Klarinet Archive - Posting 000513.txt from 1999/10
From: act_dumb@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Pondering relaxation
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 19:50:05 -0400
> i think all this started when i began to work on increasing
> my speed. i've never been able to play very fast and trying
> to do this has made me tense up.
So many posts deal with things like this. It's the old tension
game, and how on earth are we meant to overcome the body's nat-
urally tendency to curl in upon itself when the need for greater
control arises?
It's not just sluggish fingers. It's not just endurance. It's
not just a slow tongue or an embouchure that pinches. People
talk about these things as if they occur in a vacuum or some-
thing, as if the fingers, tongue, and embouchure were detached
from the body somehow and could be activated discretely via re-
mote control. We completely fail to recognize that there is,
thankfully, a mechanism which deals with all of these issues in
a single efficient stroke, in the context in which they actually
occur, which is as parts and appendages of a single human body.
My subject line gives it away, of course: relaxation. Not this
nebulous, metaphysical in-your-head type of relaxation, but earth-
bound, concrete, discernible relaxation of the body's muscles and
tendons so that maximum control and freedom maybe experienced and
sustained and replicated.
I'm not going to sit here and extol the virtues of it. Those
who have been playing for a few years or more already recognize
its self-evident value. What astonishes me, time and again, is
that even the most accomplished performers lose sight of it when
they encounter a particularly thorny passage or some new tech-
nique which they've never before had to utilize. I hear and
read all of these great tips and suggestions on how to address
discrete technical issues, and not a single one of them starts
with, "Do you know how to relax your body?" Yet any attempt
at correction of a technical weakness, or any commencement of
learning a new technique -- either of which fails to start with
relaxation as the basis from which to proceed -- is doomed to
take exponentially longer, and reap drastically (needlessly)
increased amounts of frustration and fatigue.
I'm leading up to it, slowly. I just want to drive home the
point that all of the technical issues we revisit, beyond their
practical solutions of repeating a particular exercise enough
times to make the proper execution stick, are somewhat fruit-
less if they don't start with first principles. And the first
principle is that one must know, consciously, how to relax their
body, how to relax their muscles and tendons, how to suck
and siphon tension residing in any given body part or parts,
and draw it inside a location where it actually serves a con-
structive purpose. You can't get rid of it, but you *can* re-
direct it. Most players I come across seem to treat relaxation
as some kind of crap shoot, and they're amazed on those rare
days when, for some unknown reason, they're playing better
than usual. Chances are, those aberrant flashes of brilliance
are caused by an autonomic brain that happens to be so dis-
tracted by other issues that it doesn't have time to tell the
muscles to get tense when the clarinet is grasped by the
hands and placed into the mouth. Otherwise, it would.
Alright, enough beating around the bush. The common
answers all apply, but only one of them gets to the heart of
the matter. Let me just say at this point that this is what
works for me. I only assume that it applies to everybody else
because I'm pretty sure I have a normal human body, with organs
in all the right places (no musical pun there), and that the way
my body functions is almost universally applicable to how every-
body else's body functions (gender and age considerations not-
withstanding).
Is it the air stream? Yeah. Is it the diaphragm? "Even more
nifty" I imagine Teri might be inclined to reply. Remember what
I said a paragraph ago? =85about siphoning tension into a region
where it could be applied to constructive purposes? That's what
you'll find when you walk through the door of conscious physical
relaxation. No other part of the body will be encumbered by the
negative effects of physical tension when that tension has been
directed to its rightful home. The key to unlocking the door of
physical relaxation, well, you swallowed it. It's in your gut,
literally. None of this is new. For some, it will just be a
reminder. To others, it'll be like, "Huh? I play great, but
I've never had to think about something like this."
Clark Fobes and I once had a conversation about this, probably
ten years ago, sitting in his basement as he worked on one or
the other of my clarinets. How delighted I was when he spoke
the words which expressed something I had suspected of great
players all along: "There is only one place in the whole body
where any tension should be allowed to exist. That's the dia-
phragm." To continue his thought and get into the meat of the
matter, drawing the tension out of the arms, out of the legs,
out of the fingers and embouchure and tongue and throat, is
an entirely conscious act. Breathing is one thing, where you
take air into the lungs and the oxygen travels up into your
brain and causes it to send relaxing messages down through the
rest of the body's muscles. But that doesn't cure residual
tension. It's easy enough to breathe, but how do we *force*
the tension out that refuses to leave in spite of umpteen deep
breaths? You're liable to hyperventilate and pass out waiting
for that to happen - unless you know how to *make* it happen.
We've all been told, "Breathe from the diaphragm." Yeah,
great, and perfectly valid, but what then? That's only half
of the process, and this goes appreciable distance toward
explaining why the tongue remains heavy, the embouchure
tight, why the shoulders still hunch up and the quadriceps
stand at the ready to bolt, they're so rigid with unconscious
tension. The next time you take that proverbial deep breath,
expanding up from the diaphragm, around the waist, up into the
chest, and finally into the back itself, take one more step.
