“A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.”

-Lao Tsu

My conception of what makes effective musical practice continues to evolve. I keep the ideas and principles that help me, and shed those that don’t. The one principle that I never lose sight of (because it always helps!) can be stated in the form of a question:

What is the main aim of my practice?

The answer:

I want to give myself constructive experiences as I play my instrument.

Yes, for me, it’s as simple as that. I want to give myself constructive experiences...

The more I adhere to this principle, the more skill I gain as a musician (and the greater my sense of self efficacy becomes).

So what are “constructive” experiences?  They’re when I’m practicing with clear intention, and not doing these two things:

1. I’m not creating unnecessary tension/misdirected effort in myself as I play (in the most basic sense, not stiffening my body or letting my mind race ahead).

2. I’m not playing something that is too far outside of my reach (I’ll clarify what I mean by this this in a bit).

Now, both of these things are clearly related: As I play with less misdirected effort I’m able to bring more things within my reach. As I bring things within my reach, I’m able to play with less misdirected effort, and with a clearer, quieter mind (a more constructive quality of attention).

When I’m using myself well (that’s an Alexander Technique term meaning I’m working most efficiently in my body and with my attention, relative to the task at hand), and I keep what I’m working on within reach, I’m having a constructive experience, and very productive practice session.

And that’s how I continue to improve.

Let me clarify  here what I mean by “bringing things within reach”. To improve my playing skills I have to reach beyond what I can already do. (That’s obvious.)

But I must be very mindful about how far I reach. If I don’t reach far enough (or at all) I’m just maintaining the status quo. Not much chance for growth (nor for real satisfaction).

On the other hand, if I reach too far, I actually minimize my learning because I’m not able to give myself the necessary affirming psycho-physical experiences that can produce positive change.

If I keep doing things the “wrong” (unwanted, unhelpful) way, I just strengthen this pattern of “wrong” in my brain and body. This can lead to frustration (and is why a considerable percentage of my clients seek my help).

So in a practical sense, I could also say that the aim of my practice is to bring the “unreachable” gradually into my reach. To do this, I convert all the things I work on into bite-sized pieces of things I can handle. (And I suggest you do, too.) Here’s how:

• Learn how to stop- Get comfortable with not trying to push past (over and over and over…) what you can’t do. Not only is it okay to stop, it’s fundamental to your growth. Stopping is a gift, not an obstacle.

• Notice yourself-Are you unnecessarily tensing up as you try to push past what you can do? Check your neck, shoulders and back. Check your legs and feet. Notice your breathing (or breath holding, as the case may be). Ask yourself to let go of some of that misdirected effort.

• Assess just how far out of reach the task is in the moment-Is the tempo way too fast (or slow)? Is the range impossibly difficult? Is the key (7 flats!) seem like an impenetrable jungle? To all these (and more), ask yourself, “How much so?” “What would I need to do to make this playable right now?”

• Learn the art of regression. (This is necessary in order to address the two questions above.) Go to specifics: Tempo change? Stopping more frequently? Turn off the metronome? Easier key? Singing (or speaking) the passage instead of playing it? Strive to be creative in helping yourself.

• Bring the challenge down. Way down-For example, if the tempo is impossibly fast, cut it drastically, far slower than you think you need to. Let yourself have a few successful experiences with the material. Cultivate the desire to increase tempo based upon your growing self-confidence, not on your sense of obligation. (“I feel like I can play this faster” instead of, “I should be able to play this faster”.)

• Move it to the outer edge of your reach-Gradually. Make sure you’re keeping the aim in mind of creating good experiences as you practice. This is where learning how to stop is crucial (see above).

• Bring it back within your reach-When you step too far, gently step back. Reaffirm your skills.

By bringing things within your reach (as you reach beyond what you can do), you’ll continue to improve.  I”ll leave you with this cautionary definition of “insanity”, often attributed to Albert Einstein:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.”

I would modify that definition to say that, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again in the same way expecting a different result“. And to do things differently you have to start by thinking differently.

Love and Fear. These two emotions (and all their manifestations) are polar opposites in quality. When it comes to playing music, many people are motivated by both of these energies (in varied proportions).

But one is always superior to the other. Love ultimately triumphs over fear. Fear may have great urgency and intensity, but love has endurance and strength. (And yes, it has its fair share of urgency and intensity, too.)

I’ve known this on a cognitive level for many years, but it wasn’t until I began to study (and to teach) the Alexander Technique that I became so acutely aware of this truth. And most recently, the experiences I’ve been having with one client in particular have really brought this truth to the fore. So here’s what happened.

Some months back I began to give Alexander lessons to a well-known, highly respected brass instrumentalist here in the Los Angeles area. (Because of the nature of his condition, and his professional reputation, I won’t reveal his identity).

This student came to me because he was diagnosed with a neurological condition known as focal dystonia.

