The Dynamic Musician Series Blog

“Drawing the Bowstring”

What happens between the time you decide to sing or play and actually go to producing a sound? Many amateur musicians start producing sound before they are really ready to do so. This can lead to an uncertain and shaky start at best and the feeling of insecurity when commencing playing. Often these musicians will report that they feel more comfortable after they’ve played/sung a few bars. The performer is either too relaxed (too little tonus), or too tense (too much tonus) when they start and adjust their tonus while playing. I use the word “tonus” because it describes a level of muscle activity and this can be more or less suited to producing sound. The ideal is to have your tonus just right before playing.

One the ideas I’ve been investigating lately is the metaphor of a bow and arrow. I don’t claim to have invented this because I’ve seen it on other websites. Imagine drawing back the bowstring and holding it a moment before letting the arrow fly. If the sting is not drawn back enough, the arrow will fall short of its mark. If the string is too taught, it may be difficult to hold steady and affect your aim. If you draw the string back and just let the arrow fly, you miss the opportunity to sense the string’s tonus.

The same can apply to the process of starting to play/sing. When you start to play or sing, wait for a tiny moment to sense your tonus before actually producing a sound. Make a note of the tonus level and then play. What happened? Did you have more or less than the ideal tonus? Or perhaps you were right on. Where in your body did you sense the tonus? You may even find that some parts of you are too toned and others less so. By doing this, you can begin to get a finer sense of how to optimize your tonus for the beginnings of phrases. Another way is to hear the music before you play. By doing this, your brain will get your body ready to play before you’ve started, and you’ll feel much better and secure.

Now all of this may seem very obvious, but I’ve heard enough instances where this is not happening and felt it was worth mentioning. I’m sure many of you out there have other ideas a well and I’d be interested in hearing from you. I will post other ideas so that we can all profit from them.

Thanks for reading and until then, John Tarr

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais® mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

from iTunes store

or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on The Feldenkrais Method® breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit, and stand well!

Breath Support

What does “Breath Support” really mean? Most will answer that it is the ability of your muscles to support your breathing. This is certainly true, but I’d like to suggest another viewpoint: that breath support actually comes from your skeleton. “What? From your skeleton, you don’t breathe with your skeleton!”

Sure, you don’t breathe with your skeleton, but how you use or organize your skeleton is crucial to lung capacity, and ease of breathing. When you stand or sit, all of your body weight needs to be transmitted to the floor, or floor and chair. How easily this happens depends on the alignment of your skeleton. In this case, alignment doesn’t necessarily mean “straight,” as a well-organized spine, for example has its natural curves and is actually stronger than a “straight” spine.

To experience this for yourself, find a friend and stand behind them. Gently place the palms of your hands on their shoulders close the base of their neck. Ask them if it’s all right for you to gently push down on their shoulders in the direction of the floor. Be sure to push directly downward because if you pull them towards you while pushing, you will influence their posture. Notice how strong your friend feels and how they would collapse if you were to push really hard (which of course you will not!). Do they feel solid like a tree or springy like a bow?

If they feel strong, that is, they feel like they don’t have to do anything to counter your downward force, it means that the force is traveling through their bones and the bones are carrying the weight. In this case, have them move their pelvis a bit forward so their upper back is more rounded and their head sticks a bit forward and push again. You will most likely feel them become springier like a bow. Ask them where they have to contract their muscles to resist your force and they will probably say in the abdomen, back and thighs. Have them move their pelvis back to where they feel strong again.

If your friend is springy from the beginning, have them move their pelvis back to the point where they feel more solid and won’t have to use their muscles as much to resist the downward force.

This demonstrates that the muscles are freer when the skeleton is better aligned. Freer muscles mean easier breathing, more lung capacity and it takes less energy to be upright, hence breath support. Of course this is never the same from moment to moment because we are moving around and adjusting our alignment to carry our weight (and possibly the weight of an instrument) whenever we’re in an upright position. Breath support also means the ability to find the best alignment for a given activity. I touched on this in an earlier blog entitled “What is good Posture?”

