Tag Archives: Practicing Music

Skill and Coordination (They’re Not Necessarily the Same Thing)

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One of the aims of the Alexander Technique is to improve coordination.

And I would say more specifically for musicians, the aim of the Technique is to improve the quality of  overall  coordination that you use to implement your music making skills.

A misapprehension that many musicians have is that skill and coordination are one and the same thing.

Though they are certainly closely related, they’re not exactly  one and the same.

How so?

Allow me to clarify by offering my  working definitions of the two terms.

Your skill is your ability to carry out your desired task (for our purposes, playing music). It is manifested in tangible, sonic results: pitch, time, articulation, tone color, technical control, expression, etc.

Your coordination is what you do with your entire self  to carry out your skill. It is manifested in muscular effort, or more specifically, the quality of movement you apply to the task. (This includes balance, posture, breathing….everything you do!)

So it is possible to be a highly skilled musician (and yes, this does mean having highly cultivated  fine  motor coordination skills), yet have less than optimal overall, gross  motor coordination.

You can witness this in many instances, if you take time to notice.

Some musicians make it look easy, don’t they?

Truth be told, for most of these musicians, it is  easy. They typically appear effortless because their efforts are so singularly integrated into the skill of their performance. Virtually nothing they do interferes with their artistic intentions, with their desire of self-expression, nor with the acoustic and physiologic components involved in playing.

(I look upon classical pianist Artur Rubinstein as a glowing example: free neck, strong and flexible back and arms, moving easily, fluidly and naturally with the music. It is this beautiful, efficient coordination that is at the service of his skills.)

And I think we’ve all seen/heard virtuosic musicians who look like they’re fighting an imaginary foe as they play music: head compressed into the neck, raised (stiff) shoulders, rigid ribs and back, hard narrowed gaze, noisy breathing.

Yet they still deliver the goods. They still play devastatingly beautiful music. (No, I won’t point my finger at any one musician here, as a gesture of respect. But I so easily could!)

So should these musicians even bother with improving their overall coordination? Should you?

Yes. And for three main reasons:

1. Your overall coordination impacts your skill. When you are working in a less than optimally coordinated way, you are interfering with your brain/body’s ability to carry out your skill in the most efficient manner. In essence, you’re working against your human design, and not in accordance with it.  You might be able to do so. But you do so despite of, not because  of, your coordination. Improving your overall coordination invites greater skill. Or, as F.M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technque) said, your improved coordination creates “the ideal conditions” for your skill to manifest itself through your bodily mechanism.

2. By improving your overall coordination, you reduce your risk of injury (and fatigue). This is why many musicians seek my help as an Alexander teacher in the first place. I have volumes of stories of very highly skilled musicians I’ve encountered who have career-threatening health issues that are related to the poor coordination they apply to their skill. As their coordination improves, so does their health, comfort, endurance and satisfaction.

3. By improving your overall coordination, you open yourself up to other expressive possibilities. This is the hidden gem of all this. As you improve your overall coordination, you also discover different ways to experience the music you play. You become less stereotyped (less “stuck”) in your interpretive choices, which, believe it or not, are highly conditioned by your bodily reactions. (This is especially true for improvising musicians!)

Our tendency as musicians is to sometimes become overly concerned with the parts that seem most pertinent to playing our instruments at the expense of neglecting the rest of ourselves. (For example, a flutist thinking perhaps too  much about the formation of the embouchure at the expense of not noticing neck and shoulder strain.)

If this sounds even remotely familiar to you, consider including  the quality of how you “use” your entire self (your overall coordination) into the consciousness of  playing your instrument.

Let your head be poised freely atop your spine (and of course, let your jaw be free). Let your shoulders release and widen. Soften your gaze. Let you knees unlock. If you’re standing, let your ankles be free and mobile (feet, too!) as you permit the ground to support you. Let your breathing be elastic, easy, reflexive and expansive.

Think balance, mobility and expansion, instead of position or  posture. A nice, lively, upward organization of your whole organism is the wish. Notice how these things impact your skill.

