Group 2
Unlock your full musical potential with this tailored course, designed for players seeking to release tension at the instrument. After countless hours of playing, it's not uncommon to develop unproductive habits of tension and stiffness. But it's never too late to change. By shifting our focus from the instrument to our bodies and surroundings, we can rediscover the joy and freedom of playing with ease.
Check out Dragos' Course on tonebase
Dragos Ilie - Mind and Body Mapping: Understanding Your Hands and Arms
Details
- Course Period: February 13 - February 24th
- Sign-Up: starts on February 8, 11 am PT!
- Group Session: February 20th, 10 am PT
Assignments
Here is a playlist with the first two assignments! A third one will be added next week!
Exercise 1: Bringing our arms around the guitar, with specific focus on leading with the pinky. Whenever we move our arms, we lead (whether we are aware of it or not) with a specific finger (call that the initiator of the movement in the arm). There are two general camps, the leading with thumb and leading with pinky camp. If you want to check that in more depth, you can watch the course I taught on Body Mapping on Tonebase. For today, I want us to imagine our pinkies as if they were the initiators of the movement.
**Demonstration of what I do - focusing my awareness on pinky, moving the entire arm up/down, in circles, with focus on the pinky (for some it helps if you imagine the pinky grew an inch longer). Drawing a line from pinky all the way to the shoulder blade.
***Applying over the guitar. We now bring our pinky-oriented arms to the guitar. **Doing it a couple of times. You may notice as you do that, the chest and upper back also free up. Why is that so? We have just integrated our whole arms into playing: collar bone, shoulder blade, upper and lower arm bones.
Exercise 2: Inclusive Awareness. I learned this from my mentor Jennifer Johnson. This exercise should help you gain a wider sense of awareness which is both helpful in releasing tension as well as connecting with the room, and the audience. When we tense, we collapse. We shorten, narrowing our vision and movement.
**Demonstrate at the instrument. Sometimes to get out of that habit, the easiest thing to do is to allow the surrounding space to be part of your awareness. This exercise has 3 levels:
- Start this exercise by playing anything. A scale, a passage. As you do, pick an object that’s in your visual field. You can keep that in your peripheral and still be able to pay attention to the task of playing the scale. The object itself can be vague: let the color or the loose shape of it be in your awarness.
- 2nd level, pick an object on the right side as well. This one is particularly important for us guitarists since we tend to “twist” to the left to see the fretboard.
- 3rd level. pick as many objects as you want. Let the whole room become part of your experience. This is extremely important for a performer. It may feel scary at first, but this
- way you will be able to deliver the sound to your audience. Now you are playing for them.
Third Assignment
Exercise 3:
Breathing out on the scale. This is an exercise to apply during your own playing. I found it very useful with improving hard spots. Often when we have difficult passages, we tense up which results in a holding of our breath too. The most common pattern is the one where we inhale (up), without releasing. This exercise helps you undo this pattern. We’ll use the a C Major scale just because it is the easiest form exercise, but you can do this over any passage. Take a big inhale, then play the 1st octave. Preferably you want to save enough air to perform the shift as well, that is the spot where we tend to tighten up our breath the most. Practice back and forth till you get the hang of it.
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interesting . this concept of releasing tension before even playing . excellent idea
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Michel Deslauriers That's right! With practice, we should develop that habit constantly, so it translates during playing as well.
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I also find the topic very interesting and I appreciate the exercises.
I am working on making the left hand movements softer and smaller while playing the guitar to avoid tension. My teacher says the movements of the left hand when playing should be like the movements of a cat, very relaxed and smooth - it is a good feeling, but not easy to achieve.
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Romy Glad to hear that, Romy! Let me know how you found these exercises useful to your routine.
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Dragos I
Exercise 1:
This exercise helps me to be more aware of the body and body movements. But if I focus too much on my arm or shoulder, I have to be careful not to have more tension.
Exercise 2:
Very exciting, it works well at home when practicing, I can easily integrate objects into the playing. I also play in a mandolin orchestra, where I can also integrate other players well into the playing - this gives security and a kind of relaxation. In front of an audience I find the second exercise much more difficult
and I need to practice on that.I am wondering what I can do if I notice that too much pressure is being exerted while playing the guitar, or how I can release tension while playing. Do you have any ideas? I have noticed that small movements while playing "hold" the space from exercise 1 and I am more aware of the body.
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Romy Great insight. The person who first taught me this exercise is an orchestra player, so I am glad to hear you're applying there as well! As for playing in front of the audience, I think that will require time.
What do you mean by too much pressure? Pressing into the guitar? The way I practiced releasing tension was in fact outside of the guitar. I would actively give suggestions of release to the areas that would tighten up. Just how you can bring more sensorial awareness to an area if you think about it, you can try to let go and specific tension. In Alexander Technique this is called giving directions. If you look up online instructions on "constructive rest"- Alexander technique, is another good method to work on releasing tension. As you become more and more aware, you should be able to diminish the amount of tightening and tension.
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Hello Drago,
Very interesting and useful information and exercises.
Through the exercises (1 and those in your Body Mapping course), I became aware of movement of my shoulder blades. The focus on my pinky during initial setup also increase awareness of the should blade movement. I mentioned this because I suffer pain of muscles just below my right shoulder blade after 20 minutes of playing. I am working on your exercises now, thinking that they will improve my shoulder pain.
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Vincent Tam Hi Vincent, glad to hear you find these exercises useful.
As someone who had shoulder blade pain for many years (and is still working that through) I found that the most useful things were to find movements which also stimulate the activity in the shoulder blade area (rhomboid but also lattisimus). Whether that's in the form of exercises before practing/in between sessions or even when being at the guitar is up to you (like the pinky line exercise).
Pain in that area is often synonymous with stiffness, because we might be blocking pathways of motion. Also, how's your breathing "on your back" when you practice? Deep breathing that moves the ribs in the back also should loosen up the area of the shoulder blades. As you may know, they (shoulder blades) glide over the ribs in movement. When the ribs exert up with the breath, you're basically giving the area a gentle massage.
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Dear Friends,
I wanted to share with you the link for today's Check-In with Dragos, which you can access at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89928858415 on Monday, Feb 20, at 10am PST!
I also share the third exercise here and in the thread!
