Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2005-05-21 17:18
As Robert Moody has just anticipated, I think that much of the difficulty of this subject is to do with the two different senses of the word 'support'. In fact, that's the next little bit of what I want to post.
If I say: I'm going to attack that idea, will you support me? then I expect
what you say or do to be something like what I say or do -- and at least, to be
acting in the same direction as what I say or do.
On the other hand, if I want to write something beautifully with a pen, I may rest my hand on a desk, which I use as a 'support'. Here, the effect of the desk, as support, is to 'push back' on my hand -- in the *opposite* direction to my push of the pen against the paper.
It is in this second sense that the use of the diaphragm 'supports' our abdominal muscles in our blowing of the instrument. And it's the only possible sense, because the diaphragm, as a muscle, can only act downwards, ie *against* the abdominal muscles.
Tony
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