And of course, if you need any help in this area, consider finding a skilled Alexander Technique teacher. Allow your coordination to support your skill, and your expression.

Two Main Reasons Inefficient Practice Advice Gets Perpetuated

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One of the things I usually discover early on when teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians, is that part of the problem that led them to seek my help has to do with counterproductive pedagogy.

With a wind instrumentalist, for example, I might observe what appears to be a forced, tense, noisy, unnatural-looking inhalation before playing a note or phrase.

When I ask about this breathing habit, as often as not, I learn that it’s something that has been deliberately  cultivated. In other words, it is something that they do consciously as they play.

When I ask, “So why do you do it that way?”, the answer is usually something like, “Because that’s the way ‘so and so’ (insert name of highly respected musician here) says it should be done.”

Then I ask a second question: “Why do you think he/she does it that way?”

The answer that follows usually falls into one of two categories:

Either:

They don’t know why this great musician does it that why, but it obviously works best for them.

Or:

They “know” why this great musician does it that way, but the explanation they provide isn’t in accordance with the acoustical principles of the instrument and/or with the design of the human mechanism.

And so yet more misinformation by well-meaning experts gets perpetuated. Some of it benignly inefficient, some of it downright harmful (and everything in between).

So why/how do these “myths” get perpetuated?

Two reasons:

  1. Trusting without testing.
  2. It works (to a certain degree).

Let’s look at this first one, trusting without testing:

No matter what we might think about how our bodies work, or about how our instruments work, there are certain solid, measurable, scientific realities about how they really  work.

As a serious musician, it is your responsibility to continually improve and broaden your understanding of these things.

The more clearly you understand the real “hows and whys” of your organism (including how your thinking impacts this organism!), the better your sense of cause and effect becomes when being introduced to any new pedagogic principle and/or procedure.

If you comprehend the science behind playing your instrument, you’ll see that “some musicians do well (in part), not because  of what they do, but despite  what they do.” (All of my students, and some of my readers, will recognize this as one of the recurring themes in my teaching.)

It is not enough to trust and expert. You must also build a solid faith in the efficacy of a particular pedagogic element because it stands the test of actual, measurable fact. Cause and effect.

The second reason these inefficient practice ideas get perpetuated sounds contradictory to the point I’m trying to make here:

They work (to a certain degree).

It’s the “certain degree” part that opens the door to trouble. The reason for this is actually fairly simple.

Let’s go back to my earlier example about inhaling when playing a wind instrument. If you believe that you need to noisily suck in air as you try to force the air down into your abdominal region, in order for you to get a sufficient breath, you are simply working against nature.

You can’t put air “down into your gut”, because you have no lungs there. (And don’t talk about pushing the diaphragm outward to “make space for the air”; it doesn’t work like that, either.)

Yet the noisy, gasping, overly energetic breathing often accomplishes one thing: It creates a more “active” inhalation that engages more muscles (not necessarily in the most efficient way, mind you!), and that does seem to draw in more air than when you inhale in a more passive, unintentional  way.

But there is some unwanted baggage attached to this way of breathing.

To begin with, all this effort creates undue strain in your jaw, glottis and facial muscles. Not to mention the strain it puts on the rest of your body. I’ve had musicians come to me for help with chronic neck and back pain that is clearly related to these poor breathing habits.

Equally important, you lose touch with what it is like to have a free, naturally reflexive  inhalation.

It’s the free movement of the ribs, the diaphragm, the pelvic floor, and other muscles in the body that creates the kind of necessary expansion to draw in a deep breath. Combine this with the intention of the musical phrase and expression, and you’re good to go.

Yet, as long as you need to “feel” this forced inhalation as a “complete and full breath”, you will continue to work in this inefficient way.

And unfortunately, you’ll likely pass this advice onto your students. In Alexander Technique slang, we sometimes say that this is a case of “specifically focusing on a part, while neglecting the whole”.

