Klarinet Archive - Posting 000720.txt from 2000/11

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Feedback please. Article: Breathing/Relaxation.
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 14:22:09 -0500

I received an email question recently from somebody who was having
difficulty sustaining breath support while playing. In my attempt to
address their question, I found myself several hours later in the middle
of a lengthy explication on the subject of breathing technique and phy-
sical relaxation. I decided to go ahead and finish that essay, and invite
all of you to read it and make comments, as well as ask questions. I
cite no references in this essay, because my only source for the infor-
mation is my own experience as a player. Thus, all statements are
tacitly preceded by the caveat, “In my opinion…”

> My problem is: my long tones last 15 seconds (and the
> last seconds my body became so stiff)

I assume that you wish to extend the length of time that you
can play a passage before you need to take a breath. Your sen-
tence above, especially the portion in parentheses, reveals a
sort of ‘secret’ about clarinet playing that many players never
actually recognize. I need to say a few more things before I
discuss the secret.

The most difficult and important obstacle that a clarinet player
must solve while developing their technique does not pertain to
the fingers, or the tongue, or the embouchure -- although each of
these areas is greatly affected by the obstacle in question. I'm
talking about physical tension. In your sentence above, you write,
"...and in the last seconds my body becomes stiff." When your body
becomes stiff, your muscles contract, you grip the instrument more
tightly than normal, and nothing seems to work quite properly any
more. The primary reason that most clarinetists never reach their
full technical potential on the instrument is that they never devel-
op the ability to invoke and sustain physical relaxation on command.
If you can develop the ability to relax your muscles and allow them to
*remain* relaxed while you play, all other difficulties (embouchure,
air, tongue, fingers, etc.) become much easier to resolve and refine.
With the presence of physical tension, you will never reach the point
where playing the clarinet is effortless. It is my philosophy that
all players should strive for the point where playing the clarinet
is a relaxing, effortless activity. You will meet very few clarinet
players who claim to have achieved this -- even among profession-
als.

Achieving excellence on the clarinet largely involves "getting out
of your own way." Rather than being an issue of undeveloped muscle
memory and inadequately developed technique (things that are very
easily rectified), much of what keeps people from becoming better
players is the interference of negative habits and techniques that
already exist when they play. Many of these problems are completely
invisible to the player, which is why it's so valuable to receive
feedback from a teacher or fellow player, to point out things in your
playing of which you may not be consciously aware. The main point:
most of these bad habits and poor techniques arise in an unconscious
attempt to compensate for muscles that are too tense to operate ef-
fectively. Eliminate the tension, and the path is cleared for those
muscles to be reconditioned to operate to their optimum capacity and
effect. I am convinced that if the technique for conscious physical
relaxation were emphasized with equal consistency as embouchure,
finger, and tongue exercises, the beginning player would develop
twice as quickly as is typically the case.

Okay, so what's the 'secret'? You alluded to part of it in your very
first sentence. You indicated that, as you exhausted your air supply,
your body became stiff and tense. This is a conditioned reflex, not an
autonomic function of the body. It is possible to replace this reflex
with a habit that enables you to remain relaxed as you play. And, quite
naturally, once the new positive reflex is in place, you will discover
that you've also succeeded in extending the length of time that you can
play without needing to take a breath -- your original goal. But this
is merely one of dozens of technical doors which will open wider for
you as a result of avoiding physical tension. Potential will rise
dramatically in all areas of technique, from the embouchure to the
tongue to the fingers, and everywhere else. Intuitively, you might
think that running out of air is what originally caused you to become
physically tense. But there is a conceptual layer one level beneath:
had you been genuinely relaxed before you released the original breath,
you would not have run out of air nearly as quickly in the first place,
nor would you have experienced the debilitating physical tension that
you subsequently described.

Generating physical relaxation or, more accurately, conditioning
your body such that tension-inducing reflexes no longer occur, is
a three-part process. And yes, the diaphragm and abdominal muscles
are naturally part of it -- Part 1. Parts 2 and 3 deal more (al-
though not exclusively) with psychology and conceptual understand-
ing than with direct physical action.

As has been understood for some time, the diaphragm is an involun-
tary muscle which expands as part of the body's autonomic breathing
function. When you're not thinking about how to breathe, your brain
does it for you by automatically expanding the diaphragm outward,
which (somehow) creates a vacuum in your lungs and draws air inward.
When the brain senses that enough oxygen has been received, it relaxes
the diaphragm and lets the abdominal muscles push the abdomen back
into a normal state of rest. This causes the air in the lungs to be
expelled, and the process is repeated, ad infinitum (we wish).

