technique teaches you how to become aware of, and address, harmful and inefficient movement and postural habits. You learn to uncover many of the subconscious habits of tension that interfere with your natural coordination. You learn to replace strain with ease and efficiency.

These unconscious habits are a manifestation of how you react. The way you react, even as you start thinking about playing your instrument (or doing anything, for that matter), begins to condition the coordination involved in the playing itself.

If you react by compressing yourself in tense anticipation of playing your instrument, you’re simultaneously decreasing your odds of a successful outcome.

And yes, you still might be successful in your attempt, despite doing this (many musicians are!) But to increase your chance of a satisfactory outcome, you need to improve how you respond. This is the key to conistency for many musicians.

There are two distinct disadvantages that an overly tense habitual response brings to your music making. Both are inextricably related:

1. Mechanical disavantages-By unnecessarily stiffening muscles, compressing joints, and holding yourself perpetually out of balance as you play has a very real impact on your coordination. Often, you’re creating effort in your body that you need to overcome to do the work that is actually necessary to play your instrument.

2. Cognitive disatvantages-When you respond in a overly tense manner, you’re also bringing a kind  of  “fear/urgency” response into your efforts that interferes with your ability to think as clearly as you could. I call this the “deer in the headlights” response. Your thinking becomes muddled, hurried, rigid, and ultimately disconnected to your intentions.

These two disadvantages are so closely linked that you can often see how they go hand in hand. Watch somebody truly struggle with the fast tempo of a particular piece, and you see not only a tight neck, compressed shoulders, stiff arms and hands, but also, a knitted brow and narrowly fixed eyes that seem to broadcast desperation and strain. (Not to mention the breath holding that comes along with all this!)

None of this helps you play any better. (Am I being too obvious here?)

With the Alexander Technique you learn how to play your instrument with less effort (and with fewer counterproductive movement habits) because you learn to better control how you react as you play your instrument.

You learn to replace compression and urgency with expansion and calm alertness. You gain a clearer understanding of how you function naturally (in accordance to the design of your body), so you can say “no” to stressful, counterproductive reactions, and say “yes” to the possibility of ease, control and confidence.

You learn to better stay in the present moment with your thinking, responding effectively to whatever comes your way, instead of tensely anticipating the unknown. You increase your ability to choose your responses, and in doing so, improve your odds.

If you’d like to find out more about the Alexander Technique, visit the world’s most comprehensive website on the topic. If you live in the U.S. and would like to find a teacher in your area certified by the American Society for the Alexander Technique, take a look here. If you want to contact me personall

And maybe like me, the Alexander Technique just might become your most useful tool as a musician, too.

The Power Of Deciding

Leave a reply

One of the things that has become clearer to me since studying and teaching the Alexander Technique is what it really means to make a decision.

To decide is not the same thing as to plan. Many people make plans about improving something in their lives (sometimes with elaborate details) that they will never carry out.

Why? Because they didn’t take the most crucial first step before making the plan: deciding.

Decision is a matter of commitment. It’s “closing the deal” without any way to turn back. As my older brother would say, after making a tough decision, “The ball has already been thrown; nothing to do now but wait and see where it lands”.

Though this can seem scary, it’s also empowering. If you can rely upon your ability to make a decision, and stick with it, you become your most trusted ally and advocate.

There are two types of decisions: The decision to do; and the decision not to do.

When I think of the decision to do, I think of a friend and colleague of mine here in Los Angeles, Vinny Golia.

Vinny is an internationally recognized multi-woodwind improviser, composer and teacher (CalArts). He is extraordinarily prolific, having put out dozens and dozens of recordings, many of them very ambitious in their scope (large ensembles, improbable instrumentations, multi-media collaborations, etc).

Once when I was on tour with Vinny, I asked him how he manages to plunge into these seemingly impossible projects (funding them, composing all the music, organizing the musicians, recording, promoting, etc.).

His reply:

I just make a decision to do whatever it is I want to do, whatever inspires me. I never wonder if I can or can’t. I always decide first, then figure out how afterwards.