In essence, “task specific musician’s dystonia” is a condition in which the primary muscles involved in playing a particular instrument (in the case of my student, it is his “embouchure” muscles) tense in unpredictable (and hence, uncontrollable) ways only while playing the instrument.

This diagnosis of this condition has been viewed as a career ender for many musicians, as there is no known “cure”.

But that is beginning to change, as more and more musicians are finding their ways back from focal dystonia to performing well again (including me.)

I won’t go here into what these new treatment options are, but I can tell you one thing for certain: Every musician that is able to rid him or herself of focal dystonia (or at the very least, effectively manage it) does so because he or she fundamentally changes the attentional process involved in playing music. (That’s where the Alexander Technique can be helpful.)

Besides working with me, the student I mentioned above is also working with a wonderful brass pedagogy coach who is experienced in helping musicians with  embouchure dystonia.

Both she and I ask our client lots of questions, so as to best understand his thinking. (After all, it is his thinking, in particular, his quality of attention while playing his instrument, that is possibly one of the causes of focal dystonia, and at the very least is most likely exacerbating his problems with the condition.)

In the case of my client, there was a period  early in his career when he was playing music primarily from a place of love: Love of the sound of his instrument. Love of sharing his interpretation and expression through music. Love of his musical imagination. Love of the brilliance and beauty of great musical compositions, and the feeling of being a part of helping these compositions come to life.

During this period he practiced diligently, and achieved a good amount of professional success. But he was not quite where he wanted to be in his career, so he decided to go back to music school (graduate program at a highly respected institution) and intensify the study of his instrument.

That’s where things began to change.

In grad school the emphasis began to shift in regard to playing his instrument. It went from the joy, love  and musicality mentioned above, to an almost purely athletic (physical) pursuit in order to gain consistency in brass playing.

A major aim of his post graduate training was to be made aware of all the potential “trouble spots” in various repertoire for his instrument, and to learn how to avoid them through specific training and “physical” brass pedagogy exercises.

On the surface this seems good. It certainly seems reasonable. But something came along with this kind of approach that was not anticipated nor wanted: Fear began to slowly obscure love in his music making process.

At first this new training seemed to serve him well. He cultivated a level of consistency that he needed to land him bigger, more challenging and prestigious jobs.

Unfortunately,  that success came with a price, with some unintended consequences.

He began to develop certain beliefs about what was necessary for consistency on his instrument (many of them involved creating lots of excess muscular tension and effort). These beliefs put him into a very rigid place with his attitude about playing his instrument, and with his quality of attention as he played.

As time passed, his motivation to play gradually morphed from, “I love to play”, into, “I’m going to do what I need to do to avoid mistakes”. He moved from a love based music making energy,  to a fear based music making energy.

To make a long story short, this is when the focal dystonia began to rear its ugly head. It was a gradual deterioration that eventually caused serious trouble for him.

But the good new is, things are improving dramatically for him these days. Between the excellent work he is doing with his brass pedagogy coach, and the skills he is cultivating through the Alexander Technique, he is finding an entirely new, constructive way to think about playing his instrument.

His brass pedagogy coach and I have one principle in common when interacting with him: shifting the emphasis from fear based playing to love based playing. It is a thrill for me to experience the joy and hear the beautiful expression of his love based playing.

He is rediscovering the very things that motivated him to begin playing music in the first place. He’s also rediscovering how effortless it can be to play music beautifully and expressively. (This is one area in particular the Alexander Technique helps with.)

But the bottom line is that he is reconnecting to the love, and leaving the fear behind. If he stays with the motivation of love, things will continue to get better. No doubt in my mind.

You need muscles to play music, and love speaks to your muscles in a fundamentally different way than fear:

Love is expansive. Fear is contractive.

Love accepts and discerns. Fear rejects and judges.

Love breathes easily. Fear gasps and holds its breath.

Love is curious and playful. Fear is narrow-minded and deadly serious.

Love is thankful. Fear is ungrateful.

Love finds possibilities. Fear places its concern on what is not possible.

Love forgives. Fear holds grudges.

Love looks at the unknown as an adventure. Fear looks at the unknown as a threat.

Love is flexible and yielding. Fear is stiff and rigid. 

Love welcomes opportunities to serve. Fear sees service solely as an obligation.

Love asks. Fear demands.

Love reaches out. Fear withdraws.

And so on….

So what motivates you primarily when you practice and play music? It’s a good idea to remember what thrills you about playing. Stay with that. You have the power to choose. Choose love.

One of the most common misconceptions about gaining technical fluency on a musical instrument is that it is mostly about being able to move quickly. Fast fingers, fast hands, fast tongue, etc. (depending on which instrument you play).

And for sure, when you see a musician displaying stunning technique, you are going to see various body parts moving rapidly.

But technical skill is more than just speed. It’s control. It’s the coordination between intention and execution. And that’s where time and rhythm come into the picture.

