Less is More

Often we bring more muscle tension into our playing than is needed. This is natural, as the brain’s first reaction to an exciting phrase is to get the body working hard. We tend to play exciting pieces in an excited state of mind and body.
However, a fine playing or singing technique is calm and controlled. The expert player knows how to ask his or her instrument to do the work for them, and allows the music to be exciting, without getting all excited and contracting a lot of unnecessary muscles. It may take some years to achieve this fine state of mastery. However, we have found that you can also simply ask for more ease in your practicing. How do you do it?

1. Play a phrase, or short set of phrases in your usual way.

2. Then, ask yourself to play the same phrases with “less effort.” Some times it helps to ask for half the effort, and then the next time to ask for half of that effort again.

3. The next step can be to ask your instrument, or voice, to do the work for you. Mostly we are pushing to produce something, and it can help to invite something to happen.

4. The fourth step, now that you are calmer, is play the piece in a fun way. Do you like it? Can you add a secret smile behind your eyes as you play or sing? A smile frees the neck and face, and therefore the rest of the body. It also increases the resonance in the sound, certainly for winds, brass and voice. It often also improves the sound for other instruments as the arms and hands gain from the general freedom.

Did you notice changes in your playing or singing after each step? By doing this work, which now seems slow, you are learning new ways to approach all your learning, to make it more efficient and pleasant.

Finally, remember to allow the piece to be exciting, and not to be over excited yourself. You don’t get more for pure effort. Mastery makes things easy! If you find that a certain phrase is not working, take a step back and teach it to yourself calmly. Find out what it is that you do not yet understand about it, and then the coordination problems should disappear!