Before you release the air across the reed, press outward and
downward with those diaphragm muscles, and keep pressing them
outward and downward for ETERNITY (well, until you run out of
air).
Yes, sorry, but that's all there is to it. Just about. Your
diaphragm muscles *literally* have the power to draw tension
from all other areas of your body and concentrate it - all of
it -- right there in your abdomen. Guess what that does for
control over the rest of your body? It gives you freedom you
may never have known to be possible, by relaxing all of the
other muscles you use when playing clarinet. You see, when
teachers say, "Breathe from the diaphragm and support the
air stream by pressing downward and outward with those
diaphragm muscles," they fail to tell you the whole story.
Support the air stream? Eh, big deal. The REAL treasure
of maintaining constant and unwavering downward and out-
ward pressure of the diaphragm muscles is that everywhere
ELSE in the body relaxes. Automatically.
Maybe I failed to point out that the primary cause of
all problems concerning learning how to play the clari-
net, is physical tension. This is the kind of tension
over which you generally don't think you have any control.
When somebody tells you to relax, you say, "Get bent. How
the hell am I supposed to *do* that? Is there a magical
incantation I'm supposed to utter that will make it happen
all by itself?" Only when you are able to invoke relaxa-
tion are you then able to explore the full potential of
whatever technique is under study, be it dexterity, tongue
speed, embouchure formation, sculpting of the air stream,
or whatever. It's during those fleeting moments of unpre-
dictable relaxation that we find ourselves moving forward
in our technical abilities. Wouldn't it be nice to invoke
that kind of relaxation every time we played?
So do it, and practice it faithfully. There's a little
more to it than pressing downward and outward with the dia-
phragm muscles. That conscious act must also be coupled
with a conscious release of the other muscles in your body.
It takes concentration, and you have to apply it in small
increments. After you breathe in and sustain the outward
pressure down below, relax the chest area. This probably
sounds a little odd. "Is my chest tense?" In a sense, it
is likely to be, because most players are accustomed to
expanding their chest in order to take in the maximum
amount of air. Once you've taken in your full air ca-
pacity, the chest can be relaxed. And once the chest
is relaxed, you can devote your mental concentration to
sustaining the downward and outward pressure of the dia-
phragm. Don't pay attention to what your embouchure
feels like. Don't think about your fingers. Direct all
of your energy toward relaxing all other parts of your
body while pressing downward and outward with the dia-
phragm.
Tinker with it. Experiment with the sensations. The hu-
man body is one of the most fantastic and efficient data-
gathering machines in the universe. Develop intuition
about what feels different when you relax a body part
while sustaining continuous tension in the diaphragm.
Whatever you're feeling under these circumstances, it's
likely to be the right feeling and you should seek to
replicate and develop it.
Experiment with the tension-grabbing property of the
diaphragm in other areas of your life. I find that when
I'm on the road and I see a big dip up ahead (no silly
jokes please), but I can't slow my car down quickly
enough, I get tense with the anticipation of my car
jumping, bouncing, and rocking over that dip. Just
as I approach it, I consciously press downward and
outward with my diaphragm muscles, and consciously
release the tension elsewhere in my body. As expect-
ed, I bump & bounce over that dip without the internal
spasms that I usually experience in such a situation,
knowing that my shocks are screaming bloody murder.
'Anybody ever ride on one of those free-fall amusement
park rides? You sit in a compartment, they take you
300 vertical feet into the air, and then they just drop
you until you slide down the rail and end up looking up
at the sky. The thrill you experience is partially a
result of the enormous physical tension you feel, borne
of a fear of falling and/or heights. The next time you're
on one of those hellish rides, breathe in, press downward
and outward continuously with your diaphragm, and relax the
rest of your body. Let all of the tension reside down there
in your abdomen, and see what kind of ride it then turns out
to be.
It's a long editorial, I know. I felt the urge to
wax philosophical in light of the recent posts
about endurance and tongue speed and finger dex-
terity and so forth. If people don't recognize
their built-in ability to consciously invoke physical
relaxation, they're doomed to years of battle be-
tween their conscious desire to improve, and
their body's natural tendency to confound those
efforts by spreading tension into whatever muscle
group is being used at the time. So, before you
issue forth with that set of long tones, before you
tick away on the Kell staccato studies or tackle
that nasty part in Sorcerer's Apprentice, consider
first the question: Do you know how to relax your
body?
After you're able to answer that question in the
affirmative, you are poised to move forward in
whatever area is at issue - with the greatest
possible efficiency and productivity of which
you, your brain, and your body are capable,
together.
Best of luck!
-- Neil
LookSmart @-----.
http://www.looksmart.com
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