Klarinet Archive - Posting 000543.txt from 2000/02

From: alevin@-----. Levin)
Subj: Re: [kl] Flexibility/Relaxation and the Diaphragm
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 12:32:53 -0500

Neil:

I'm not one to get excited, but:

Wow! Great analysis! A+ with a bullet! To be saved for future reference!

Thank you.

Allen

At 07:01 PM 2/11/00 -0800, you wrote:
>--- klar-ANN-ette H Satterfield <klarann@-----.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:42:41 -0500 alevin@-----. Levin)
>> writes:
>
>> > Flexibility is only a prerequisite component. Good breathing is at
>> > least as important. (My wife teaches voice and voice therapy. She
>> > was surprised to learn that wind players - in general - must breathe
>> > exactly as good singers who wish to preserve their voices.)
>
>> Also i strongly agree here. but i think not-extra-tense is a prerequi-
>> site to good breathing. then good breathing aids the readiness.
>
>Neil's opinion:
>
>I think these thoughts are dancing around the main point, which I per-
>ceive to be: proper breathing is the most important fundamental skill
>that a clarinet player can master. It doesn't happen overnight, but
>it is a prerequisite to optimum functionality of all other physical
>mechanisms involved in playing the clarinet. It is via a well-devel-
>oped use of the diaphragm that a player is able to achieve consummate
>relaxation, followed by consummate technical mastery of the instrument.
>
>The goal of the developing player is to achieve a conditioned state of
>physical relaxation while playing, where no voluntary muscle in the en-
>tire body carries any degree of involuntary tension. I may be getting
>a little purist here, but I'll go out on a limb and say that even the
>principal players in our country's major orchestras are not playing at
>their full potential -- depite their obvious level of accomplishment --
>if they are not able, on command, to consciously invoke physical relax-
>ation when they perform. Other people have other techniques -- yoga,
>Alexander, drugs, whatever -- but for myself and many of the finer play-
>ers I've known, being able to achieve this on-call physical relaxation
>starts with the diaphragm.
>
>In simple terms, the "arrival" point is when there is only one place
>in the entire body that carries any degree of tension while playing:
>the diaphragm. All other voluntary muscles involved in tone produc-
>tion and manipulation are in a steady state of relaxation, 100% of
>their functionality available to perform at peak efficiency. And
>those muscles that are *not* directly involved in tone production
>and manipulation -- the quadriceps, the pectorals, the shoulders,
>etc. -- are *also* free of tension while playing. This latter
>point is especially important, because residual tension in the
>legs or arms or shoulders travels as well to those muscles needed
>to play the clarinet: the tongue, the whole network of intertwined
>muscles in the face, the fingers, the throat. Thus, it is vital
>that a technique be used which can deal with tension in all of
>these areas simultaneously, and reliably.
>
>We've all been harped on by our teachers: "Breathe from the diaphragm!
>Support from the diaphragm!" That muscular, membranous separator be-
>tween the abdomen and the chest is partially responsible for the fact
>that we can walk around all day without having to consciously think,
>"Okay, breathe in. Right, now breathe out. In again. And now out."
>And so on. It's an involuntary muscle, but we adapt it for voluntary
>use when we play the clarinet. In effect, its functionality is re-
>versed for clarinet playing, because we must compel it to remain ex-
>panded, when its autonomic function is to contract as soon as it has
>reached a certain point of expansion. If you hyperflex any muscle
>in your body -- a quadricep, one of your biceps -- it is possible
>while doing this to consciously release tension that might be pre-
>sent in any of the other muscles. The diaphram is important in this
>respect because it is the only muscle where that type of deliberate
>manipulation is beneficial to playing the clarinet. But rather than
>hold it in an artificially contracted state, its benefit arises from
>holding it in a consciously *expanded* state. The potential effect
>on tension throughout the rest of the body is the same. The addi-
>tional function, of course, is to force air out of the lungs, which
>is what it does all day long when you're not thinking about it.
>
>By manipulating the diaphragm to stay expanded against your brain's
>autonomic wishes, you pick up another handy ability beyond drawing
>tension out of your muscles: you acquire control over when, and how
>quickly, the air in your lungs is propelled out of your body. It
>also determines how much air you take in with a given inhalation.
>In order to fully capitalize on this fact, it is critical that the
>lungs be expanded with air at the same rate that the diaphragm is
>being expanded downward and outward. This is why your teacher keeps
>telling you to expand and support from the diaphragm. If part of your
>breathing technique involves inhaling from the chest before your dia-
>phragm has fully expanded, you sacrifice the total volume that your
>lungs are capable of containing, because the diaphragm is already
>partially expanded before air pours into your lungs, and the bottom
>portion of your lungs does not fill with air.
>
>Being able to fully utilize the volume capacity of your lungs suggests
>another, somewhat common sense, benefit. We all know intuitively what
>it is. Our friends, colleagues, parents, supervisors, etc. have all
>said it to us at one point or another in our lives, especially when
>we were particularly upset, excited, or agitated in some manner, "Calm
>down! Take a deep breath!" There are few things that can induce ten-
>sion more quickly than being short of oxygen, for obvious reasons.
>Ironically, our brain doesn't observe any difference between suffo-
>cation vs. running out of air during that pesky long passage in Rach-
>maninov Symphony No. 2 (and sometimes *we* don't see the difference
>either -- it certainly *feels* the same!). In both cases, the brain
>sounds "red alert" and the panic reflex takes effect. So...taking
>two gut-stretching lungfulls of air also sends a fresh load of oxy-
>genated blood to the brain, effectively saying, "Relaaaax, my brain.
>Plenty 'o oxygen coming in. Nothing to worry about..." See? The
>brain makes no more distinction about why the oxygen is coming in
>than it does about why you might not be getting as much as it thinks
>is necessary to continue functioning. The effect is the same: phys-
>ical tension is released when oxygenated blood is received.
>
>If you're getting the impression that a lot of playing the clarinet
>involves messing around with the way our body was originally wired
>to function, that's where I'm going with this little extemporaneous
>dissertation. Mind you, these are just my thoughts, based on obser-
>vations I've made about my own body over the last 20 years of play-
>ing the clarinet. There are bound to be differing opinions and con-
>cepts on the matter. For myself, I discovered that using the dia-
>phragm to its full beneficial effect -- enabling the release of
>muscular tension, enabling full and conscious control of when and
>how much air is released from the lungs, and enabling the brain to
>release additional tension via the influx of oxygenated blood --
>cleared the way for all other areas and elements of my technique
>to be developed to their fullest possible potential. I was able
>to walk into any rehearsal or performance situation with the un-
>shakable knowledge that I could consciously invoke physical relax-
>ation and perform at my best every time. Tension is a player's
>worst enemy. It inhibits our freedom to perform at any given mo-
>ment, and stunts the rate at which we grow technically on the in-
>strument in the long run. And for clarinetists (and vocalists,
>flutists, oboists, bassoonists, and all the other wind instrument-
>alists) our best friend in these situations is the diaphragm.
>
>Know your diaphragm. Love your diaphragm. Use your diaphragm,
>and reap the benefits of both peak performance and accelerated
>musical growth through the elimination of physical tension.
>
>-- Neil the long-winded
> (pun fully intended)
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
>http://im.yahoo.com
>
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