There are many practices that can be used to develop better skeletal alignment while playing and in daily life. The Feldenkrais Method® is the method I personally find the most effective in working with this theme, but I know many other musicians have found help from other methods as well. You can experience more of what I’m talking about by doing the podcast lessons or doing the lessons from Volume one of the “Dynamic Musician Series.”

Thanks for reading, John Tarr

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais® mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

from iTunes

or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on The Feldenkrais Method® breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit, and stand well!

Introducing Richard Corbeil

As I mentioned in the last blog, I would like to introduce Voice Teacher and Feldenkrais Trainer Richard Corbeil. Richard has produced a wonderful set of CD’s entitled, “Vocal Integration with the Feldenkrais Method®.” Unlike existing Feldenkrais Method lessons, Richard integrates the use of consonants and vowels with the Awareness Through Movement process unique to the FM. For vocalists, some parts of the lessons may seem familiar, but I don’t know of any other combination that is so thorough and complete.

For those of us who are not vocalists, the lessons can be very useful in developing a greater understanding of what happens in our throats and mouths as we play. This will lead to a refinement in articulation and jaw movements. And they are certainly helpful for our students who may be having problems with tension in the throat and jaw.

After doing some of the lessons with Richard in the Basel 3 Feldenkrais Teachers’ Training program, I discovered a new tonguing pattern while playing the didgeridoo. I have also been able to guide students to better sense the tension patterns in their throats, necks and jaws.

If you want to find out more about Richard’s work, go to his website:

And as always, Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From iTunes

-or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit and stand well!

Thoughts on the Lower Back

Hello Readers,

I’m back after a long sojourn. In July I was working as an Assistant Trainer in the Basel 3 (Switzerland) Professional Feldenkrais Teachers’ Training Program and after that had some vacation time. In the Training, I met Richard Corbeil, Feldenkrais Trainer and Voice Teacher who has some very interesting lessons for vocalists, which I’ll talk about in the next blog.

One of the things catching my attention lately is how many musicians over extend their lower and even mid-backs when backs while standing or sitting to hold themselves upright and how this can affect breathing. If you feel the muscles along the spine, you will notice that they can be very active and tense. This is often referred to as “sway back.” If you ask someone who does this to bend forward, they will often lower their head and neck but their chest may stay in the upright position. In extreme cases the lumbar curve or sway back will stay constant or even increase when bending forward.

What does this mean? Well, for one, there might be the experience of feeling stiff when bending forward and I encounter this quite a bit in my private Feldenkrais® practice. An overly arched lower back also inhibits breathing and lung capacity. The back of the diaphragm is attached to the upper two lumbar vertebrae and the twelfth (lowest floating) ribs. When the lumbar spine is held still, this limits some of the possibilities for breathing movements in the lower back area.

This is a complex area and there are many reasons for over arching in the lower back. Sometimes it’s an overcompensation for being upright when the chest and shoulders are forward. Holding a heavy instrument can also lend to this tendency and I suspect there are emotional factors as well.

In the corresponding podcast, I’ll present a short Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® lesson addressing this topic. Of course this will give you a sample of a full lesson and if the pattern of sway back has been present for a long time, it will need some attention and awareness before it can be changed.

Thanks for reading, John Tarr

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais® mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From iTunes

-or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on The Feldenkrais Method® breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit, and stand well!

Practicing stress?

What are you practicing when you are practicing?

This may seem like an incredibly stupid question. You might respond by saying I’m practicing Brahms for my recital or an etude for my next lesson. But what I’m really asking is what mental and physical state are you practicing?

When I work with students who have muscular-stress related problems such as shaking uncontrollably or undue amounts of tension, I often hear them say that when they feel they don’t have time to practice thoroughly, their problems get worse. What this means for me is that they are practicing stress and not music and this exasperates the existing problem. For example, if I usually have 2 hours to practice but today I only have 20 minutes because I have to go to a meeting, what do I do with those precious 20 minutes? Do I try to get as much done as possible? Am I angry because I don’t have enough time? How I feel during those 20 minutes will have a large influence on the productivity of that particular session. If I hurry through my daily routine, skip over things that I’m not satisfied with, I’m also practicing sloppiness. My practice session will be much different if I accept the situation and use that time to do as much as I can but as easily and as relaxed as I can.