Again, decision precedes planning to make the seemingly impossible  possible. In a sense, this is the very definition of ambitiousness.

But whenever I think of the decision not to do, I always think of the Alexander Technique. 

Sticking with the decision to not do something as I carry out an activity is the cornerstone of the Alexander Technique. This has been the skill that I’ve cultivated to help me solve some rather serious problems I was facing as a saxophonist.

Whenever I give an Alexander lesson to a musician, we always come face to face with the need (and the difficulty) of  sticking to the decision of not doing.

For example, I recently started giving lessons to a violinist who begins her sound (draws her bow across the strings) by stiffening her neck, shoulders and arms, thereby noticeably interfering with her technique, tone color and intonation.

My aim with this student is to get her to play without this habitual excess tension. As you might guess, it’s not as easy (at first, anyhow) as it sounds.

Too often it turns into a bit of an internally waged war, in which the student is trying hard to stop the habitual response of tensing up, only to create a different, yet equally tense response.

 F.M. Alexander (the developer of the Alexander Technique) sums it up accurately:

When you are asked not to do something, instead of making the decision not to do it, you try to prevent yourself from doing it. But this only means that you decide to do it, and then use muscle tension to prevent yourself from doing it.

And so it was in the beginning with my violinist. Her problem, too, was that she never really made a decision to play without her habitual pattern.

Why not? Well, first, producing her sound was so tied up into the excess muscular tension that she really had no idea what it might be like to play without all that extra effort. (Part of my job is to work with my hands to guide her into a different kind of coordination as she plays.)

Second, she (like most musicians) has a very strong aversion to sounding bad, and/or being wrong. Holding on to the tension was an unconscious security blanket that made her believe that she could get her sound, no matter the physical consequences.

She’s already (after about seven lessons) doing noticeably better with all this, as she gradually changes her practice process.

Specifically, she aims at giving herself permission to draw the bow only if she doesn’t tighten her neck and shoulders first. If she feels herself  preparing to play a particular passage with her habitual tension, she simply stops.

That’s right. She doesn’t start to play. She decides to proceed into playing only when she feels confident that she has started without all the extra junk.

It’s a decision she’s made and a commitment she stays true to. Now, to be clear, this is something she works on as she practices. It’s obviously not something she has the luxury of bringing into rehearsals and performances.

But the more she does this, the weaker (and more manageable) the old pattern becomes. By giving herself permission to stop, she no longer replaces tension with tension. Instead, she replaces excessive “doing” with an easy “non-doing”. Things will only get better for her. All because of her growing skills of deciding not to do as she plays here instrument.

So if you’d like to change, to really improve the quality of your practice, you can apply this same, highly effective principle. No matter whether you’re deciding to do, or not to do, staying with a decision is an important part of your continued growth and improvement.

Practicing Music: Understanding The Difference Between Routine And Process

4 Replies

There is a topic that seems to be finding its way into the books and blogs of several well-respected musicians and music teachers these days. It is about the importance of paying attention to the quality of process as you practice your instrument.

I’m pleased with this trend, and am in complete agreement with it.

In the Alexander Technique, we have a jargon term that we use, called “the means-whereby”. In essence, this is a principle which asserts, that, if you pay attention to the quality of how you do something (the “means”, i.e., your process), you’ll get the best results (to paraphrase F.M. Alexander, “the end will take care of itself”).

My experience, both as Alexander Technique teacher/student, and as a musician, has shown this to be true. Without fail.

Now, mind you, I’m not talking about your practice “routine” here. I’m talking about what you do with yourself as you implement your routine.

Many musicians who come to me for help do so, in part, because they’ve developed a process within their carefully planned practice routine that is counterproductive (if not downright harmful!) As they work with their instrument, they’re so focused on gaining the desired result (sound, technical demand, reading, etc.) that they’ve lost sight of what they’re doing with themselves as they strive to achieve these results. This often leads to a variety of troubles: from inconsistent and unpredictable results, to worsening technique (and coordination),  to chronic pain and injury.

