Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
« Dorset woodland | Main | Ewelme, Oxfordshire »
Making less effort
I've been practicing my fiddle for an hour this morning, trying to improve my vibrato so that I can keep the 'warbling' going while I change notes. This may sound easy and it should certainly sound easy; nothing should sound as though the musician is finding it difficult! Having taken 3 months off from playing music to practice vibrato technique earlier last year, my new 'efforts' are moving me on to a different level.
There are a variety of styles of violin vibrato technique; there is the wrist vibrato, the arm vibrato and the rarely used and 'old style' of finger-tip impulse vibrato that I am now using. This seems to be a harder technique to learn but when performed well can bring wonderful depth and richness to the notes. Being a traditionalist and enthusiast of old techniques and despite learning as an older person with the inherent limitations that the lack of youth imposes (to become a top performer you need to start at the age of 3 or 4!), I still want to play in the classical and traditional manner. I threw away my shoulder rest two years ago for similar reasons. I may never play the virtuosic pieces by Paganini, but it is my intention that whatever I play, it should sound as beautiful as I can make it. So I work on producing a beautiful vibrato.
It is my impression that a student's vibrato can often be left to develop by itself without training. Everyone has a slightly different style and possibly needs to grow their own over time. However I believe that problems can arise if left unattended and poor habits can interfere without our awareness. So I give a lot of attention to working on technique including vibrato, separately from the music. Everyone wants to play music (I do too) and we use scales, arpeggios and exercises to develop our skill as well. However playing the violin or for that matter swinging a golf club requires a great deal of fluidity of movement, poise, balance and the minimum of interference from unwanted muscle tension. Posture is critical and so is the freedom of the wrists, the relaxed thumbs and free neck. I believe such considerations are fundamental to performing any activity to a high standard.
So I play random notes slowly, working on the freedom of my wrists, the relaxed left thumb that still needs to support my instrument (in the absence of a shoulder rest) and I work on achieving the free movement of my hand and the rolling impulse effect of my fingertips on the strings. I experiment with making less effort with the fingers on the strings so they are freer and looser and consequently more agile and dexterous. I endeavour to use as little effort as possible to achieve the same effect or better. I also use a mirror so I can see what I am doing from a different angle.
When we 'try hard' to do something better, it is very easy to increase the amount of physical effort we make in the process. This can work diametrically against what we are actually wanting to achieve as the extra effort stiffens us up and prevent us from moving fluidly. We are far more likely to succeed if we make less effort rather than more. Less effort = less muscle tension. We may even require to make an unfamiliar degree of 'less effort'. This can feel strange. We may feel unsupported, insecure in our movement as though we may even drop the instrument, golf club or whatever. However with practice the new way becomes more familiar and we learn just how much effort is required while also maintaining our fluidity of movement. Muscle memory plays its role so our technique becomes established.
Such considerations cannot be given adequate experimentation and time to develop if we are also trying to play a piece of music beautifully or compete in sport. (If you are a runner, how loosely can you run?) Taking time out to work on such basics for their own right can eventually lead to an enhanced technique that will positively aid and enhance every note we play or golf stroke we swing. It may require a little patience but the dividends can be huge and worth all the patient work and time put in.
Make less effort at almost any activity you do and you are almost certain to eventually enhance your abilities to a higher level than you could otherwise.
