Muscles: working from the zero point - Simon Fischer

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Muscles: working from the zero point Key point: Spreading the fingers is one thing; tightening is another. They are two separate factors. After only a short time of playing double stops with a tight hand, when we first attempt them as beginners, we form an association between tension and double stops and forever afterwards expect that feeling. Instead, picture the hand remaining soft, flexible and free as you widen it. Then find this feeling of letting go, releasing and remaining free as you widen the fingers. It is perfectly possible to widen the hand a long way and remain soft and free at the same time. You just have to break the association with tension, and begin to expect softness and freedom rather than contraction and hardness. Fig. 102 (a) Release every muscle in the hand [xxx] Lengthening and widening Lengthening the back and neck (b)Widening the fingers as though playing a minor third Since muscles can only contract, undoing bad habits of posture usually involves lengthening the muscles, as well as finding the middle point where a muscle is neither contracted nor stretched. Suppose you notice in the mirror that your shoulders seem too rounded (Fig. 103a). The top of the chest is pulled down; notice the chin jutting out and the back of the head pulled down. So, using the muscles around your shoulder blades, you pull your shoulders back, leaving everything else as it was before (Fig. 103b). Of course if you were to do this it would cause great strain. The position in the photograph is exaggerated to illustrate the point; but many people do an imperceptible amount of pulling back, which creates great tension. Instead, the answer to the rounded shoulders is to lengthen the back (Fig. 103c). The shoulders then naturally want to ease back into their correct position. Then, because the spine is more upright, the head naturally finds a position of balance where it can just sit on top of the spine. Key point: If you pull down in the upper chest, your head is right to want to go into the position shown in Fig. 103b, since that is actually ‘correct’ for the head, given the position of the back. If the back lengthens, and finds more of an upright position of balance, the best position of balance for the head naturally changes too. (a) Pulling down, rounded shoulders, head back and down Fig. 103 (a) Pulling down [xxx] (b) Same plus pulling back shoulders (b) Pulling the shoulders back does not help [xxx] (c) Description text (c) The shoulders naturally ease back when you lengthen and widen [xxx] [v5.1 12/06/2010 2:10 PM] Lesson 7: Avoiding aches and pains 193
Lengthening and widening 194 1 See also Localising: the ultimate key to mastery, page 219 Image of the ladder A good image to illustrate the ease of keeping your head upright, when it is sitting in a state of balance, compared with having to hold it in place when it is not, is of supporting a long ladder with your hands. The ladder is not leaning against anything, but is standing vertically on its end, supported only by the ground and your hands. If the ladder is standing upright in a state of balance, it requires only the smallest amount of effort from you to keep it there. You give it the lightest push or pull to correct it, as it moves fractionally from side to side across the central balance point, but otherwise the ladder basically supports itself. Now imagine that the ladder begins to lean much further away from the balance point. Now you have to push or pull with a lot of strength to prevent it from falling. The further from the balance point the ladder leans, the greater the effort to keep it from falling to the ground. Similarly, if your head sits on top of your spine in a state of balance, the muscles have little work to do to keep it there (Fig. 103c). But if your head is not sitting freely in a state of balance you need to ‘hold it on top of your spine’, and work the muscles in your neck and shoulders very hard to keep your head there. Fig. 103a shows the classic position of the head, pulling ‘back-and-down’ and sticking the chin out. Not pulling down: lengthening the back and raising the chest ‘Pulling down’ means contracting the muscles in the front of the body so that the upper chest is lowered in the direction of the stomach (Fig. 104a). Pulling down in the upper chest is one of the occupational hazards of playing the violin or viola. If you work on a building site, an occupational hazard is that something may fall on your head; so wearing a hard hat is essential. Playing the violin, you have to pay constant attention to lengthening the back and raising the chest. Fig 104 (a) Lengthening the back and raising the chest [xxx] (b) Pulling down[xxx] The tell-tale sign is a hump or curve at the top of the back (Fig. 104b). This posture leads to a catalogue of problems in the back and in the working of the arms and hands, and then in the fingers. It is all-too-easy to link bowings and left hand actions (and musical feelings), with a simultaneous pulling-down, so that the scroll always visibly lowers whenever a particular note or phrase is played. When you cut the link between these actions, so that (say) playing a strong accent with the bow does not automatically trigger shortening the muscles in the front of the body, an extraordinary new sense of economy, freedom, control, focus and stature immediately enters the overall playing. 1 Go up to go up; go up to go down As he watched a violinist playing some large string crossings, and pulling down as she did so, the Alexander teacher Walter Carrington observed: ‘You have to go up to go up, and go up to go down!’ Lesson 7: Avoiding aches and pains [12/06/2010 2:10 PM v5.1]
Page 1 and 2: Muscles: working from the zero poin
Page 3 and 4: Muscles: working from the zero poin
Page 5: Muscles: working from the zero poin

Muscles: working from the zero point - Simon Fischer

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?