Yet, most of these musicians, after experiencing these negative outcomes, still think they need to find some kind of new, magical routine to solve their problems.

Your routine is a series of prescribed activities (exercises, etudes, etc.) that you carry out (in single or multiple practice sessions) aimed at improving your playing skills: tone production, scales, arpeggios, articulation, ear-training, repertoire, technical etudes, sight-reading, etc.

Your process is how you think as you work on these components of your routine (and how that thinking impacts what you do).

Truth be told, virtually everyone (including you, most likely) has a process that they adhere to as they practice and play music. The question is: Is your process constructive or not?

Counterproductive Thinking Habits

It’s not unusual for me to encounter a student whose carefully calculated, and faithfully executed practice routine (though once a reliable source of improvement) has seemed to become mysteriously ineffective. Whenever this is the case, I ask lots of questions. Not about routine and pedagogy, so much, but about thinking.

What I usually discover is a thinking process, gradually developed over the years, which has been making the routine inefficient (at best) and counterproductive (at worst).

In the simplest sense, it is a type of thinking that has become rigid, narrow, and over-focused on the mechanical details of playing, at the expense of the auditory/expressive component. The bigger picture, as it were.

The student is trying to hit his/her target (the desired result) with an ever-increasing sense of fear, tension, and over-efforting. I can easily see this manifested into bodily gestures as I observe them engage in their routine: stiff necks, narrowed shoulders, fluttering eyes, noisy breathing, etc.

What I’m seeing is their thinking.

When I ask them about what they think of whenever they play a particular exercise, the answer is never vague. They have a very specific “focus” in mind, a very specific intention. (This is part of their process.)

But it is this “focus” that has divided their attention, cutting themselves off from what they sense in their bodies, the feel of the sound inside their instrument,  as well as to what they hear. And this divided attention is what’s rendering their practice routine ineffective.

As I ask more questions, I typically find that there was once a time when their thinking wasn’t so rigid and contractile as they practiced. There was once a time when their thinking was more flexible and responsive, and less anticipatory and anxious.

My job is to help them get their thinking back on track. I start doing this by helping them to become more self-aware, and then to help them soften and expand their attention as they play. In short, I help them to improve their process.

Improve Your Process

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you practice that will help you establish a more constructive process:

  • Notice how you react-What do you do as you prepare to play an exercise? Where do your thoughts go? What happens in your body? Do you contract? Tighten your neck and shoulders? Lock your knees? What happens to your breathing? Where do your eyes go? See if you can play with even a bit less of this unnecessary tension, and you’ll likely be surprised by the results.
  • Give yourself permission to stop-Get comfortable with stopping, whether in the middle of an exercise or the middle of a phrase. In fact, make it a point to stop more than you normally do. Not only can you use the pause to redirect your thinking, but also, by having an active willingness to stop, you’ll keep some of your excess tension in check.
  • Balance the internal and the external-It is easy to become too focused on what something feels like at the expense of what it sounds like and vice versa. There is a dance between what you imagine (your aural impression), what you sense in your body, and what you hear. Let that dance be flexible, dynamic and responsive.
  • Aim toward easy-Don’t make the exercise itself your target. Make playing it with efficiency be your goal. Think of reducing effort wherever and whenever possible. (This ties into my first bullet point, above.)
  • Aim toward flexible-In body and in thought. Rather than narrowing your focus, see if you can gradually expand your consciousness to integrate what you sense, think, and hear.
  • Always play with clear intentions-Never practice anything mindlessly. There is never any benefit in doing so, but can be some harm. If you find your thinking slipping away as you start and exercise, STOP. Reaffirm your aim and intention with whatever you’re working on, then continue when you’re clear and ready.
  • Reassess regularly-Not only your process, but each detail of your routine. Be willing to question, modify, or even throw out completely a particular exercise if it doesn’t seem to be fruitful.

So if you’d like to  take your practicing to a new level, it might not be that you need a new routine. Maybe just an improved process.

