Since then I've gotten and done a lot of bodywork. Pretty much everyone has back and shoulder issues, usually from a mostly unconscious hunching of the shoulders. For me, when I'm working to deepen my technique, whether its keyboard, guitar, banjo, flute or horn, there's a tendency to let the intensity of my mental effort create needless physical tension, especially in the shoulders and their muscle attachments to the torso. It's sort of a negative example of embodied cognition. The relaxed and alert physical state best for making music seems a little antithetical to our mental image of someone working hard and thinking hard.
Somehow my feeling of really working hard and concentrating and being completely focused on the task at hand suggests the body posture of hunching over the instrument and using exaggerated control gestures and scowling (!). I'll catch myself, relax, let my shoulders slip back to a more neutral position and let go of the facial contortions. Then the next time I see 16th notes in a key signature of more than a couple of sharps or flats, or have a new chord or chord progression to fret, I slip back into the needless extra tension. Over time I slip back less, and to usually a lighter degree of tension, but it always happens. My suspicion is that those two and a half years of intense piano work, with very little sense of what I was doing to my body, helped me create this situation.
Jeffrey Agrell and James Boldin over on the Regular Reads: Horn list both have talked about the need to be aware of basic body issues when learning to make music and I think they're really on to something. As a therapist I've always paid a lot of attention to how a client physically interacts with an instrument. I just wish I'd figured out my own issues before wiring my brain and body in some dysfunctional ways back in the day.
Update - Pasting in below most of a comment left by Jonathan West, as it is so responsive to my post:
When you play horn in band, you aren't playing continuously, so it is reasonable for your practice at home to mimic to some extent the kinds of activities involved when you play in a group. And that consists of bursts of playing interspersed with rests. If you get into the habit of doing some kind of relaxation exercise during home practice, you may find that it comes increasingly naturally to you to do such execises during rests in band rehearsal as well, and you may find that this has a surprising effect on your endurance.
As for what exercises to do, I suspect that you're in a better position than I am to know the sorts of exercises that would be good for you.
Relaxation exercises to loosen your shoulders are great, but I think that it would be an even better idea to find some kind of relaxation technique that stops your shoulders getting bunched in the first place.
Try standing, and play an octave scale of long tones, each one with a long crescendo and diminuendo. You get rid of all technical issues, and you just concentrate on feeling relaxed and getting that smooth intense non-brassy tone you want, all the way from p to f and back again. Think of and feel your shoulders as you crescendo and concentrate on remaining relaxed.
If you find yourself getting tense during practice, stop what you are doing, do a relaxation exercise to un-knit your shoulder muscles, and then do a couple of long tones to remind yourself how you should be feeling when playing. Then go back to what you were doing before.
When I saw the headline, I initially wondered which old magazines you have been looking through :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm with James & Jeffrey on being aware of your physical state when playing. It may be that you need to put regular relaxation exercises explicitly into your practice routine.
When you play horn in band, you aren't playing continuously, so it is reasonable for your practice at home to mimic to some extent the kinds of activities involved when you play in a group. And that consists of bursts of playing interspersed with rests. If you get into the habit of doing some kind of relaxation exercise during home practice, you may find that it comes increasingly naturally to you to do such execises during rests in band rehearsal as well, and you may find that this has a surprising effect on your endurance.
As for what exercises to do, I suspect that you're in a better position than I am to know the sorts of exercises that would be good for you.
Relaxation exercises to loosen your shoulders are great, but I think that it would be an even better idea to find some kind of relaxation technique that stops your shoulders getting bunched in the first place.
Try standing, and play an octave scale of long tones, each one with a long crescendo and diminuendo. You get rid of all technical issues, and you just concentrate on feeling relaxed and getting that smooth intense non-brassy tone you want, all the way from p to f and back again. Think of and feel your shoulders as you crescendo and concentrate on remaining relaxed.
