Posts Tagged ‘Violin Technique’

This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Violin 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 violin 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.

WHEN YOU’VE PLAYED A SPORT OR AN INSTRUMENT FOR MANY YEARS AND HAVE BECOME VERY ACCOMPLISHED AT THE SPORT OR INSTRUMENT, AND YOU DECIDE TO MAKE CHANGES TO THE POSTURES AND TECHNIQUES YOU’VE BEEN USING, IT CAN FEEL LIKE THE OLD IS BATTLING OR EVEN SABOTAGING THE NEW.

The main difference between great posture and great technique and bad posture and bad technique, is that great posture and technique evolves your playing of the sport or instrument, helping you run or play the piano easier and easier. You experience performing with greater ease on a daily or weekly basis.

When you use poor posture and poor technique to run or play the piano, you will have lots of bad or mediocre days in the activity. There will be little to no improvement in how well you run or play the piano over the years.

As I write about practicing and using repetition to improve in a sport or musical instrument, I am taken back emotionally to when I used to practice up to 6 hours every day on the classical guitar. I was striving to become a concert guitarist. It was brutal, but I didn’t realize it at at the time. I just did what was expected of me by me and others.

I barely improved. I simply did endless practice to get pieces memorized and ready to perform in concert. I got it done and I played the concerts.

But did I improve as a guitarist? NO!

But I wasn’t even conscious that I wasn’t improving. I just kept memorizing pieces and playing concerts. Why did I not know I wasn’t improving?

Because I kept performing and getting positive reinforcement from the listeners, but I was really suffering. Why?

Because I kept relentlessly striving to get better and better, but I wasn’t. What a conflict inside of me!

There is a famous quote that says insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This is what I did on the guitar.

When I arrived in England in the early seventies to study guitar at the Royal College of Music in London, I really got into physical and emotional trouble. Why? I was surrounded by incredible guitarists, I was being made to revamp my guitar technique by the guitar teacher, and I WASN’T IMPROVING AS A GUITARIST.

So, I came back to the USA after 3 years and crashed and burned. I stopped playing guitar and got caught up in a loop of endless psychotherapy that didn’t help. Why? Because I chose poor therapists, and I wasn’t ready to heal.

Eventually, years later, I was ready to heal. I found a psychotherapist whose emotionally confrontive therapy worked for me. This allowed me to apply my extraordinary Alexander Technique training to the guitar and to do a true revamping of my guitar technique. What did this revamping look like?

IT MEANT FOR THE FIRST TIME I USED THE PRINCIPLES OF THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE AND STOPPED USING THE SAME POSTURES AND TECHNIQUES ON THE GUITAR THAT WERE ARTIFICIALLY LIMITING HOW WELL I COULD PLAY THE GUITAR.

If you are ready, it may be time to admit to yourself you’re stuck in your sport or instrument, and to go find an Alexander Technique teacher (and maybe a psychotherapist as well) to teach you how to evolve without sacrificing your body and your heart.