Klarinet Archive - Posting 000577.txt from 1997/07

From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: aching hands
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 16:57:33 -0400

On Sat, 19 Jul 1997, Roger Shilcock wrote:

> Six hours a day does seem quite ludicrous. This young man must getting
> bleeding lips besides bad wrists. Three-hour sessions make this worse - 3
> two-hour sessions would be at least a little more humane. What does he do
> for the rest of the day - lie down in a darkened room with multiple cold
> compresses over the affected parts??

I'm not sure if the above response is based on personal experience,
or perhaps an uninformed knee-jerk impression of what practicing that
many hours per day would seem to do to a person. There have been
many other reactions of shock and distress on the list at the notion
of putting in a 6-hour practice day, so I'm certainly not singling
out Roger as I submit my own contribution to this discussion. His
statements, as well as all of the others contributed thus far, are
perfectly valid and understandable from the standpoint of what most
of us consider normal practicing methods. In other words, please
don't flame me for offering an alternative viewpoint to what would
seem an ironclad truth to most.

Based on my own personal experience, it is entirely possible to develop
the stamina and relaxation which would enable a player to practice and
perform 6 hours a day without any problems whatsoever. When at my most
intense stage in college, I often accumulated practice time of 7 or 8
hours per day, often in 3 or 4 hour increments, extended over the course
of many months. The real issue revolves around the approach that one
takes when endeavoring to increase their practice time and raise their
endurance. Whether or not it is ever really necessary to a player's
ultimate success that (s)he be able to play for such long periods is
not part of the issue under consideration. It's a question to be
answered based on the individual's personality and talents and needs.
I'll venture to say that most players don't see themselves ever
"needing" to have such longevity, but then, Ricardo Morales and
Sean Osborne might have something to say about it. We recognize
immediately that they are the exception, rather than anything close
to the rule.

For myself, having the endurance to perform at my best for such long
periods of time was one of the most thrilling aspects of my come-uppance
as a performer. While my colleagues bemoaned their fatigue by the
middle of a concert performance after having rehearsed for 2 hours
that afternoon, I revelled in the sensation of vitality and relaxation
I continued to feel from beginning to end. The secret, as I hinted at
before, was in my approach. Needless to say, I did not wake up one
morning and start putting in 4 hour sessions. But something else
did happen "one morning" that changed how I approached my practice
routine. For some reason, I suddenly became incredibly "patient".
I'll not try to explain what causes spontaneous changes in a person's
perspective or psychology (I haven't any idea), but I remember
clearly the effect it had on my approach and my abilities as a
player.

Practice sessions from that morning forward centered on creating
and nurturing a psychological and physical state of relaxation during
every moment that I played, such that fatigue was never allowed to
set in until the muscles had actually been taken to their full
capacity relative to their development. The point here is that
physical and psychological tension, all by themselves, can effectively
exhaust a person, even if they're not engaged in any taxing physical
activity. Tense muscles are difficult to control, and we are all
daily victims of involuntary tension due to the stresses of life.
The resultant fatigue in those situations is also involuntary,
meaning that if we hope to ever exercise the full potential of
our muscles, it behooves us to develop a talent for consciously
invoking relaxation. That's what I began to practice.

My new approach demanded that my forward momentum be reduced dramatically,
such that the amount of material actually covered during a practice
session dropped to the level of a beginner. In terms of my ability
to invoke relaxation on command, I really *was* a beginner, so doing
what I did was appropriate. Every single exercise I practiced, every
single day, every minute, was guided by the principle of effortless
physical relaxation. This is not be confused with taxing the muscles,
for much like an athlete, we must "work" the muscles in order to
strengthen them over time. Thus, it's important to make the distinction
between muscular exertion and tension-induced muscular fatigue. The
whole thing revolved around the most important area of any wind
musician's repertoire of technique: the use and manipulation of the
air stream.

Long tones were the order of the day in the beginning. But I paid
equal attention to what I was feeling in my body vs. what I heard
come out of my clarinet. I looked in the mirror constantly. I
diverted my attention to other muscles which we normally don't
consider relevant to the act of playing the clarinet, like the
calves, the hamstrings, the muscles in the forehead, the toes.
It was while observing these remote areas of the body that I
realized I was a total tension-monger, and that this peripheral
tension was having a sympathetic effect on the muscles which
*are* intimately involved in the act of playing the clarinet,
like the diaphragm, the upper and lower arms, shoulders, tongue,
facial muscles, etc. Thus, long tones served a much greater
purpose beyond merely development of tone or strength in the
embouchure.

Long tones are the simplest act one can perform where a tone is
being produced and the player can observe and focus on many other
areas of their technique at the same time. If I couldn't produce a
single sustained tone on my clarinet without manifesting tiny (and
sometimes not so tiny) pockets of involuntary physical tension all
over my body, I had no business rehearsing an etude, working on a
concerto, or practicing orchestral excerpts. Not yet. At least not
at the level where I could dismiss the fundamental issue of relaxation
as "solved" and internalized. I needed to practice using the air as
a mental focal point, a facilitator for the development of an ability
to release the flexion of any muscles in my body beyond the diaphragm.

The rest of this discussion is beyond the scope of the original
thread, so I won't continue in detail. I wanted to illustrate
with the above that there exists a methodology which worked for
me in the process of developing longevity at the level of 6 - 8
hours of practice per day. By the time I had gained mastery over
my air stream and the elimination of physical tension, playing
real music became pure pleasure. It was a mutualistic, symbiotic
dynamic, where the more I relaxed phsyically, the more I "let go"
mentally as well, which naturally fed back into enabling further
physical relaxation. When I reached the 6 hours-per-day level,
the same principal was in operation which had guided my practice
at the 30-minute level. The only thing that changed was the
facility of the muscles and my enhanced ability to control them
via consciously invoked physical relaxation.

Years later, after having taken several years off of playing, I
developed tendonitis while trying to regain my skills. I had lost
the conditioning which had enabled my mind and body to relax. So I
stopped playing for a a couple of weeks for recuperation, and am
presently mid-process on rebuilding the mechanism which enabled me
to play at my best for as long as I pleased once upon a time. I don't
know if this is possible for everybody -- or even anybody else --
but since it was possible for me, I didn't experience as much
surprise as others on the list at Chad's statement of playing
as long as he does each day. All I can say empirically is that
if he feels pain and tension when he plays for 3 hours at a
time, he is not ready to play that long and would be well-advised
to scale it down and take a look at his approach in the mean time.

Neil