You and your musical instrument have a relationship. We all know about it. It summons you. You respond. It challenges you. You rise to meet it. You change it, set it in motion. It’ changes you, sets you in motion. You have an intimate relationship, more intimate than an outsider may know. You play it. It plays you.

Let’s hear it for the players, those who hear an instrument while still a child and know in the whole of themselves, body, mind, and spirit, that this is the thing they want to do for the rest of their lives. Let’s hear it for the virtuosi. 

Let’s hear it too for the players whose love for their instrument—taken up early or late—will challenge them to shatter the ceilings of their potential, whose next step in their playing is always the one ahead. Let’s hear it for the innovators.

Let’s hear it for the players, those who will never hear in their physical ears what they hear in their mind and are not deterred, who rejoice in a scale beautifully articulated and in top-notch tune, whose goals are, better…better. Let’s hear it for the aspirers.

Let s hear it for the players, the music lovers whom the French call amateurs. Let’s hear it for their selfless contributions to civic orchestras, doctors’ orchestras, and jazz ensembles, for all those who play for the love of music. Let’s hear it for the amateurs.

Let’s hear it for the players, those who pick up an instrument, hit it, strum it, blow it, rub it, or bow it, rejoicing in the instrument’s sounds, moved and moving by the rhythm and vibrations. Let’s hear it for the rockers.

Self-actualization

It is popular today to say that since the player is the actuator of sound, the instrument we’re playing is our selves. Nonsense. There is something dominating and patriarchal in the very thought of it and a premise divorced from reality. And if it were true, the accomplished player of one’s self might just as readily turn from saxophone to sackbut. Unlikely. 

Watch the marriage of player and instrument in the playing of Jacqueline du Pré, in that of Miles Davis whose trumpet is an outgrowth of his body, or in that of Nathan Milstein whose violin seems to be a human appendage. 

The ideal is, that in the marriage of player and instrument, a highly recognizable and totally unique entity is created. We witness the marriage of two technologies, one of the self, the other of an instrument’s shape, materials, and construction. Body and instrument, instrument and body conform, player and played, their roles inseparable. 

You and your instrument

You may spend more time practicing your instrument than you do in class or with your mate, more time practicing than asleep, although that might not be something to which you aspire. 

No matter how much time you spend in practice, you care about your instrument; you treasure it. A good friend lost her gold piccolo, waking from a nap on the subway to find it gone. I spent more time than I care to mention searching pawn shops in New York City. We did not recover it. Nightmare. You weren’t planning on sleeping tonight, were you? 

Touching your instrument, handling it, removing it from its case is a privilege accorded few, perhaps only yourself. While playing, you would never allow anyone to interfere with your instrument. It would be an assault. Unthinkable. It would alter resonance, diminish your sound, and cancel a friendship. Oh, you mean the guy who wanted to touch my bassoon while I was playing it. Eww.

Your instrument is exquisitely responsive to you and sounds differently moved by the breath or hands of another. Its sound suffers when you suffer: stiffness, fatigue, inefficiency, soreness, overwork, or pathology. You and your musical instrument have a relationship that few can imagine. You are its wind, its play, and its vibrations, and vice versa.

A few decades back the venerable acoustics of Carnegie Hall were drastically and adversely impacted by a contractor’s mistake. The stage had been sprung over an open space, a vibrator above a resonator, a drumhead over a resonant void. In a too frequent mistake—it had happened elsewhere— the void had been filled with concrete. The hope was that the acoustics would not have been harmed. They should have known better.

The hall opened to the public, and it was apparent from the first note that the acoustics of the Hall had been altered, ruined. The only option was to remove the concrete without tearing the hall apart. Grisly task. Yet, it was done, the hall re-opened, and voilà, the famed acoustical perfection had returned. 

While you, the player, may have no concrete to contend with, you almost certainly have joints where you hold yourself together with unnecessary tension, muscles that are too set in their ways, extremities, heads, arms, and legs, that you tend to gather inward and lessen your efficiency. Concretions we’ll call them, but by whatever name, they hamper your play. While you may not recognize these inefficiencies in your sound, your instrument does, and it is airing your story in every moment of your play. We can change that.

The engine of the breath

Though you might not play a wind instrument, you are a wind instrument, and a rather efficient one at that. Your torso and its multiple diaphragms are designed not just to take in air but just as importantly, to conserve air. Learning more about your torso’s anatomy and its function is going to make you a better player. Your torso is an utterly miraculous instrument. Let’s build one. But before we build, let’s imagine.

