This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Lute Technique, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the accurate lute technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
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IT IS TOO HARD TO MAINTAIN GREAT PLAYING, SO IT IS EASIER TO NOT ATTEMPT TO BECOME AN EXTRAORDINARY LUTENIST. Is this true? I believe that if lute players look deeply at their beliefs about being great players, this is the one that would be at the top of the list for not striving to be their best.
It is a lie, but it is an extraordinarily powerful self-fulfilling lie. What I mean, is that if it is running your performing life, then it is running your whole life. This means you will probably not let yourself be great at anything.
There is an exception to being great at anything. You may find a way to allow yourself to be a great writer or painter. These are activities that have completion. But as a performing lutenist, every time you perform for yourself and/or someone else, it can be an excruciating test of constantly proving how good you are.
Is there a way around this, so that letting yourself be a wonderful lute player is easier than not? YES!
What has to happen? You have to first bring to consciousness that you believe it is intolerably hard to sustain great lute playing once you’ve achieved it. You have to realize that probably you are projecting onto your listeners that they are pressuring you to be a consistently great lutenist.
Nobody makes us do anything! We make ourselves do everything we do and then may blame others, if we are making our lives too hard to tolerate. If you feel nonstop pressure from others to strain to sustain great lute playing, ONLY you are doing this to yourself.
So, how do you attain great lute playing and sustain great lute playing effortlessly? Try this affirmation: “It is easy for me to be a great lutenist all of the time.” What was your response to this affirmation? I bet you felt this was an incredibly huge lie.
What if you wrote and said this to yourself until you believed it? It is possible. But are you willing to give up your sacrosanct belief that to sustain greatness on the lute is unbelievably exhausting? If you are willing to repeat this affirmation consistently enough, and if you are willing to entertain the possibility that sustaining great lute playing over the years is easy, then you will eventually accept this truth.
One final piece to the psychological aspect of great lute playing, you may have to do some psychotherapy to uncover and release the reasons why you may want to hold onto great lute playing as too hard.
What I just described is the psychological aspect of attaining great lute playing. What about the physical component of great lute playing sustained effortlessly? If you are willing to stop making the great lute playing too hard to sustain psychologically, then you may as well go all of the way, and look at what physically works and doesn’t work in your lute technique and posture at the instrument.
If you only get out of your way psychologically and accept being a great lutenist can be easy to allow day in and day out, then you do NOT want a lute technique that proves you’re wrong.
What do I mean? If your lute technique isn’t based on letting go of what doesn’t work physically, which means it makes playing the greatest lute repertoire unnecessarily hard, then you are putting yourself in a double bind. This double bind means that if you know that your playing doesn’t have to be a struggle to do and sustain, and if your technique will NOT allow this to happen, then your ego gets to win, and you may not let yourself play wonderfully day in and day out.
Then you get to say, “I was right. It is too hard to be a wonderful lute player consistently.” There is only one problem with this. It is a lie. You cannot live by a lie and not hurt. So, I ask you to entertain the possibility that great lute playing can be easy to allow day to day to day to day.
One final point: If you allow yourself to become and be a great lutenist without pain and strain and struggle, then the final piece that makes this easy is that you always play for yourself and others as a gift, as an offering of love.
