Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-09-20 16:35
John wrote:
>> How do you support more or less? Is this achieved through flexing the abdominals tighter or by pushing out more or in more? Pushing out or in....are these different muscles than the abdominals?>>
I didn't reply immediately to you about this because it's something that you can investigate for yourself, and I hoped you might do that. Here's what I find.
First, a word about taxonomy: not being a physiologist, I don't know what the standard nomenclature of these complex and inter-related muscle systems is. But regardless, in what is undoubtedly a simplification, I'm going to take 'abdominal' to refer to the muscles that bend the body around the midriff -- the ones you use in situps. I can flex those whilst continuing to stand upright, and check that in doing that they are opposed by back muscles -- as you would expect -- by feeling what happens there with my hand.
The muscle system that makes me look less fat in a bathing suit (whatever that's called), together with its opposite, seem to me to be essentially independent of the abdominal/back opposition I've just described. (I can bend and straighten my trunk whether I'm looking good or not:-) But, just from personal experience, I seem to be able to play the clarinet much better if I DON'T try to look good in that sense -- and it squares with the conventional wisdom (compare Paul Harvey's "The Clarinet Player's Bedside Book" on 'keeping your trousers up':-)
That's why in the BBoard post I tried to separate out 'blowing the instrument well' from 'playing with support', and suggested a reason why 'blowing the instrument well' probably equated to 'not pulling in'.
In reply to your:
>> How do you support more or less? Is this achieved through flexing the abdominals tighter or by pushing out more or in more?>>
...I would go back to my characterisation of 'playing with support' as 'blowing harder than you play' -- in other words, with your diaphragm (unfelt) resisting the squirty push upwards of your flexed abdominal/back system. For a given dynamic, therefore, 'more support' equates to 'greater abdominal flexion' (and also, greater unfelt diaphragm flexion).
The 'outward', 'being fatter' bit -- which I suggest has more of the quality of a 'relaxation' -- I think of separately, and try to have it be a part of my general performance demeanour both off- and on-stage. I notice that to do so often requires more of a conscious effort, and is made more difficult, if I am particularly concerned about my playing.
You later wrote:
>> I think maybe I understand the opposing muscle idea. I take it that in order to flex the abdominals we are in a sense trying to push out and pull in.....the result is muscle opposition..... Flexing?>>
So, what I wrote above doesn't amount to that.
Tony
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