When I teach the Alexander Technique to musicians I’m always reminded of this. Without fail, every technical limitation (whether in the moment, or chronic) that my students demonstrate can be traced to a lack of rhythmic clarity. This lack of clarity manifests itself as an uncoordinated technical effort:  unsteady tempo (rushed or dragged notes within a single phrase), missed notes, uneven color, uneven attack, etc.

But here’s where it gets interesting, because often the poor rhythmic clarity is being exacerbated by poor overall coordination. This is mostly a manifestation of habitual, excess muscular tension: stiff necks, shoulders, arms, hands and rib cages; locked knees, noisy breathing and more.

And (as anyone who has ever taken lessons would tell you) this is what the Alexander Technique is especially helpful for. You learn how to recognize and prevent these unhelpful habits.

As I get farther along teaching the Technique (and applying it to myself as a saxophonist) I develop a deeper understanding of this inseparable relationship between rhythm and coordination:

As my sense of time improves so does my technical skill. As I improve my overall coordination, my sense of time and rhythm improve. One hand washes the other.

Alexander Technique teacher and cellist, Pedro de Alcantara, in his excellent, highly practical book, Integrated Practice, speaks at great length about the connection between bodily coordination and rhythm. One of his talking points is that musicians need to aspire to not only play rhythmically, but also, to live rhythmically (i.e., in a well-coordinated way). I couldn’t agree more.

This morning I was giving a lesson to a fine professional guitarist here in Los Angeles. He’s been studying with me for nearly two years, and has considerable skill applying the Alexander principles to playing his instrument.

He was working on a very fast bluegrass style piece in his lesson with me, and was having difficulties on one particular passage. As we took time to workshop the tricky part, I asked him, “What are you noticing here in this part compared to how you’re playing in the rest of the piece?”

As he took time to investigate, he answered, “Well, I notice two things: First, I’m tensing my left shoulder a bit in anticipation of the ‘hard part’. Second, my conception of the time and rhythm is not as clear as it is in the rest of the piece. It’s almost like I loose my imagination of the pulse and the groove that I had going into this part.”

So, he simply reminds himself not to tense his shoulder (and to let his neck be free), then slows down the tempo a little on the piece to clarify and reintegrate his rhythmic conception with his new coordination. He practices it a few times with this new thinking.

When he is confident that he is keeping his tension in check, and that he has a uniform rhythmic clarity throughout the entire piece, he brings it back up to tempo. And…problem solved.

You see, it’s not that my student needed to move his fingers and hands faster to play this fast passage; it’s that he needed use his hands in such a way as to have them serve his rhythmic imagination. In essence, he was lacking evenness in playing the passage. He was lacking coordination.

I teach my students to work with themselves the same way I do as I work on technical challenges. Always aiming to bring my bodily coordination into sync with my rhythmic imagination, and vice versa. I’m pleased with the results.

So here’s a few things to work with and/or keep in mind to help you with this:

• Check your tension-Where are you holding? What are you doing that you don’t need to be doing as you play? Check your neck, jaw, and shoulders. Are you stiffening in anticipation. How are you doing in your legs? Are you knees free or locked? Give yourself a moment to consciously let go of some of that unnecessary tension.

• Clarify your rhythmic imagination-Make sure you’re “pre hearing” the passage you’re going to play as vividly as you can.  Slow it down if you need to. (If you’re improvising, it’s not quite as simple as this, but that’s the subject of another blog article).  Sing the passage.  Using spoken words (for example, “hippopotamus” can be used as a verbal representation of a quintuplet; “wonderful” is a good one for triplets, etc.) is great for helping you strengthen and clarify your conception. (In Indian classical music rhythms are learned and memorized vocally, by using specific syllables.) Make up a list of words that you can use to help yourself.

• Be clear on the pitches-Is the sequence of notes clear both in your ear and your mind. Take some time to know it well. Again, don’t hesitate to slow the tempo to do so. (Singing the sequence is very helpful here.)

• Listen to what you’re actually playing-Try not to get caught up into what you think it should feel like to play. Notice where you lose the continuity of your rhythmic conception. Is it in certain range of your instrument? Is it when rhythms shift (e.g., going from triplets to sixteenth notes)?

• Connect your imagination to the outside-Use a metronome. Listen to the metronome very carefully, especially as it relates to your internal sense of time. This is also a part of listening (see above).

• Investigate-When you find yourself getting stuck on a particular technical passage (whatever the tempo), take time to make sure that you haven’t lost your rhythmic conception. (This is a good time to use your words.) Also, see that you’re not tensing up again. Keep refreshing the thought (the wish) to remain free and easy. Trust in this process to address your problem.

So if you want to increase your dexterity, velocity and technical control, work on cultivating the connection between what you imagine (rhythm, pitch, time, expression) with what you’re doing in your body. Best wishes!