So stay clear about these two things as you practice, explore and expose yourself to new ideas about playing your instrument. You’ll be better off (and so will your students!)

I’ll leave you with a quote from F.M Alexander, the founder and developer of the Alexander Technique:

If I went to a man to take singing lessons, it wouldn’t matter what he taught me, he couldn’t injure me.

Rethinking Long Tones

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One of the staples of practicing a wind instrument or a string instrument is holding sustained tones. The initial aim of practicing “long tones” is to improve sound, intonation and (for some musicians) endurance.

Yet I’m still taken aback at the amount of musicians I encounter who view long tone practice as a mindless activity that “builds strength”. A necessary evil, of sorts, that is part of the obligatory price of admission to the more interesting parts of the practice session.

It’s not unusual for me, when coaching brass instrumentalists, for example, to find out that they often regularly practices long tones while watching television, or engaging in some other kind distracting activity.

I find that unfortunate.

This kind of mindless practice, at the very best, helps these musicians maintain a certain amount of endurance (and so-called “muscle memory), but not much else.

At the worst it acts as a breeding ground for cultivating unnecessary and unwanted habits of tension. In my teaching experience, a good amount of repetitive strain injuries for wind instrumentalists can attributed, in no small part, to this kind of practice.

But even if no physical problems arise from practicing this way, there is so much that musicians are missing out on by not taking a more conscious approach to this tried and true practice activity.

The ultimate value of practicing long tones is in giving you a chance to develop a more intimate experience with the most intimate, personal component of your musical expression: Your sound.

One of my Alexander Technique students, himself an excellent Horn player, describes his long tone work as sound meditation. 

I like that description a lot. It resonates with the way I approach long tones. (I actually look forward to this part of my daily routine with great relish!)

Sound meditation. What that means is that each time you practice a long tone there are at least two things in place before  the note even starts:

  1. A crystal clear and detailed aural conception of how you want the note to sound.
  2. Attention to how you can best use yourself to get the sound you want.

Allow me to elaborate on these two things.

First, your conception. Your sound starts “between your ears”, in your imagination. When you are clear about the details of how you want something to sound, your brain has the best chance of carrying out your wishes. In holding long tones, some of the details of your sound are: attack, color, pitch, dynamic, spread (and center), vibrato, shading, release, etc.

Lots of details.

If you spend time being conscious of these details, they will show up more readily (and more naturally) when you actually play music. They become a seamless extension of your self-expression as a musician.

Now you’ll of course notice that various components of your own playing mechanism (e.g., your lips, soft palate, tongue, jaw, respiratory muscles, etc.) have to come into play a certain way to get the sound qualities you want.

One of the aims of long tones should be for you be conscious of how these mechanical components work together, but not to get stuck putting too much of your attention on them. Once you get what you want by “directing your mechanism”, bring your attention to the sound itself and allow the mechanism to follow your wishes. Let your imagination lead your coordination.

In other words, wish for a “round, dark sound”, not for your “jaw to come forward” as you go after that sound. As you practice this way, you also learn to more vividly “feel” your sound inside the instrument as you hear it outside in the room.

Now let’s look at your use. When I’m talking about your use, I’m not just talking about the mechanism that is mostly responsible for producing your sound. I’m talking about what you are doing with your entire self  as you produce your sound.

As you start your sound:

Do you stiffen your neck, maybe compressing your head down onto your spine? Do you arch your back? Pull your shoulders down? Lock your knees? Pull your feet off the floor? Stiffen your arms (and hands)? Knit your brow tightly? Gasp in loudly to take a breath?

(I could go on naming these unnecessary habits of tense reaction…)

Part of your long tone practice should be about improving not only how you are using yourself, but also about developing and improving upon your ability to constructively pay attention to yourself as you play.

Again, if you work towards this kind of inclusive attention, it becomes a natural part of your technique and expression as a musician.