If you find yourself getting tense during practice, stop what you are doing, do a relaxation exercise to un-knit your shoulder muscles, and then do a couple of long tones to remind yourself how you should be feeling when playing. Then go back to what you were doing before.
Hi, Jonathan - The "Back Issues" was an English major's attempt at either humor or resonance in language, or both. I think issues I'm dealing with now go back to my 20's when in conservatory trying to get through piano juries, and was in a rush to get credentialed as a music therapist, so just accepted the physical pain as the price to pay.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about stopping the tension before it starts is exactly what I was trying to get at, and is exactly the kind of thing mindfulness would address, if only I could maintain it. This post is really what Wikipedia would call a "stub", as there's lots and lots going on here in multiple conscious and unconscious systems.
Interestlingly I'm pretty sure it's the flute playing where this is happening the most. Feel as though I've established the off the leg horn playing fairly well. You were right about the pain passing with time once I adjusted.
That's good about the pain passing with adjustment to off-the-leg playing. That should give you hope that you can do something along the same lines for the way you hold the flute as well.
ReplyDeleteThe position you have to hold for the flute is more unnatural than for the horn, for all that the flute is lighter. But some of the same principles might apply in terms of finding the most natural possible position.
It is probably worth doing some exprimenting in terms of body and instrument positions while playing something straightforward so you don't get distracted by technical issues from being aware of how your body feels. Maybe tuck in your right elbow a bit more to ease the strain on your shoulder?
Are you at present leaning forward in order to give yourself a sense of attacking the notes? That might strain your back. If so then you might sit up a bit straighter in the same way that you probably are now doing for your horn playing.
Not having seen you play the flute, I have no way of knowing whether these thoughts have any relevance to how you play, so if they are wide of the mark, feel free to discard them.
Jonathan - per usual, you're "spot on". Couple of points I didn't mention (hope to do a flute diary after the church performance next Sunday).
ReplyDeleteI play (and practice) flute standing up while everyone else in the ensemble sits, even though it draws comments. I can simply breathe better and get better sound, and being a part timer, need all the help I can get. Try to have a slight flex in the knees, back straight and comfortable, with shoulders in as natural a position as possible.
I do tend to hunch, crouch forward when hitting or drilling difficult passages - and also, having played the alto flute for years and this being my first real attempt to play the soprano at this level, it feels puny and toy like in my long fingered hands, and I find myself pushing the fingers down on the keys WAY harder that necessary, to the point of my fingers sometimes aching later.
I still think those two and a half years of forcing myself through piano juries set me up for an unconscious feeling of combating music that's above my skill level, as opposed to growing naturally into it.
Your habit of hunching for difficult passages very likely comes from your piano playing, the habit of leasning in to the notes to physically attack the keys that much more strongly.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be worthwhile trying to play the flute sitting. Use the relaxed upright posture that I hope you have now adopted for the horn, and bring the flute up to where your mouth is rather than leaning forward into the flute.
Then try some relatively straightforward exercises, while concentrating on maintaining a relaxed upright posture and using the lightest possible touch on the keys. It is probably worth abandoning all attempts at practicing difficult technical stuff on the flute for a week or so while you practice getting used to this new relaxed posture.
Only then do you try doing more difficult technical exercises having got thoroughly used to your new body position. Again, don't go straight into the most difficult stuff immediately, work you way up gradually so that you get used to playing things of progessively increasing difficulty without hunching up.
In doing this, you might find yourself having to make other adjustments - to the height and position of your music stand. In addition, if you use glasses, you might need to get a pair of intermediate-distance glasses so that you can clearly see the music without having to lean forward.
Opticians understand much more about the need for intermediate distance vision than they used to, because the distance the music is from you on the stand is pretty close to the ideal distance of a computer monitor from your eyes, and far more people use computers than play music!
Jonathan - This (great) comment just now showed up in my spam folder. Have no idea where it's been since you made it. All your points are very good - thanks.
ReplyDelete