Now we get to the real substance of the issue. Playing the clarinet
is not an autonomic function (although people like Karl Leister make
you wonder sometimes), and the act of breathing is a conscious one
in this case. This is actually to our advantage -- it would be a
serious problem if we could not assume manual control of our breath-
ing process on command. Whether conscious or autonomic, it is only
when the diaphragm is relaxed that the abdominal muscles will automat-
ically compress the abdomen back into a state of rest, expelling the
air from the lungs in the process. It stands to reason, then, that
if we can somehow prevent the diaphragm from relaxing (when the lungs
have been filled with air), the abdominal muscles will not contract,
and the air will not be forced out of the lungs nearly as quickly as
when we breathe unconsciously. In fact, if the diaphragm is forced
to remain in a perpetually expanded state, the air in the lungs will
never be expelled at all. We're shooting for something a little less
extreme than this, but not by very much. Here's part 1 of the re-
laxation technique, which is inextricably linked to how we breathe
when playing the clarinet, as well as to what we do with our bodies
before and after the air has been inhaled. Mind you, this is only a
third of the prescription, and is not meant to be applied in isolation.
You must apply parts 1, 2, and 3 together in order to get the full ef-
fect of the technique:

Part 1
------

1. WithOUT the clarinet in hand, inhale deeply by expanding first
from the diaphragm area, such that the abdomen is fully extended.
When teaching this technique to fellow undergraduate students, I
often found myself using the phrase, "Make yourself look fat."
When it didn't get chuckles, the idea seemed to produce the
correct effect.

Now let me repeat a phrase from a previous paragraph:

"If the diaphragm is forced to remain in a perpetually expanded
state, the air in the lungs will never be expelled."

Once you've experienced this concept in application, and actually
understand it viscerally, it's a short step forward to recognize
its power when applied to clarinet technique. If the diaphragm is
forced to remain in an ALMOST completely expanded state while play-
ing clarinet, you suddenly achieve enormous control over how much
-- and how quickly -- the air is expelled from the lungs.

2. Apply the above breathing instructions in the context of taking a
breath, for the purpose of producing a tone on the clarinet. However:
do not relax the diaphragm when you begin to release the air across
the reed and into the mouthpiece. Continue to "make yourself look
fat". Clearly, according to my own description, the diaphragm must
relax at least a tiny bit in order for the abdominal muscles to push
the air out of the lungs. The power of this technique is in the know-
ledge that you possess total control over how quickly those abdominal
muscles will be allowed to contract, based entirely on how much you
decide to relax the diaphragm. Remember, the abdominal muscles will
only contract and expel the air to the degree to which you allow the
diaphragm to relax.

3. 1 & 2 above may remain opaque or nebulous in terms of practicality
until Parts 2 and 3 below are applied in conjunction.

Part 2:
------

You will remember that the early part of this essay focused heavily
on the effects of physical tension relative to clarinet technique. I
promised that I would provide a means for consciously invoking physical
relaxation on command and, in fact, I already have. Part 1 (above) is
that technique, albeit incomplete. Here's the rest:

1. Physical tension is non-discriminatory. It has no preference relative to
where it ultimately resides in the body, and only responds to muscle ac-
tions and reflexes that we cause to occur, consciously and otherwise. Most
often, it is generated subconsciously. Since it can form and manifest it-
self in any given area of the body, the only practical way to avoid it is
to develop a means for preventing it from occurring *anywhere* in the body,
from the very start.

2. There is only one place in the entire body where tension has no negative
effect on clarinet technique. This is also the only place in the body where
tension actually has a *positive* effect, because of the simultaneous con-
trol and physical relaxation that it produces everywhere *else*. Where is
this magical place? You guessed it: the diaphragm. Here's why:

a. Tension in any muscular group other than the diaphragm causes those
muscles to lose their optimal flexibility and strength, be they in the
face, the fingers, the throat, or inside the mouth (i.e.; the tongue).
This restricts your ability to consciously manipulate those muscles
to optimum effect. Your goal is optimal functionality of all muscle
groups, even the ones not directly involved in playing the clarinet,
unrestricted by any involuntary contractive impulses and, simulta-
neously, facilitated by relevant muscle memory reflexes that have
been developed in favor of optimal clarinet technique.