So start by making a decision to make your long tone practice a real  sound meditation. Turn off the television. Rid yourself of distractions. Discover more and more details and subtleties about your sound. Find intimacy with your sound. Discover pleasure in doing so.

It doesn’t matter if you’re playing dynamically static single sustained tones, or if you’re working with crescendo and diminuendo, or if you’re playing slowly moving melodies with an expressive vibrato.

As long as you bring consciousness and clearer intention to what you do, you’ll not only play with less effort, but with greater depth of expression and enjoyment.

A Simple Way To Expand Your Improvisational Vocabulary (As You Improve Your Technique!)

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The most typical frustration that an aspiring student of improvisation expresses to me in our initial consultation is that they feel stuck. They feel rather stagnant, uninspired by their own predictable (to them, anyhow!) playing.

And as I listen to them play and ask questions, I notice without fail that not enough of their practice study and effort is put into studying rhythm and meter.

Lots of work done on melodic sequences, harmonic substitution, licks, etc., but not much consciousness about how to most easily vary the patterns they already know all too well.

There are many ways to begin to vary what you do rhythmically and metricallyin order to increase your improvisational vocabulary. I’d like to offer here one very simple, very easy thing you can do with the patterns (scales, arpeggios, licks) that can open up your ears and thinking in a fundamental way.

Here it is: Rythmically displace every pattern  that you practice.

Simple as that.

If it’s an eighth-note based pattern that starts on the downbeat of beat one, start it on the upbeat (the “and”) of beat one. (You can also start it on the upbeat of the fourth beat, as well.)

If it’s a sixteenth-note based pattern that starts on the downbeat of beat one, start it after a sixteenth rest (the “e”) of beat one. (Or on the “a” of the preceding fourth beat.)

Take a look at the bebop cliché I put at the top of this page, and play through it, if you have your instrument handy.

Now take a look at the pattern below. It’s the same pattern as above delayed by an eighth rest:

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If you play through this pattern (especially if you use a swing feel) you’ll hear that the pattern sounds fundamentally different. Because of the contour of line, and where the harmonic tensions are placed, the overall quality and color of the pattern is transformed.

This is such an easy thing to do whenever you practice patterns, and should be done with every pattern you practice. If you make this a habit of your daily practice routine, you’ll benefit in several ways:

First, you’ll breathe new life into all the patterns that you already know and use to create your improvisations.

Second, you’ll change your habits of phrasing, opening up yourself to new ways to feel the bar-form and express yourself within this form.

Third, you’ll improve your time.

Fourth, you’ll increase your rhythmic and metric imagination. (Displacing patterns that fit neatly into the “4/4 box” gets you to immediately feel and imagine other meters imposed upon 4/4.

Fifth, you’ll improve your ears, as you learn to hear tensions in “unusual” places (sometime going over the measure from dominant to tonic).

These things will most certainly help you grow and improve as an improviser.

But there is another, very important benefit of practicing things this way. By regularly displacing the beat in the melodic patterns you practice, you invite your brain to find new ways to organize the motor activity necessary to play the pattern.

This is a HUGE benefit for you, whether you improvise or not. It is the “novelty” of the rhythmic displacement that calls upon your brain to virtually “recreate” the pattern. Doing this regularly helps you to better retain any new material that you learn.

It helps you develop a kind “neuro-flexibility” that you’ll take into the practice room as well into performance. (From a neuroscientific point of view, we are wired more for “flexibility” than we are “consistency”, where motor skill is concerned.)

One of the things I most admire (and there are many things to admire!) about saxophonist and jazz pedagogy teacher, Matt Otto, are his free video lessons. With practically  every pattern he presents for you to study, he demonstrates the pattern played with an eighth-note displacement. (He encourages you to do so, too!)

So make this simple variation available and habitual to your practice sessions. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you begin to change how you hear yourself and express yourself as you improvise.

If you’re interested in studying rhythmic displacement in a more comprehensive, methodical way, please consider my e-book, Essential Polymeter Studies in 4/4 Time for the Improvising Musician. Thanks!

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.