Contrary Motion

Sometimes musicians notice that their expressiveness is accompanied by some stiffness in moving or forgetting to breathe. Many years of work at the conservatory has lead to a discovery that most musicians are trying to “sing along” with the music by going up and down with the notes. This is very different than hearing a clear phrase in your head. And singing out loud and then playing is perfectly fine too.
This kind of singing along interferes with playing. You can tell if you are doing this when the larynx goes up and down with the phrase, or if in high notes you lift your shoulders, come up on your toes, or raise your eyebrows. By low notes, people will be seen to pull their chin down, bend their knees or make themselves shorter by folding up. This is all a natural reaction to the line of the music, but it does mean that you keep disturbing the basic balance, poise and breathing. You are increasing effort to reach or tune the notes, contracting muscles and stiffening joints, and sometimes moving more than is necessary. Luckily you can re-train this on the brain level so that your body can be free to make music the way you want to hear it! By training your reaction to the music, you can save yourself hours of practice time by halting tension patterns before they begin.
Test yourself to see if you are a “sing-along” musician:
Put your instrument down and select a test phrase. Take a phrase and sing it out loud (if you are a singer, play it on the piano) very slowly while moving your hand up and down in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION to the notes. Include all changes in pitch, small intervals and large intervals. Move your hand legato through space. Did you have trouble keeping the contrary motion of your hand going? If so, you are, like many talented people, a “sing-along” musician, expressive in the extreme, which is a good thing. However, we want the music to end up going through the instrument, and not getting stuck in you larynx.
To work on this:
Take a piece that you do not need to learn quickly for a lesson or concert. Learn it as much as you can in silence, while moving your hand smoothly in the opposite direction to the notes. When you first try this, it will take about 3 weeks of daily short practices to get it in to your brain that music and contrary motion can go together. once you can move your hand reliably in contrary motion, then you can try playing the phrase with the motion in your thoughts. It is best to begin in silence, then try alternating the motion without your instrument with playing or singing the same phrase. You may notice then that the usual effort to play high or fast or expressively falls away, which may feel odd at first, like you are not “trying hard enough.” Listen to what the results are though, and listen to the new sound.
After your first experience learning a piece this way, you can work the contrary motion in to all your pieces. Eventually, you will only need to remind yourself to not go up or down, and your playing will become possible with less effort.