Example: finger dexterity and smoothness of technique are at their
most refined when the fingers are placed a certain very close distance
away from their corresponding tone holes and keys at all times. The
fingers do not assume this optimal distance automatically, and must be
conditioned via slow practice and repetition over time to do so. Fur-
thermore, even when the fingers have been conditioned to assume the
optimal configuration, they will not necessarily operate in the desired
smooth and facile manner that was intended. Unconscious tension in
the fingers (which may have been there from the start, or may have
traveled via the legs, to the shoulders, to the arms and hands) will
confound any advantage that has been created via optimally programmed
muscle memory. When tension is introduced into a given muscle group,
muscle memory does not work as well as intended. Whether the tension
was in the fingers from the start, or whether it started elsewhere and
traveled to the fingers, all of your hard work at conditioning the fing-
ers to be poised close to the instrument will never come to full frui-
tion until you simultaneously develop a reflex to prevent tension from
entering those wonderfully conditioned muscles.

Another example: a light and agile tongue – one that can move quickly
and also effortlessly effect the full range of articulation styles – must
be conditioned to poise itself very close to the tip of the reed at all
times. Much like with the fingers, optimal functionality of the tongue
involves very fine muscular motion within a very narrowly defined range
of distance. It is this fine muscle control – whichever area of clarinet
technique is being discussed – that is confounded by unwanted physical
tension, causing the muscle to work against the memory which has been so
meticulously conditioned into it.

b. Tension will travel from one muscle group to another in response to
conditioned reflexes.

c. Since control of the diaphragm is an issue of consciously forcing it
to remain expanded outward (in order to manipulate the volume and
speed of air release,) constant muscular force is required with the
diaphragm.

d. (Following from b. and c.) When constant muscular force is applied
to keeping the diaphragm expanded, it is possible to release all
superfluous muscular force being applied everywhere else (i.e.; fing-
ers, tongue, throat, embouchure). This is key, per the examples pro-
vided above, since the absence of tension enables positively condi-
tioned reflexes to work in an optimal fashion.

3. Muscular tension in any muscle group *beyond* the fingers, face, throat,
and tongue (e.g.; the shoulders, the quadriceps, the biceps, the neck, etc.)
will unavoidably travel to one of these aforementioned vital muscle groups
and confound optimal functionality -- unless a mechanism is engaged that
will prevent this tension from being generated anywhere in the first place.
Usage of the diaphragm, as described in Part 1, is the mechanism in question.

a. Again: the diaphragm is the only muscle (it’s a muscular membrane)
that has a positive effect on clarinet playing when compelled to re-
main in a state of flexion. When air is inhaled, and the diaphragm
is consciously expanded and held in place, all other muscle groups
in the body are free to relax and release whatever flexion may exist
prior to taking in the breath of air. For the purpose of clarinet
playing, those muscles should relax and release *before* the dia-
phragm is expanded and the air inhaled into the lungs. Start by
allowing all muscles to relax first, *then* simultaneously expand
the diaphragm and inhale.

Part III
--------

Most players are so accustomed to the presence of physical tension throughout
Their bodies that it feels awkward and unsettling to play without it. Tension
provides an unproductive psychological anchor to which many players cling,
thinking that without this counter-productive muscular resistance, they have
no means to manipulate those muscles when playing. Only when playing has
been experienced without this tension will the power of fine muscular control
and motion become fully accessible.* Then it becomes a matter of developing
the muscles such that *only* that fine type of control is ever used – never to
return to the coarse and exaggerated motion which characterized the originally
tension-ridden playing. Once the floating sensation of playing without tension
is experienced and identified, it becomes a matter of invoking that sensation
every time you play, in exactly the same manner that you condition certain
muscles to operate within a narrow range of physical distance. How?
Practice, of course.

* (This “power” takes different forms, depending on the clarinet technique in
question. In the embouchure, for example, it takes the form of delicate yet
firm support of the mouthpiece and reed, using only the lips in an “ooh”
configuration, as if sucking on a drinking straw, except that you are blow-
ing. No jaw motion. Manipulations of tone quality, of intonation, of reed
response – all occur via infinitesimal muscular adjustments in the embou-
chure, imperceptible to the naked eye, yet fully perceptible and control-
able by the player, in conjunction with limitless control of the air
stream via the diaphragm.)

