Physical Attributes
In the previous posts, we’ve been discussing what can make successful practices. Some of these ideas have been
Reading and note taking
Ear training and sight singing
Physical attributes
Building blocks
Repertoire
Free play
A bit of housekeeping:
It’s been a while since I wrote here. I wish I could say that it’s because I’ve been so busy practicing that I haven’t had time to do other things, or because I’ve been really thinking deeply about what I want to write next. It’s not. I’ve lost certain habits, and I’m writing this newsletter to bring them back.
In the previous post, I talked about music recognition, complementary skills of ear training and sight singing, as part of what you’re doing.
Today we are going to talk about something else that I find interesting, which is the physical attributes of making music. Something that we don’t think about often is that in the same way that there are aspects of ourselves that we consider immaterial, like a mind or a soul, there are parts of ourselves that are deeply material, our bodies. Like all sensory information, music is received and made through the body. Our hearing receives the signals and allows the brain to process it, and we also feel the sound waves with out bodies. If you have ever been to a concert and felt impact on your body, that’s not your imagination, sound waves are bouncing around all over the place and you are likely receiving the impact.
In other words, your body, is very important to the experiences of both generating and receiving music. People have complicated feelings and thoughts about this, what in the area of philosophy called Philosophy of Mind they call the “mind and body” problem, an approach called “dualism”, meaning that they think that the mind and body are two distinct things related, somehow. All those words have tremendous import for understanding what we mean!
Music is not distinct from other things this way. Love is experienced and felt as love in the mind, but there is a physical sensation of it, too, and its expressions are often physical, such as in touch, or even in speech, which is physical. When you give someone a hug, for example, even if motivated by an emotion in your immaterial self, you are using your material self to interact with someone else’s material self, and doing so in a way that will bring physical pleasure to both of you, but also, emotional pleasure. For more intimate forms of touch, like doing a choreographed dance together, taking a walk together, etc., these interplays become more complex.
When you are using your body to receive music or to generate it, accordingly, your body has to be in a condition to do so. And this means that you have to take care of yourself in very specific ways. There are a lot of legends in jazz of musicians over-practicing or destroying themselves in other ways, like taking drugs. Heroin, heroin, heroin. You’ll know if you’re a viper.
Do not do this.
I have found it better to think of your body as a monastery, a place where holiness can be pursued, cultivated and shared, which is very much so how traditional martial arts training will teach you to interact with yourself. Martial arts training will also tell you over and over again, so often and so frequently that you will groan every time you hear it, till you, too, start saying it to others, that
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
While this is generally applied to technique and the cultivation of it, telling people that if you focus on making your technique correct in its direction, force, shape, etc., it’s also a very good way to describe total velocity of training. Gaining ground slowly means that you are gaining it smoothly and when you are gaining it smoothly, you are gaining it quickly. Smoothness means that it’s coming to you correctly, so you don’t have to unlearn things later, just refine.
It’s a good idea to spend time detoxifying yourself from unnecessary stimulation. Allow yourself to focus your mind by removing litter and clutter from it. You probably don’t need all the latent sound around you, it’s creating unnecessary associations for music recognition. You probably don’t need to tire your eyes from staring at a screen as often as you are, either.
Yes, obviously, do physical exercise. I recommend things like yoga and Kung Fu to train your mind and body to work together as integration of physicality and contemplation, with strength training and endurance training. Lifting weights and swimming will be very good for you. You should be not surprised at how physically difficult it will be to hold a guitar and play it, but you will be. More surprising will be how much harder it is to do so while also applying your mind to the circumstance. This is why I recommend yoga and Kung Fu, this is what they excel in training.
Anyway, a very large part of this work is going to consist how you treat and prepare your body to cultivate the musicianship. As part of the physical training, I suggest using a pencil and paper for making notes on the manuscripts, as well as a notebook for immediate notes. Write your notes by hand, later, to make them beautiful, and type them, if you’d like. Making music is a physical process, what you do with your hands will imprint on your mind, and the same is true for writing, which is externalised thinking. Use your hands. Get good with them.
All of my notes and charts, even most of my posts, I write most of them out longhand before I put them on software. That’s part of what makes them take so long.
Back sooner than later, I hope.