Mindset and Body Awareness: Principles to Facilitate a Process of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Mindset and Body Awareness: Principles to Facilitate a Process of Discovery During Practice

Lachlan Dent

PhD (Music Performance) (Monash), MMus (Melb), MTeach (Deakin), PGradDip Music (Melb), BMusPerf (VCA), LMusA, LRSM (Dist), MVMTA

Poll time!

• Which instrument do you play/teach?
• Reminder to Lachlan: Stop sharing screen or

risk a Zoom disaster!

Areas to Cover

• Finding Your Own Way
• Understanding the Instrument
• Facilitating the Instrument’s Needs (Body

Use/Breathing)

• Practice Processes and Brain Function
• Releasing Tension Caused by Expressiveness in

Playing

Finding Your Own Way

• “Everything the last teacher said was wrong”
• Starting with what happens to the instrument,

then secondarily finding ways of moving to facilitate the instrument’s requirements

• Non-negotiables
• Defining Variables
• Movement as Gestalt
• It’s your body

Towards an Investigative Approach

• Data collection (we need all of the data!)
• Need for technical predictability
• A curious and problem-solving mindset

(assume that there is a solution!)

Ariadne’s Thread and Occam’s Razor (and not manipulating results!)

…not manipulating results!

• Fear and the Amygdala
• Desensitisation and acceptance facilitate more

reliable feedback

• Letting go of ambition
• Removing visual stimuli/distractions (e.g. sheet

music)

• Feedback pathways: Touch (connection to

instrument), Proprioception, Sound.

• Feeling the resistance of the string

Proprioception

• Proprioception refers to the body's ability to

perceive its own position in space

• If one has a faulty concept of where a joint

exists in the body, the body will operate according to that faulty concept

• It’s worth investing in a model skeleton to see

how things work from the inside out!

Bow Variables

• Proximity to Bridge (Placement)
• Bow Speed
• Weight/Pressure
• Angle of Bow
• Three basic results: Crunchy, Airy, Beautiful

(Helmholtz)

Placement vs Pressure/Weight

Properties of the String

• Let’s look at what actually

happens to the string when it vibrates Slow-motion Bowed String

• Properties of the string and

how they relate to bowing

• How notes start (grab-release

process)

Placement

• Needs to change depending on string length

(proportional relationship)

• Can be affected by bow angle
• Doesn’t really affect volume in itself (but

allows greater bow pressure closer to the bridge)

• For the same bow weight and speed, the bow

will need to be closer to the bridge for higher strings than for lower strings

Variables to do with the Left Hand

• Please join me on August 11 at 7:30pm for

another webinar!

• The Left Hand for Cellists: Form, Function and

Intonation

Complete Tension Release

• True masters usually display effortlessness
• We can actually start with this appearance of

effortlessness (and then find the ‘result’ within that approach)

• We don’t want to slump/collapse

Eliminating Tension: It’s Easy!

• (if you breathe, and don’t worry about how it

sounds!)

• Tension release facilitates body awareness

(but body awareness still needs to be a priority)

• How it might sound after tension release:

“Shreds” videos

Some Ideas for Putting Everything Back Together

• Hierarchy of Elements:
• Body Use
• Rhythm (Pulsing Process)
• Tone
• Pitch

Pablo Casals on Co-ordination

“Only this impulse, coming from the center of the body instead of each extremity, will group the different movements in a unified whole, producing better results and less fatigue. This impulse…is rather like an image of what I feel at the time, not an easy thing to identify or to name”

Breathing

• Diaphragmatic breathing
• Noticing your breath away from the

instrument

• 1-2 breathing (i.e. making exhalations twice as

long as inhalations)

Meditation Techniques

• Breath Awareness
• Mantra-based meditation
• Mindfulness
• Wim Hof Method
• (There are many others!)

Changing Habits and Learning

• Myelin Sheath
• The man without a Hippocampus
• Zone of Proximal….Frustration!

Learning from Children’s Learning

Very little children tend to:

• Focus on what takes their interest
• Repeat and refine a single element of a task
• Move on once they are bored

Practice Techniques

• Counting out loud (with long sounds)
• If you make a mistake…DON’T stop!
• Looping/refining sections
• Correct errors – but practice getting it right!
• Dropping the bow onto the string
• Starts of notes only
• String Analysis (isolating the bowing)

String Analysis

Specific Case: Expression Causing Tension

• High-end speakers/headphones can be almost

indistinguishable from a live musician…

• Yet the equipment experiences no emotion

and the emotion of the performance is preserved

• Discovering expressive meaning of different

types of sound in the practice room…

• And staying as cool as a cucumber when

actually making those sounds in performance!

Things to Investigate

• High-end audio gear. Headphones give the best sound

quality vs money spent, but research first!

• https://plus.maths.org/content/why-violin-so-hard-

play

• Bulletproof Musician
• Wim Hof Method
• Humanual by Betsy Polatin
• Alexander Technique
• Body Mapping
• Feldenkrais
• Deliberate Practice

Q & A Time!

• Genevieve Newton will now join us to

moderate the Q & A