(Ruth Dalphin a faculty member at
the University of is Delaware. Ed.)
Throughout my many years of playing
and teaching bassoon I have experimented with a number of body-mind
techniques to overcome problems related to stress and tension
that keep us from playing our best. I have meditated, exercised,
practiced yoga, tai chi, biofeedback, and Alexander technique,
in addition to spending many hours alone and with students programming
fingers and tongue to the "clickclick" of the metronome.
While I still find these techniques helpful, recently I have become
really excited about a more active, direct method of not only
relieving tension but of propelling the playing into the dynamic
realm of motion. It is well known that focusing on the negative
(e.g., "eliminate tension," "don't make a mistake,"
"here comes the hard part") directs us to a negative
result, such as tension, mistakes, cracking notes, and uneven
playing. Telling ourselves and our students to relax doesn't seem
to help much either.
What we are trying to achieve is that beautiful state of balance, of equilibrium, of open awareness and effortless concentration, that flowing sensation that occurs in performance, it often seems, purely by chance. The discovery that this state of peak performance can be induced is good news indeed. Let me pause here to note that, unfortunately, not all problems disappear immediately. However, just knowing that we can have some control over that tension monster and achieve an easy naturalness in our playing even under stress is exciting and confidence building.
There is now an impressive body of information about the brain and its two hemispheres, the intuitive, creative right, and the logical, reasoning, thinking left, as well as about how we learn through the conscious and subconscious mind, and how to visualize a desired result to attain that result in fact. Athletes, psychologists, and business people are taking advantage of seminars, books, and training sessions to learn how to achieve peak performance. This information is available to musicians too, of course, but as far as I know is relatively little used by most in their own playing and teaching. Eloise Ristad (A Soprano on Her Head) and a few other musicians and consultants are the rare and commendable exception.
Let's get down to some specifics of right brain bassooning. I have often directed a student to produce a "burgundy velvet tone" (For some students "melted chocolate" works better.) and heard a new richness in the sound, or cleaned up a sloppy interval with the suggestion to "imagine a cat leaping from the E-flat to the A-flat, " for example. I have used other images for particular phrases as have most other musicians. Recently, however, I have begun to use both movement exercises and images much more extensively and to involve students more in producing their own images. These things can be done in many ways, but here are a few that have resulted in dramatic improvements.
For some students, perhaps a real extrovert or someone with a dance or athletic background, dancing phrases with the whole body can lead to a free-flowing sound and clear up technical problems that were caused by tension. Not every student will respond immediately and favorably to the suggestion to "Put down your bassoon and dance that phrase, " however. Some students will feel more comfortable in the beginning remaining seated and just creating a phrase movement with the arms. Force and humiliation are not my style; I feel that it is important and more productive to start where the student is at least relatively comfortable, then to encourage a stretch. Many instrumentalists are able to sing a phrase beautifully and then play the same phrase with a much-improved sense of phrasing and style, but someone whose voice is an embarrassment might croak through the passage with inner shudders and groans and not produce a desirable result after picking up the instrument again.
How, then, can we perfect a phrase and encourage a smooth performance with someone who can (or will) neither sing nor dance? I find that images of water or of animals often help. For example, I recently asked a student who had just played a note-perfect, but static and uninteresting, opening of the Saint-Saens Sonata, "If this were water, what kind of water would it be?" In reply to her stunned look, I continued, "Would it be a waterfall, a lake, a river, a brook, water running through a hose, or what?" She suggested and tried "lake," then decided herself that the water should be flowing, not just sitting there. Next she tried "river," and I helped her build her mental movie ("wide and slow moving here, narrower and faster moving, perhaps tumbling over some smooth rock here, rounding a bend there. Are there trees or clouds shading the river here?") and on we went till that magnificent moment where "the sun, bright and warm, pops out from behind the mountain." This incidentally, is on B-flat4 (high B-flat) at the key change in the first movement. The results when she played were astounding. The music came to life, and her accuracy improved immediately. She played that first section several times, and each time I directed here awareness to another area (dynamics, pitch of a particular interval, rhythm, etc.) while reminding her to feel the movement of the river. The piece began to make sense to her (to feel right), and her enthusiasm and excitement carried her through the semester and lead her through the first two movements in record time.
The opening of the Mozart Concerto, I find, usually takes up a large part of the first lesson spent on it and often needs to be reworked later. Sometimes imitation works fairly well, but I've never been totally happy with that approach. Words such as "longer," "shorter," and ,'more bounce" have their limitations too. A few weeks ago I took a student to the zoo (mentally), and we stood at the edge of the seal tank watching the seals play and swim and leap. She threw them a large rubber ball, and we watched it bounce from one seal nose to another. Voila! She played the opening perfectly with just the right bounce on the opening B-flat and following notes. Suddenly the phrase had movement, direction, flow, and, incidentally, accurate pitch, clean attacks and lovely releases.
Going to the circus (again in our imaginations) helped clear up one movement of a Galliard sonata. Birds flying, tigers running through the jungle, mice scampering (Try this in the Tansman Sonatine in the sixteenth-note passage near the end of the first movement.), and popcorn popping (for a lively, short staccato) are all helpful images. Sometimes motion and direction are accomplished by visualizing an ice skater or cross-country skier.
I could go on and on with examples of how quickly and effectively this method works to encourage new dimensions in playing and a more relaxed and alert performer, but perhaps one more particularly dramatic example will suffice. Last semester in a repertoire class at the University of Delaware I asked each of the bassoon students to play part of the piece he or she would play for juries a few weeks later. In their private lessons during the previous weeks I had given them exercises to clean up technical problems, worked on rhythm, dynamics, tone colors, special trill or alternate fingerings needed, and on phrasing using a melodic-harmonic approach. We had danced phrases from other pieces during the semester but not from these. Each student was to play while the others listened. I then asked the listeners to make positive comments (no criticism allowed) about their colleague's playing of the selection. One new student played the second movement of the Fasch Sonata and received compliments on his rhythm, tone, and attention to dynamics. Then I asked the listeners for suggestions on how to liven up the performance. "What kind of animal could dance this piece?" "Monkeys!" came a delighted answer accompanied by laughter all around. This was getting fun. The young woman illustrated to her friend in the hot seat and the rest of us how monkeys would dance the dotted rhythm, and, in the spirit of fun and games and no longer afraid of being judged, he played the best I had ever heard him play. Excitement filled the room. Another student jumped up and yelled, "Bravo! That was fantastic! " and we all applauded spontaneously. I asked him how he felt the second time he played, and he responded, "Fine. It felt really natural. The first time I was all uptight and worried about the rhythm, but the second time it was fun. " What seems to be happening is that the images bring the right brain, the creative, doing part, into action, thus stilling the thinking, judgmental left brain, which really gets in the way when it dominates our performing. I have noticed a high degree of consistency, too, as a bonus, in using these methods. One need only recall the image to repeat the results.
Obviously, dancing monkeys won't replace the many hours of slow, careful practice and listening necessary for a first- rate performance, nor will a babbling brook make up for an inadequate reed, but I am convinced that using these ideas will result in better performances. I am deeply concerned about the possible effects of the increasing use of beta blockers and other drugs by so many of my colleagues in highstress situations. Perhaps there are better ways to unlock our potential and to perform more often in that peak zone we have all experienced at some time.
In our endless quest for the perfect reed and our daily professional concerns we sometimes forget why we started playing bassoon (Remember, it used to be fun!). If we focus on our own and our students' problems all the time we risk burn-out. Why not, instead, involve our creative imaginations and re-learn how to play bassoon!