Alexander Exercise 1: Shoulders open to bring your arms forward

Imagine with me what your instrument might see as you take your hands to it. God forbid you’re in a hurry. Your arms come to your instrument straight away, their jointedness disabled, elbows fixed, wrists, and knuckles too. Your fingers may be straightened to get a good grip; you are not going to drop it; that’s the good news. The bad news, perhaps, is that in your haste, the shoulders may be managing the whole of the movement. Your poor instrument is witnessing the precursor of a serious crime. Wait. How can we undo this? Let’s take it to the practice room.

Seat yourself before your instrument, perhaps still in its case, or stand before your bass or your percussion set or another large instrument and pause. Wait. Bring into your consciousness your instrument in its environment, the space of the room and its furnishings, spare though they may be. 

Take it all in, don’t forget your instrument, and notice the change in your breathing. Undo every bit of the effort that holds your shoulders to your torso. They do not need that help or want it. Allow your shoulders to let away from the torso, and again, notice your breathing. You do not need to colonize your shoulders, own them, or otherwise hold on to them. You may be doing that right now. Ouch.

Stand. Let your arms rest easily by your side, pads of the fingers freely touching your leg, no need to press. Using the thumb as the axis of your hands’ rotation, let your palms open to the sky and your arms to come to shoulder height, quite slowly. Stay there a bit and breathe. 

To be clear, at movement’s end, you’re standing—alone or partnered—in your practice room, or living room, for that matter, arms outstretched but not stretched out, palms aloft. You may feel minor discomfort in bringing your arms to this height as muscles respond in a new way to your wishes. Let your hands and arms return to your side, recalling your arms’ position and disposition in their movement aloft.

Raising your arms in supplication, some maintain, excites the neural centers of inspiration, creating a feedback loop, the physical exciting the neural, the neural exciting the physical, a powerful symbiosis. You’ll determine the veracity of the assertion in your use and experimentation. There’s a dissertation in there somewhere. 

Let every movement toward your instrument invoke the outward opening of your shoulders. Do this every time you bring your hands to your instrument, and you’ll develop a new habit and a new relationship to your instrument. It might not fear you any longer. Open to bring the arms forward

To repeat, let your shoulders open away from the torso as your arms come independently of the shoulders to your instrument in an embrace. The arms upon extension may bring the shoulders in play, but never the other way around. Yo Yo Ma embraces his instrument, his arms come round to it. Jacqueline du Pré, she of blessed memory, does the same, and so might you, not just on the cello, but on every instrument including keyboards, those of Dell or Fazioli.

Alexander Exercise 2: The tale of two diaphragms

Breathe from your diaphragm is advice we’ve heard all our lives, and like some oft-heard advice, it may not be so productive. Why? There are at least five reasons.

1. There are two diaphragms in the torso, the thoracic and the pelvic and they work together. Their function is inseparable. Breathe from the diaphragm? Which diaphragm, sir, and how?
2. We’re always breathing with our diaphragms. Without their actions our lungs would not fill.
3.  The action of our diaphragms cannot profitably be addressed directly. Attempts to do so are frustrating, as you may have already learned. 
4. Our diaphragms are involuntary muscles until you tamper with them. 
5. The location of the thoracic diaphragm is generally misunderstood. It is not located in the abdominal section of the body. Were it otherwise humanity might have developed differently or not at all.

All together now

Since the action of the thoracic diaphragm and the pelvic are inextricably linked we will discuss them together. At the base of your torso is your pelvic diaphragm. Its shape is conic, located within the pelvic girdle. By some accounts, this one included, it is the conductor of your breath, acting in tandem with your thoracic diaphragm. 

When you engage both fully and flexibly, the whole concert of the breath is engaged. There will no need to suck in air. Air falls in where space is created. You will never breathe from your diaphragm, but your expanding, breathing, living torso will call upon both diaphragms and involve the rest, there are seven, and all can be addressed only indirectly. Let’s call on them.

Breath renewed

Lying in semi-supine, knees bent, head supported by a book or two (find what seems most comfortable), spend a little time noticing your breathing. Don’t let your notice be rigid.You’ll miss something. Your breathing may vary, even stop for a bit, it may shudder, it will slow and speed up. Notice.

 Make no demands on your breath and undo your expectations. With lips closed, let a smile develop in your eyes and, breathing normally, inhale gently through the nose. 

You don’t want to strain to take in a lot of air. Let the exhalation begin through your open lips as you utter and prolong shhhhhh, the final consonant of “hush”. Let the consonant continue as long as it will comfortably but without complete exhaustion. 

Come back to neutral and continue to notice your breathing. Never repeat the unvoiced exhalation one after the other. Rest between and notice how and if your breathing is changing. 

