Here's a concept I've been wrestling with for a while:

static energy destroys music

 

Music is Motion. Music is flow. It delineates TIME and describes the passage of time in a most miraculous way. Anything that disrupts flow is counter to our musical aims.

Air flows. Tone flows. Phrases flow. Movements flow. Dynamics flow.

Problems we encounter while making good "quality of motion" in our music are often the result of static energy. Here are a few examples:

1) When playing "loud" (I much prefer "strong" when I think Forte), do you ever feel the sound get strained, brittle, bright? Check the chest. I'll bet it's very rigid and still on the exhale; almost frozen in place.

2) Does your sound wobble when playing soft and high. Again, check the chest? Then check the lips.....rock hard, frozen, tensed.

3) Do you have difficulty playing fast lips slurs or a smooth, easy legato? Lips and jaw feel tight, I would guess.

4) Do you have difficulty making musical LINE happen? Think of the Mozart Requiem: Does it flow through notes or slot from note to note? Static. Vertical thinking. Note, then note, then note, then note, etc.

 

Physically and mentally, we must loosen the bonds and allow our bodies and minds to adapt to the flow of the music. The quality of our music is directly related to the quality of motion we invoke. We cannot create good motion when the body and mind are locked, frozen, rigid, and stiff.

We can use the mind-body connection to our advantage. If we loosen the body, the mind will follow. But how? Here are some ideas for you:

1) Think in cycles. The universe operates in cycles. Time passes in cycles. Never ceasing, never pausing, always moving round and round. Climb aboard the cycles you sense in the music. Don't pause to dwell. Stay always with the moment, free to progress through time and move ahead. No static energy.

2) Breathe in cycles. Practice this every day before you play a single note. Breathe in. Easy. Steady. Feel the body expand, don't MAKE it expand. Then blow out. Easy. Steady. Feel the body contract, don't MAKE it contract. Over and over do this, sensing the easy cycle and easy flow. Expand, contract.......over and over. No static energy.

3) Practice "strong" playing every day. Sense the air bag filling up, then allow it to compress from every direction as the air flows through the buzzing lips. Don't just contract from the belly. Feel a SPHERE of air inside you and wrap you're entire body around that sphere as you blow. The only point of resistance is at the LIPS. Not in the throat, not in the tongue, not in the mind. Get the air forward in your mouth and feel it pass through the lips. Expand with the inhale, CONTRACT on the exhale. Don't lock the body in place with a stationary stance or stiff posture of any sort. Watch great performers: their bodies are free to move and they appear relaxed. That's because they ARE free to move and they ARE relaxed. No static energy.

4) When playing soft and high, take a tiny sip of air on the inhale. Air under pressure is STATIC air, until it finds a way to burst out of its shell. Static air is death to a brass player. So, if only a tiny amount of air will be passing through the lips, we don't need an enormous amount of air when playing soft and high, right? Too much air will cause a static back pressure and will be seeking a way to burst. This is not conducive to a good sound, no matter how many hours you spend trying to control it. Easy breath. Easy blow. And just as much strength in the embouchure as needed, no more. "Strength" is static. Holding still and rigid, staying tight, is not going to produce a nice tone. Feeling malleable, gooey, and filled with flow will allow for good sounds. No static energy.

5) Practice lip slurs just a bit faster than you can do them cleanly. Use the metronome and stay just at the edge of control. Eventually, you should develop a sensation that the lips are very rubbery, very loose. Able to move on the rim, not locked in place. You want them always to feel this way. Through rubbery lips passes steady air flow. The air will support your sound, not the lips. The air must be moving, the lips must be moving. Everything must MOVE. No static energy anywhere in the body.

 

On a larger, more esoteric plane of thought, static energy is really every human beings enemy. Static energy is indicative of the fight-or-flight syndrome. Once a life preserver (when tigers were likely to eat us), it now can be a life disabler. This is seen often as stage-fright, by the way. An undue response to a perceived threat to life. At one time, a very handy response indeed, but perhaps not when we play, eh? If a tiger were about to eat you, tensing up and lashing out (or running away quickly) might be the best way to handle the situation. When you're about to play a Sonata, I don't believe the situation is quite so severe. In all but the most dire circumstances, we modern people don't need the fight-or-flight responses. It is an evolutionary leftover from a bygone era when life really was a difficult and dangerous proposition. We can appreciate that aspect of our heritage and lineage without allowing it to cripple our lives. An awareness of this condition, in fact, can serve the humanist in you and make your music that much more powerful to your listeners. Human beings can empathize, after all.

Music is a very powerful representation of life itself. Tension and release is all throughout our music. It derives from the earliest attempts to portray the hunt, the chase, and all other aspects of daily survival. Tension and release is the key to good phrasing, because good phrases must necessarily be representative. Otherwise, we don't communicate to our listeners. It's the moment of release after mounting tension that makes you sigh to Beethoven. It's growing stress and tension that makes you squirm with Mahler. Shostakovich. Mozart. It's the way in which the masters control tension and its appeasement that makes them masterful.

But remember this: it is NOT tension in our bodies that will convey tension in the music. Tense music still has flow. Flow is anti-static. The tension is derived through motion. Find another way to introduce tension-release to your phrases other then locking up the body. Find a healthier, more free, more musical means to communicate. Great tone, great pitch, great shapes........but stay loose, even as the music feels "tight" and "tense".

Be representative. Create good quality of motion. Avoid static.