Klarinet Archive - Posting 000657.txt from 1997/07

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: aching hands
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 15:56:40 -0400

Dear Neil:
Thank you. I have found that my throat muscles give up long before my
wrists and hands - usually after about two to two-and-a-half hours of
*intensive practice or playing. Concerts generally have intervals,
fortunately, so it never happens then. Perhaps there is sone way of
prolonging this. However, I generally practise with the aim of solving
specific problems - probably I do this when I should simply be geting back
into shape after a layoff, too, which is bad, no doubt - and after less
than two hours, usually, I've either solved it, at least for the time
being, or decided it's not possible that session, for whatever reason.
So personally I'm not that keen on being able to practice for longer.
As I've said before, I don't get wrist problems at all unless I'm playing
in cramped surroundings,and I don't really understand this American
prevalence of such problems - if Chad is getting problems, though,
presumably he's doing far too much of whatever he's doing.
Roger Shilcock

On Sat, 19 Jul 1997, Neil Leupold wrote:

> Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 10:43:10 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.edu>
> Reply-To: klarinet@-----.us
> To: Klarinet List <klarinet@-----.us>
> Subject: Re: aching hands
>
> 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
>
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