Panting not requisite

When our breathing is high, our chests rising and falling noticeably, the pelvic diaphragm may become fixed and the thoracic diaphragm ineffectual. They become dormant just as surely as other bodily functions may be lost if they are not nourished and used. Some instruments deteriorate when un-played.

Your chest and its association with certain postural muscles is not the ideal motor of your inspiration. To rely upon the chest, the thorax alone, for respiration is to live in a state of alternating collapse and correction, and in a constant state of disturbance for both you and your instrument.

The breath of the instrumentalist, of the surgeon, of the dentist, and of the singer ought to be the same. A universally expanding torso, the neck freeing, a deep and universal breath conducted by the pelvic diaphragm and partnered to the thoracic is the ideal. We expand to breathe, universally, completely, economically. Doing so, it is not so much that we breathe, as that we are breathed. 

Alexander Exercise 3: The solar plexus

The act of breathing for both vocalist and instrumentalist is universally expansive. It is beneficial to the internal organs, and one reason, perhaps, that performing musicians are so notably long-lived. 

Among those organs that you benefit and that benefit you in return is the solar plexus. In Eastern thought, if you’ll allow the generalization, the solar plexus is the center of our energy and power. In Western practice it is the Grand Central Station of our autonomic nervous system, and to the performer, still more, the origin of our leg muscles and of our postural stability. Its importance can scarcely be over-stated. It is the point from which we radiate and expand. Let’s locate it.

Let one arm open away from your shoulder, fully engaging your jointedness at your shoulder, elbows, wrist, and knuckles. Let your arm bring your hand to alight on your navel with fingers lightly touching one another and pointing perpendicularly to the side opposite your raised arm. You’ve encompassed the solar plexus or dan tian as it is called in Chinese medicine. It is commonly thought to lie two inches above the navel and two inches within the torso. The aorta lies just in behind.

Let your fingers turn upward leaving the hand in place, a rotation hardly more than the thought of it. With permission of all concerned, exchange this work with another. Talk about your breathing. The solar plexus can be a source of liberation or fixation. You’ll learn to choose the former and your hand will teach you. 

Alexander Exercise 4: Going up to get down

Getting down with a piece of music is the ultimate. It signals your oneness with the beat, the scope, the spirit of your connection. Get down, but not so fast. Get down but not mindlessly, not without preserving your innate postural up.

A down beat not take you down. Take a look at your section in your band, your orchestra, chorus, or at the members of your jazz ensemble. Note how you and they respond to the down beat. 

Do all of you move downward in a bobbing motion, marking time, moving downward and back up, quite likely not fully back or up? Down beats may be getting you down. You and your musical instru

That bobbing, nodding motion comes naturally. It’s a groove. It’s cool, a yielding to the motion of the music. Yet, to the extent that it is habitual, it may rob you, rob your section and your ensemble of buoyancy, of down counterbalanced by up, of righteous opposition, and according to some, power. Do you agree that it’s worth a look? If so, read on.

Alexander Exercise 5: Your sitting bones

Your torso is the engine of your breath. Like every other engine it requires mounts, good ones, a solid base on which it might run. Mounts you say? Yes. You’re sitting on them, and they are aptly named. They are your sitting bones, the ischia, the bottom of you pelvic girdle. 

Your sitting bones, the ischia, have a prominence, a sort of elbow at their bottom that’s deeply informative. You can feel them as you get your hands under your torso, under your butt, finding your ischial tuberosities. You’ll find two prominences, the ischial tuberosities, they feel like elbows. If you find that you’re sitting directly on them, they are telling a story whose meaning may be that you’re over-straightening your back. You may be setting yourself up for a world of pain. The spine wants its natural curves.

Conversely, if you find that the prominences are forward of your torso, it may mean you’re slumping. You want to be on the feet of the sitting bones, a flat area of several inches, just behind the prominences. You want to be able to rock on them, move, dance with your instrument away and forward, forward and away.

You and your instrument are plowing air. Air is resisting your every movement, informing it, buoying you up, giving to your movement and play, authority, fluidity, and substance. 

There is no law of the universe to which you and your play are not subject, and few if any, that you cannot more mindfully manifest in your play. You and your instrument are both player and played. 

Play on then, virtuosi, innovators, aspirers, amateurs, and rockers. Play on. 

Do you need more?

If you love these exercises and are serious about taking the next steps here are some options good friend!

1. Read my blog on skilled hands
2. Book a private Alexander Technique Session with yours truly.
3. Book this class for your conservatory, studio, or university, 2 sessions in one day, or 5 sessions, Monday through Friday. 

All you need to set that in motion is to email me at alanbowersnyc@mac.com.

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