Tag: Health

Alexander Technique – My First Lesson

Nicole Neal9 Comments

Before I get stuck into today’s post, don’t forget to take part in my survey and your chance to shape the future of this blog, if you’ve not done so already: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5VN6PGS

Right. on with the show!

For those of you who have followed the blog for a while you’ll remember that I’ve been working over recent months to reduce tension and any painful feelings associated with playing (both during and after) the guitar, particularly around head, neck and shoulders.

For those of you who are newer to the blog, or if you’d like a reminder of the journey thus far, here are some of my posts on dealing with the issues:

In the last year or so, I’ve made some really great – and noticeable – progress in eliminating the pain and tension issues. In turn I’m very happy to be paying this forward to both your good self, dear

Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique (Photo credit: gordonplant)

reader, and hands on with my students.

So one of the most recent treatments had dealing with neck, shoulder, head and jaw pain and tension was with some myotherapy. This is an excellent treatment, and makes you feel like you’re floating on air immediately afterwards. However, the effects can be relatively short-lived and that’s because it’s really just treating a symptom and not getting to the cause of an issue. Don’t get me wrong, I think myotherapy is great and good idea to get some work done from time to time, but it’s not really a time or cost-effective answer as a solution to an underlying problem long-term.

This is where Alexander Technique enters. It was first recommended to me by my own teacher, the fantastic Ben Dix, who himself reaped enormous benefits from the technique.

So what is Alexander Technique?

It’s not passive therapy such as myotherapy or massage where you lie on a table and someone prods and pokes and moves you about. It’s a technique that teaches you to help yourself; you do the “work”, or the non-work to probably be more accurate, with guidance from the Alexander Technique (AT for short) teacher.

And it’s a technique that combines both mind and body – it’s all part of the same system after all. It teaches you to understand and be increasingly aware of where you may hold tension in the body. Of course, flowing on from that, releasing that tension so you can use your body more efficiently and effectively.

The key focus in the technique is on creating freedom in the neck and head, with the view that everything else along the rest of the spine (and all the other bits of our body, which of course stem from the spine) will flow on.

My first lesson – thoughts and impressions

Yes, they call it a lesson and not a session or anything else as it really is about teaching you to be more aware.

First up the AT teacher chatted through where I was experiencing tension (or currently aware of tension) and pains, when they occurred, my playing, other activities and work and so on, building a picture of how I use my body on a daily basis.

She then whacked me up on to a table, and I spent much of the rest of the lesson laid on my back in a semi-supine position!

Hah hah! Sounds easy right?

Wrong! Well. Kind of a bit of both.

It was very relaxing in a way. Lying there, focusing on creating looseness, space, relaxation in my head, neck, jaw, shoulders….. Ahhh….just letting go.

On the other hand, the teacher then began to move my limbs – first the legs, then arms, asking me to stop her from moving them.

Easy. Done.

Then for me to give the full weight of the limbs to her, and to let her move them.

Incredibly challenging! More so than you would think!

This was an exercise in understanding where you may hold onto essentially useless and counter-productive tension in the body built up through years and years and years of habits.

Hmmmm.

So how has it influenced my playing?

Well, it has only been one week since my first lesson, but I’d say the biggest impact has been in an increased awareness in what my body is doing when playing – such as raising up my knees and/or curling my toes in my shoes when playing something fast or that I perceive as a challenge,  and  interestingly tension in my jaw more so than neck or shoulders per se. Could this be a key cause of neck and shoulder pains? We’ll see…..

I’ve also experienced that when recognising these things and letting go, it does make the movements flow more easily. And then my brain trips back over into old habit mode after a few seconds and switches on the tension again. And then I pick it up again…. It’s going to take a few weeks, probably months, of working on this to build the new habits in, but I can definitely see that this is a very powerful technique that will have definite benefits for my playing.

I’ll keep you posted!

Why do we memorise music?

Nicole Neal1 Comment

Before looking at the “how” of memorisation, it’s important to discuss the issue of “why”.

So why do we memorise pieces?

Well, in the pop, folk and often the jazz idioms (ooh there’s a good word) it de rigueur to play without any kind of score. And that often reflects the way the music has been composed and brought together

Chopin trio partiture
Memorise this…..Go! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

with the musicians playing it. Not to mention we’d probably think it looked a little strange with Keith Richards turning his sheet music, or Pete Townsend scissor kicking his music stand (OK probably not likely found scissor kicking these days, but you get the idea). One may also argue that pop songs are a little less complex than certain pieces we as classical guitarists might play, and therefore arguably more easy to memorise. Having words to a song helps too.

So why do we classical musicians memorise?

One could argue that it “looks good”, or say “because that’s what we’re supposed to do, that’s the culture”. Well, yes. And also no. It is recounted that Chopin threw up his hands in horror when a student rocked up and played something from memory. He considered this the height of rudeness, very flippant and arrogant of the student, that they couldn’t be giving the due care and attention to this written instructions on the score!

You’ve got to admit he did have a point – there’s a lot of information on there, and it can really help in the middle of a piece (or start or end – I’m non-discriminatory!) when your mind wanders a little or you lose yourself a little too much in the musical moment.

Interesting. So back to the question. Why do we really memorise music, if we don’t need to as such?

1. It helps us to learn and really know a piece inside out, upside down and back to front. When you’re flying solo you’ve really got to know exactly where you’re headed, where you’ve come from, the melody, the structure of the piece and so on. Can you pick up in the middle of a phrase? Or can you skip ahead and start from the third or fourth phrase or some other landmark in the score? If not, you probably don’t know it was well as you could do yet. Really knowing something inside out is also going to help in managing performance anxiety too. If you’re not worried (or less worried) about whether you’re going to forget something or stuff something up because you’re not quite rocksteady with it yet, that is likely to significantly reduce the feeling of nerves.

2. Gives us the freedom to take a look at both our left and right hands for some of those more challenging sections and then not get lost trying to find our place on the page again.

3. Once we really feel we know the structure, technical requirements and mechanics of a piece inside out, it’s memorisation allows greater freedom in exploring tones, colours, dynamics, phrasing and other musical expression. Some say it removes a level of interference in playing the music from the heart. By knowing it by heart, it can perhaps more easily come from the heart.

4. Memorisation allows us to really LISTEN and be aware of what we’re playing and how we’re playing it. It allows us to focus on producing exactly the quality of tone and sound that we want at any given point in the piece.

5. By playing something from memory, even if only partially memorised, it’s a fantastically direct indicator of which bits you know very well and those that you don’t know so well. When you’re first committing a piece to memory which are the bits where you have memory fade? Ask yourself this and examine why? What’s going in the melody – can you sing it?, the harmony? The phrasing?

6. Last, but not least it’s good for the brain! It’s an excellent exercise for the grey matter, regardless of age. It helps build up your noggin’s cognitive reserves!