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Support

Author: Alexis
Date: 2007-02-24 02:28

Hi

I have a theory about support that I would like some feedback on.

I do not view support as being a direct application of stomach muscles to give a desired tonal result. I see it in the contrary manner. To my mind, loud and soft, low and high notes require different amounts air to speak clearly.

Now my knowledge of anatomy is extremely shaky, but I'm going to give this a shot. In normal breathing, the diaphragm works in an involuntary fashion, rising as you breath out and falling to an low position to allow air into the lungs. When playing a wind instrument, we want air to come in as quickly as possible, so we try and stay relaxed when we breathe in so this involuntary movement can occur without interruption.

However, it would be no good to let the same involuntary action take place on the out breath, because we'd only be able to play for a second or two. In order to slow this process, we use muscular control (not sure which muscles exactly) to stop the diaphragm from rising too prematurely. This muscular control however is not an entirely conscious undertaking. Rather, it is an indirect result of trying to maintain a constant level of air pressure. Perhaps another way of putting it, is blowing a certain amount of air at a given point. If you try blowing a small quantity of air onto the palm of your hand without varying the amount of air (i.e without blips or stops) you might be able to feel these muscles at working. (If this doesn't seem to work, try doing it with a small relaxed in-breath or just without consciously breathing in at all)

This brings me to my hypothesis. The muscular activity called 'support' is an indirect result of good control of the airstream. If a player wants better 'support' what he really needs to practice is getting the right amount/air speed of air for any given note/dynamic. This of course needs to be practiced regularly so it can become automatic. By finding this, the player automatically finds the correct amount of muscular control.

I think is slightly misguided to concentrate on the abdominal muscles that control the rising of the diaphragm as the chance of getting them to work in the same way as they do unconsciously seems unlikely.

I apologise if some of this is unclear (or with regards to anatomy, wildly inaccurate!). I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.

Cheers
Alex

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