How many students practice “hard” or until they’re too tire to do more? We want to be practicing or cultivating ease and musicality and not stress. We can even go further and ask why we practice at all? Do we practice because we’re supposed to or because we want to make good music? There is a big difference between those two motivations. One is working, struggling and cultivating stress. The other is doing what is necessary to perform well and communicate through the music. Do we want to show our audiences that we’re struggling, fighting and suffering?

Here are a few recommendations for practicing and you may have heard them already.
-Practice smart and use your time for what you need to learn.
-Check you attitude often and listen to your body and tension level.
-Cultivate ease and fluency.
-Stop when things are going well so your body remembers that feeling instead of stopping when you’re exhausted.

There is more to say about this but I’ll leave you with this for now. Of course I’d be interested to hear others’ thoughts on this subject as well.

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From iTunes

Or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit and stand well!

Breathing in Rhythm

Last month while performing with a new brass quartet, I found that although I’d never played with the other members, I was able to match my tempo, style and rhythm quite easily. Of course this felt normal to me but I started to ask what made this situation easier than others I’ve experienced? The one thing that stood out the most was that we all breathed in time and together. Now this may seem so obvious that it just sounds silly, but I’ve been working with groups who don’t breathe together and the beginnings of pieces are often shaky.

I’ve been using these ideas to create exercises that help ensemble members begin to better coordinate their breathing with some good results. This is especially important with children so that the habit can be established early. Breathing in time and in the style of the piece is an essential element to internalizing the pulse and feel of the music. When I observe players or singers who don’t breathe rhythmically, they often stumble or loose the tempo for a moment, or worse never get into the rhythm. Their breathing also seems awkward and out of place.

For you teachers out there, I recommend taking a little time at the beginning of a rehearsal to get people breathing together. You can do this by simply establishing a tempo and having the members inhale on 4 (in 4/4 time) and sing on 1 for 3 or 7 beats and repeat the process. I’m sure many of you out there have some really excellent methods of working with this theme. In my next podcast I will address this issue as well. If you have any ideas on this matter, I’d be interested in hearing your comments.

Players and singers can check this when practicing. How do you start a piece or even an exercise? Do you hear/feel the tempo before starting? Breathing in time will prepare you for music making before you start producing sound, which will ultimately make practicing more efficient.

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From iTunes

or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit and stand well!

Podcast problems

For those of you who have subscribed to the iTunes podcasts, I want to let you know that I have had some trouble with podcsts disappearing after posting new ones. I've found the problem and corrected it but am now having to re-post the podcasts.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. As before you can get the lessons for free:

From iTunes

Or direct

How far apart are your knees (or feet)?

This may sound like a silly question, but I’ve been asked what is the proper distance for a student to have between his/her knees? In one workshop, a participant, working with a colleague said, “she should have her knees closer together, otherwise her lower back is closed.”

Some people are more comfortable with their knees quite wide and others with them close together. Is there and anatomically optimal position? Yes and no. Of course comfort is one important consideration and is what instrument you are playing. There are many factors involved and it’s just too simple to say the knees should be so or so. The flexibility in the hip joints and the muscles around the hip play a very important role as do the height and angle of the chair. Cellists need to have their knees apart and some guitarists use a foot pedal so the position of the knees can be influenced by outside factors. If you have a student change the position of the knees without considering these other factors, you may be creating more tension than was there before and that is certainly not helpful. Standing can be similar but then it’s more a question of the distance between the feet.

What to do? Again, it’s time to experiment. If you have the sense that you or a student of yours should change the position of your/his/her knees, do so in small increments. Ask, “what else in the body changes when the distance between the knees changes?” It could be that very little changes and it’s also possible that changes will be very noticeable. If your knees have to be wide in order to feel comfortable, this could mean that the muscles and tendons on the outside of the hips are shorter than optimal. If you have to have your knees very close together, then you may be holding them and that uses extra energy and both extremes can effect the position of your pelvis and length of your spine.

