This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Clarinet 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 clarinet technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
WHEN YOUR POSTURE IS NOT AS GOOD AS YOUR CLARINET TECHNIQUE, THEN YOU CANNOT PLAY AS WELL AS YOU COULD WITH A POSTURE AS GOOD AS YOUR CLARINET TECHNIQUE.
Here is a very simple explanation for this. By definition, poor posture takes a whole lot more muscle to maintain than balanced posture. Balanced posture in the Alexander Technique means that you have such a gentle balanced posture going on in your body as you play the clarinet, that sitting or standing fully upright is very close to effortless.
When a clarinetist with poor posture goes to an Alexander Technique teacher who makes gentle radical changes to how the clarinetist sits or stands with the clarinet, why does it feel like a whole lot more work to sit or stand at ease with the clarinet?
A clarinetist’s posture with the clarinet is usually a long term devolution of the body getting in shape to handle poor posture. What does this mean? It means that over time, if your posture with the clarinet becomes poorer and poorer, then your musculature handles these usually gradual changes, as you become more and more off balance, by using too much muscle and you become more and more immobile.
Think about it. If, as you age and/or try to play the clarinet better and better, you hunker down and collapse your torso and tense your embouchure more and more, you are actually doing more and more muscular work to play the clarinet. So, as you get older and usually weaker, you are working harder to play the clarinet, when you should be evolving a technique and posture over the years, that makes playing the clarinet more and more effortless to sit or stand with and play.
If your posture is degrading over the years on the clarinet, and you are tensing more and more as you go further and further off balance, then your technique is going to suffer. You cannot keep the tension of your whole body’s poor posture out of your embouchure, shoulders, arms, and hands.
There is another side to this issue of posture compromising your clarinet technique. YOU CAN BE IN GOOD POSTURAL ALIGNMENT, BUT IF YOU ARE USING MORE MUSCLE THAN IS NECESSARY TO HAVE GOOD POSTURE ON THE CLARINET, YOU WILL STILL COMPROMISE YOUR CLARINET TECHNIQUE. This is core to how the Alexander Technique works with clarinet players.
Simply, if you are doing UNNECESSARY work in any part of your body as you play the clarinet, you will have a negative effect on your clarinet technique. This means the tension level will rise in your embouchure, shoulders, arms, and hands.
What if you created a balanced posture that evolved using less and less muscle on the clarinet over the years? What if there was constant flow in your body on the clarinet? What if your whole body embodied effortless clarinet technique? What if you played the clarinet as if you were getting younger and younger every year?