Six Quotes About Learning (And Unlearning) That Inform My Teaching And Practice

Leave a reply

Everything that I write on this blog, whether it’s about practicing more efficiently, improvising with greater skill and expression, or about how to avoid injury and strain, is based largely upon the ideas of a person who didn’t even play music.

Yet his ideas continue to serve me well, both in helping me to help my students, and in helping me explore more deeply my own process of growth and development as a musician.

The person I’m referring to is F.M. Alexander, known as the founder of the Alexander Technique.

In solving his own problems with using his voice (he was a stage actor), Alexander discovered several fundamental principles about how thought and movement are inextricably linked (in any and every human activity). And though he wasn’t a musician, his ideas are highly applicable (and highly usefu!) for any musician.

As a certified Alexander Technique teacher, I can say with great certainty that his ideas not only helped me to solve my own serious problems as a musician, but also, continue to influence how I approach teaching and practicing music.

So I thought I’d offer up six fairly well-known quotes  (well-known in the Alexander Technique world, that is) attributed to Alexander that exemplify some of the most essential ideas that I keep in mind as I do my work. Here they are, with a few brief elaborations beneath each one:

1. “You translate everything, whether physical or mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.”

There is an inextricable relationship between what you think and how you move (how your muscles react). The extra strain and effort you put into playing your instrument is a direct result of how you choose and organize your thoughts as you play your instrument. Improve your thinking, and you’ll improve your playing.

2. “Change involves carrying out an activity against the habit of life.“

The most powerful force (for better or worse) in playing your instrument is habit. Most pedagogical problems (especially for advanced musicians) end up calling for the subtraction of counterproductive habits. The only way this can happen is to come to the stimulus (the thought) of doing a particular activity (for example, singing  or playing a high note), and reacting differently. Most of this “reacting differently”, in the Alexander Technique, involves keeping ineffient movement/thought responses in check as you proceed in playing your instrument.

3. “Everybody wants to be right, but no one stops to consider if their idea of right is right.”

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that keep many musicians from  improving, is an almost religious reverence for the advice of a so-called expert, no matter how flawed the logic is in this expert’s advice. Unless you understand the measurable cause and effect relationship involved in any pedagogical principle, you can’t make an accurate assessment as to the  efficacy of the principle. Therefore, it’s a good idea to study and understand both the acoustical science of playing your instrument, AND, your anatomical and physiological makeup (and how these things work together). The better your understanding, the clearer you are about why things work the way they do.

4. “When people are wrong, the thing that is right is bound to be wrong to them.”

Alexander wrote about a faulty sensory appreciation, meaning that, because of habit, the wrong thing (e.g., excess tension, imbalance, etc.) often feels right (i.e., “familiar”) to the person with the habit. In fact, some musicians don’t even feel like they can play their best unless they “feel” all this excess tension and misdirected energy. For this reason it’s not such a good idea to be guided exclusively by what something feels like if you want to improve your playing. To experience change (to experience something new and more efficient) you must be willing to accept that you might  feel wrong (at first, anyhow). 

5. “When you stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing does itself.”

Much of my work as an Alexander Technique teacher is getting my students to stop doing the thing (their habit) that is interfering with their beautiful and efficient playing (the right thing). Rather than adding more “doing”, we’re primarily aiming at undoing (unlearning) these old habits. The results are consistently remarkable.

6. “The experience you want is in the process of getting it. If you have something, give it up. Getting it, not having it, is what you want.”

It’s not unusual during a lesson that a student has a wonderful new experience  of lightness and ease, and then wants to “hold on” to the experience, almost trying to “memorize” the feeling. This often leads to just another type of stiffness,  rigidity, and counterproductive expectations. I remind my students that rather than chasing the feeling, it’s more helpful to follow the process of thinking that led to the better result  (because ultimately, it was this change in thinking that produced the result). Our work is about examining and cultivating this new thinking. Pay attention to the quality of process, and the end result will take care of itself (as stated in number 5, above).

I hope I’ve given you some things to consider as you strive for improvement. The longer I stay with Alexander’s principles, the more amazed I become at what is possible. Just by changing my thinking.