How Alexander Technique Changed My Approach to Practice
During my undergraduate degree, I practiced four hours a day. I was told to do one hour of exercises, one hour of scales, and two hours of repertoire. When it was time for a recital, I fit in five hours a day.
Getting those hours in was so important to me that I went to great lengths to maintain that routine. I took summer classes so that my course load during the school year would be light enough to allow for my practice hours. And I used to gather my syllabi at the beginning of the semester, note how many times I was allowed to miss each class, and actually plan missed classes into my schedule so that I could have enough time in the practice room.
Who does that?!
Playing exercises and scales for two hours a day was as fun as it sounds. I had to get very creative in order to pay attention for that length of time. I did a lot of experimentation—”what happens if I try it this way”, or “if I think about this while I play…”, etc. It was a good training ground for the mindfulness I’d eventually seek out.
But now that I’m long past this time and I’ve been studying Alexander Technique for seven years, I’ve been thinking about that type of practice regimen with a different perspective.
A New Lens on Practicing
My Alexander teacher often says she enjoys working with musicians because we have something that we eventually want to do with what we learn. Yet she also says we’re the worst in terms of “getting it right”. We want to take an idea and practice it to death, and we’re great at end gaining. If you don’t know that term, check out this article.
Instead of endless repetition, Alexander Technique offers heightened awareness. Those two ideas are pretty much mutually exclusive, as it’s difficult to stay aware when we reiterate something so much. Even though I tried various ways to stay engaged, I know my mind was often elsewhere during all those hours of exercises and scales!
But if our awareness is heightened, we can achieve more with less time and effort. So I’d like to explore how I’d approach learning a piece of music using an Alexander Technique approach, and why I think it’s preferable to the more traditional method I used in music school.
Learning a Piece: Then vs. Now
When I received a new piece in school, I’d sight read through it to get a sense of the music. I still think that’s a good starting point, but I had a habit of hyper focusing in an effort to play as many correct notes as possible. Narrowing our focus makes our bodies contract, and that creates tension. I wasn’t paying much attention to what my body was doing at the time—so I didn’t notice that I was contracting and creating muscle memory with strain.
Here’s how I prevent those old habits from taking over when I learn a new piece now:
I use a soft eyes approach to take in more of the score at once.
I give attention to what my body is doing instead of only focusing on “getting the notes right”. I allow good use of my body to help me achieve accuracy.
I cultivate awareness of the space around me. That may sound unrelated to the task, but you can learn more about how that would help by reading this article.
I try to look at the piece as a whole so I can grasp the form of it early on in the learning process. I’m sure my teachers wanted me to do that in school, but with exam dates always looming, I often skipped over that step in an effort to move faster.
Gestures and Whole-Body Coordination
I was fortunate to have a teacher who taught us to integrate technique with note learning from the start—we learned the notes and the corresponding gestures together. But when I began to put hands together, I’d often use force to “get the gestures to work.” I probably held my breath as a result, and I’m sure that affected my sense of tempo, phrasing, and tone.
What Alexander Technique offers is a broader coordination: using the whole body, not just the hand and arm. When the entire system is working well, our gestures become more fluid and less effortful.
We also think about the head leading and the body following in Alexander Technique. When our coordination is good, our breathing functions as it’s meant to.
If we’re breathing and moving fluidly while we’re learning a new piece, we won’t have the arduous task of removing tension later on. So I think taking an Alexander Technique approach is a more efficient way of “choreographing” a piece.
Redefining Productive Practice
As a student, I knew enough to take short breaks during those long practice sessions, but I’d wait until my neck and shoulders required it. I wasn’t paying attention to my whole body as I played, and I accepted the situation without questioning why I had that pain.
Certainly increasing the time of my breaks would have been a good idea. But with the heightened awareness that Alexander Technique fosters, I’d wager that a four hour practice session might not be necessary—we could accomplish the same amount of work in less time.
Having better use of the whole body would also make the neck and shoulder pain less likely. When pianists have pain in that area, it’s often because they’re not utilizing the muscles of the back to support the arms. The video below will show you how to integrate arm weight into your back and help you avoid the neck and shoulder pain that is unfortunately popular in our line of work!
I don’t know if my 20-year-old self would have accepted these ideas, especially with the pressure of juries and recitals always on the horizon. So I think that I found Alexander Technique at the right time. It’s helped me take a new approach to my playing, and I’ve been able to help others recover from habits that may have formed during their music school years.
If your practice habits were shaped by the “just get it done” mindset of music school, you’re not alone—we did what we had to do. But now, as teachers, we have the opportunity to reexamine those patterns—and to offer our students something healthier.
If that’s of interest to you, you can start by downloading our free PDF guide to help you incorporate basic Alexander Technique ideas into your teaching.
Comment below and let me know which of these ideas resonated with you the most!