Going back to experimenting, you can also begin to notice how your posture, position of your head and breathing are influenced by the position of your knees. In the case of the above example, the person in question was not comfortable when she put her upper legs where her peer thought they should be. She actually felt that is was more difficult to breathe and less comfortable to sit. Once again, we have to realize that when we change something in our organization, there will also be changes in other places.

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From iTunes

Or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit and stand well!

What about those feet?

I recall many music lessons and rehearsals in which we were constantly told to have our feet flat on the floor. I also remember wondering: but why? Now, as a teacher and a Feldenkrais Practitioner® I see that there was some wisdom in these admonishments but also that admonishments rarely work.

The first question we need to ask is: what roles do feet and legs play while sitting?

If you’ve ever tried to sit and keep your feet off the floor, you’ll have some idea. Of course that’s a very difficult position to be in! Imagine what it would be like to balance on your pelvis, without your legs. This might give you a better clue. When we sit, we sit on two bones often called the “sitz bones.” If you lift up one side of your pelvis and slide your hand underneath from the side, then gently lower your weight back onto your hand; you will probably feel the tip of one these bones. They are shaped like small rockers and allow your pelvis to roll forward and back. Balancing on these without your legs would be a very difficult task indeed.

How much support do you really need from your legs?

Between the most stable position, which is having your feet completely on the floor, and the least stable of having just one toe on the floor, there is a wide range of possibilities. You can begin to experiment for yourself and find out what works best. Some students like to have their ankles crossed and underneath the chair while others like to wrap their feet around the legs of the chair and these different positions can affect the way they breathe and quality of their sound. Try out these different possibilities for yourself and see if you can feel/hear the differences. Are there differences in the belly and back muscles for example?

The question of choice is also very important in this discussion. We want to have different possibilities when sitting and the freedom to freely choose from those possibilities. Sometimes it might be useful to have our feet in different positions and we need to consider that we were not designed to sit still for long periods of time so shifting our position is a natural thing to do. One simple way to go about finding the best position for the moment is to ask: Am I comfortable and does my sitting position support/suit what I’m doing now? If yes, good continue on and ask the question later. If no, good, shift your feet to a different position and ask the question again.

In this way you increase your awareness and begin to understand more about your own sitting strategies. Asking students similar questions will in turn help them to develop their own awareness and find the most suitable positions for themselves.

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From iTunes

-or direct:

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe and sit well!

What is good posture?

What is good posture?

I hear this question almost daily in my practice and music workshops. One way to think about posture is to be upright and straight. But why is this so uncomfortable for so many people? Moshé Feldenkrais, (The Feldenkrais Guild of N. America) who developed the Feldenkais Method defined posture very differently. He said good posture (which he actually called “acture” because posture means something static) meant being able to move backwards, forwards, to the right and left as well as up and down without a preliminary movement. Another way of saying this would be to say one is able to move from his/her center with equal ease in all directions.

What dose this mean for musicians? Well, we can stop telling our students to sit or stand up straight. Instead, we can ask them if they feel differences when shifting more weight on to one foot or the other. We can also ask them how it feels to breathe and hold the instrument (if that is needed)? If you are slouched over and your teacher says, “sit up, that’s not good posture,” you may not agree because sitting up “straight” may not feel so comfortable and you don’t really have any way of knowing what straight means. However, if you are slumped over and you need to look to the left or right, you will have to erect yourself before you can turn to look and that means needing a preparatory movement. Sometimes students can even be too straight or erect. This can usually be heard in the sound quality and the muscles of the back are overworked. So the next time you wonder about your or a student’s posture, feel what it’s like to move in different directions and experiment with the sound quality. It’s even possible to hear a difference in the sound when standing with more weight on one foot as compared to the other foot or in the middle. Give it a try.

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

from iTunes

or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe well!