Playing with Ease
For every musician who can perform at their best when they need to, how many fall by the wayside?
How
many show great potential but are unable to realise that potential due
to pain, injuries, inconsistency, or not handling the demands?
What if you had a generic model of movement that could help you to identify and rectify faults of carriage and movement?
My
own beginnings with the Technique may be relevant at this point. After
I left school I studied at the NSW State Conservatorium in Sydney. The
trombone was my instrument and my aim was to set the world on fire!
Playing in an orchestra was fun and I wanted more as well. So I
practised very hard indeed. I would never practice for less than four
hours a day, often more, on top of rehearsals with different groups. So
I was doing a great deal of playing. I was ambitious and I tried hard,
and this was my undoing!
Trying hard, of course, involved a
certain physical effort and in my case a lot of that physical effort
was misdirected. Because of the hours I was putting in, I was deadening
myself to the feel of this effort. It was just there, all the time.
Pretty
soon I was locked into a vicious circle of increasing tension which I
was almost completely unaware of. I had a few problems with my playing
and a few aches and pains, but I tended to ignore them and just push
through regardless.
A few months later it became clear that
ignoring the problem was not working, for, despite a continued
programme of diligent practice, my playing was now in fact steadily
deteriorating.
As far as I was concerned there was nothing
really wrong with me anyway, just this little problem with my lips, a
sort of “overuse of the mouth”, which was stopping me playing.
With
hindsight I can see that I’d tied myself into knots with tension, and
that was moreorless why my mouth wasn’t doing what it was told, and why
I was having breathing difficulties.
So here I was, 23 years
old, supposedly a hot shot player, who had been through the
Conservatorium, played in the ABC Training Orchestra, the Opera
orchestra, been a state finalist in the ABC Instrumental and Vocal
Competition and I couldn’t play a note! I’d ground to a complete halt.
You can probably imagine how I was feeling. At this point, I learned
that I’d won a scholarship to do a postgraduate performance degree in
Germany. I was desperate.
With mounting panic I spent
months going from one specialist to another and finally had myself
referred to a doctor in Harley Street, London. This man told me, “If I
were you, I’d look at a different career”. This was not an answer that
appealed to me in the slightest. All I was interested in was playing
music.
As chance would have it, just before I left for London
someone lent me a book on the Alexander Technique by Dr Wilfrid Barlow,
which many of you may have read. He was both a rheumatologist and
Alexander Technique teacher, and I went to see him. He said, “Well, I
don’t know if we can cure your lips, but you could certainly improve
the environment within which they have to function”.
It
seemed logical, so I started having lessons and was quickly astounded
at what my teacher was able to show me about what I had physically been
doing to myself in the pursuit of perfection in playing music.
All
those years of dedication to my career had resulted in a particular
maldistribution of tension. It involved elements that had built up
unconsciously over years, which I had taken for granted, and which I
was battling without understanding why, as well as other elements that
I wasn’t even aware of.
I had intensive bursts of lessons
and over the next year learnt to leave out of my playing many of the
tensions that had complicated it to the point of breakdown.
In
the process, I discovered a great deal that I didn’t know before about
playing the trombone. The biggest surprise was what I learnt, in a very
practical way, about breathing. After playing for 10 or 12 years at
this stage, I thought I knew a bit about the subject, but discovered
that my knowledge was largely theoretical - I wasn’t putting it into
practice. This is where a qualified Alexander Technique teacher comes
into his own - he can give you the actual experience of
moving/balancing/breathing more freely - he knows whether you are
tensing or if you are doing it economically.
I learnt that
the relationship of the head to the rest of me conditioned
neuromuscular activity throughout my body. This is a principle which
holds true for any vertebrate. This head-neck-back relationship
influences the amount of effort required for any particular task, how
that effort is distributed, and ultimately how that effort is
perceived. We can be putting a great deal of effort into an activity
without being aware of either the effort or the imbalance in the rest
of the body that the effort encourages.
A disorganised
playing position might not seem to matter too much in the earliest
stages of learning an instrument. However, habits thus formed, slipping
very quickly below the level of one’s conscious awareness, are hard to
change. If they are bad ones, they may provide an insurmountable hurdle
at a later stage of technical development.
As I continued
having Alexander lessons, I realized that I was being taught to “play
the instrument which plays the trombone”, that is, myself. My Alexander
teacher was showing me how it was that in my efforts to play the
trombone, I had actually been getting in my own way.
My way
of playing had involved tightening up, and since I practised a great
deal, I had eventually become very good at being tense, particularly
when playing! This grossly inefficient way of playing had placed so
much strain on my embouchure that it eventually broke down.
Unravelling
all this misdirected energy took a change in attitude and a bit of
time. The embouchure problem gradually sorted itself out and after a
year I could earn my living from playing again.
In trying
hard to become the best player we can be, we lose sight of our basic
equipment, ourself, our own body. We lose touch with the sensitivity
and delicacy of which we are capable. Our effort is at odds with the
easy, strain-free attitude which we are striving for.
The
result can be a complicated tangle of tensions, and poor posture. It
can affect breathing, the way we hold our instrument, and indirectly
even our attitude to playing, performance anxiety and our enjoyment in
playing. We may encounter unexpected technical blocks which limit our
musical expression. The player may be aware of sore spots or of some of
the tensions, but unravelling and backtracking out of a pattern which
has been practised, is a complex task. Simply “relaxing” is no longer
possible.
Our musculature is a bit like a very complex system
of pulleys, each balancing its opposing number. If anything is too
tight, or too loose, sooner or later everything else in the system is
affected in the effort to keep the system working. F. M. Alexander’s
great contribution to education was the discovery of a means by which a
person can become aware of this interference and regain normal use of
themselves. The principle is general in its application and not
confined to the problems of musicians. Many people who have Alexander
Technique lessons come because of back or neck pain or some other
musculo-skeletal problem. They come wanting a longer-term approach to
self-management. Musicians are usually quick to grasp the significance
of the Alexander Technique and to put it to practical use.
The
process of having Alexander Technique lessons is similar to that of
having instrumental lessons. Like learning an instrument, it ideally
needs steady application over time.
The job of a teacher of
the Alexander Technique is to bring to your attention things you are
doing that you are unaware of. This can help you extend your choice in
the way that you move, act and react, helping you out of the
monkey-trap of habit.
I found that applying the Alexander
Technique to my playing changed it dramatically for the better. In
removing the various interferences to my own functioning, and restoring
a balance between effort and relaxation, I ironed out a lot of the
inconsistency and unreliability in my playing.
It would be
interesting to know how many players either didn’t “make it” at all or
are playing well below their potential, simply because of unrecognised
harmful habits of movement or holding in their playing.
In
working with musicians, my aim is to help the player (or singer)
develop a sensitivity to the quality of their movement and how it is
affecting their performance. Instead of fighting the instrument and
yourself, discovering that there is a “softer” approach, which is
easier and gets results, comes as a surprise to many players. As a
complement to instrumental study, musicians find a knowledge of the
Alexander Technique invaluable. For students and established players
alike, it gives them a way of avoiding tension and pain, while
potentially liberating their playing. The rewards are poise, ease of
performance, lessened fatigue and the confidence that comes with
self-knowledge.
© Michael Stenning Canberra 2004