The following statements use similar language, but each is a separate concept
in the sequence of learning how to play without physical tension, ultimately
effecting optimum functionality in all areas of clarinet technique toward ef-
fortless playing. Maxim: if you find something difficult about playing the
clarinet, look first to identify any sources of tension. Address the tension
first, then move forward with the conditioning of those muscles involved in
making that area of performance an effortless one.

1. After learning how to manipulate air flow via an expanded diaphragm,
you must practice *maintaining* the diaphragm in an expanded state at
all times while playing, systemically focusing all physical tension in
that single area of the body, thereby allowing all other muscles to relax.

2. After learning how to maintain the diaphragm in an extended state while
playing, you must practice releasing the tension and flexion in all other
muscles *before* invoking the diaphragm technique in the first place.
Let the body relax as you sit or stand. From this state of rest, breathe
in and expand the diaphragm.

3. After learning how to relax all other muscles prior to inhaling, you must
practice maintaining that relaxation after releasing the air into the instru-
ment, which involves focusing your mental attention simultaneously on (1) the
physical sensation of maintaining a continuously expanded diaphragm and (2)
the physical sensation of the fact that all other muscles are still free of
tension while you play.

4. After learning how to begin and continue playing with relaxed muscles,
where the diaphragm is the only muscle in the body that is actively and
consciously flexed at all times, you are at liberty to develop maximum
facility of fine muscular motion in all areas of clarinet technique, which
will result in the realization of your maximum potential as a clarinetist.

a. Optimum facility of fine muscular motion is easy to develop, but it
takes time and discipline. It first involves constant vigilance to en-
sure that tension never creeps back into the body, something that can
be assured by maintaining the diaphragm in its extended state.

b. Further definition of what constitutes proper development of fine
muscular control and motion requires face-to-face guidance, which
is plainly beyond the scope of this essay.

----------------------------------

This is about as much as I can say on the subject of breathing technique
and physical relaxation without feedback from readers, i.e.; comments and
questions relative to the content of this essay. I will make one last obser-
vation:

Have you ever been excited or upset or agitated, and somebody said to you,
“Calm down. Take a deep breath.”? If you heeded their advice, you may
have noticed that the act of taking a deep breath did indeed have a calming
effect on your state-of-mind and body. This is an issue I did not formally
discuss in the above essay, yet it is useful to recognize it as a facilitat-
ing by-product of proper breathing technique on the clarinet. The brain
craves oxygen at all times. When the brain senses that it is not receiving
enough oxygenated blood, it will send signals to the rest of the body and
quickly force you to address the issue. That’s what yawning is all about.
When you’re physically fatigued, the body’s autonomic breathing function is
slightly repressed, and you take in less oxygen than the brain considers
acceptable. The brain triggers the yawn reflex in this case, in effect forc-
ing you to compensate for the fact that you’re not breathing as deeply as
usual.

This wraps nicely around to the person’s question which prompted the
entire essay above. A person wrote to me, “My problem is: my long tones
last 15 seconds (and in the last seconds my body becomes stiff).” That
stiffness – the physical tension that arises as we run out of air while play-
ing – is an autonomic reflex of the brain, which “thinks” that it is being
denied the oxygen it requires to function. Relaxing the muscles before
playing, then breathing deeply, establishes a foundation of relaxation upon
which the playing you’re going to do may be optimally constructed. The
brain receives a fresh dose of oxygenated blood, prompting it to allow your
body’s muscles to *stay* relaxed while you use your air to generate a tone
on the clarinet. Via the diaphragm, you draw all tension away from the
body’s muscles, centering it in the abdominal region, allowing you to
sustain physical relaxation in all other muscle locations, even as you
reach the point of fully exhausting that original intake of air. Hence,
all areas of technique will remain consistent to the end of the musical
phrase. Your tone will not go thin or sharp, your fingers will not begin
to slow down and grip the instrument more tightly, your embouchure
will not pinch down on the reed as if in an attempt to squeeze more
oxygen out of it for consumption by the brain. And when you reach
the end of the air supply for that phrase, you simply take in more air,
continuing to use the expanded diaphragm technique to manage and
manipulate air flow and physical relaxation. When these things are
working well together, it’s natural that the mind begins to relax as
well. This is when it becomes possible to achieve effortless playing
of the clarinet.

-- Neil

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