Dump What You Don't Need
Answer this question about the piece of music on your stand, “What movements do I need to play this?”
What do you come up with? I often find musicians overworking to bring their ideas to life. Overworking gets in the way of playing because the extra effort limits the movements that we need.
If you video yourself playing what movements do you see that you didn’t list as the needed for the music? Look for things like raising elbows or shoulders, head shifting forward, lifting a foot, or both feet. All of these movements are extraneous, they require muscular effort that limits your ability to move everything else!
Now that you have identified what you are doing that doesn’t serve your music, go back to the list of what you need and play. It is helpful to play slowly at first to find the movements and the right amount of effort. What happens?
The next layer of this is clarifying the hows behind what you need. If you identified “blow air”, how do you do it? If you need to take a bigger breath, how? If your jaw is tightening when you want to make an embouchure change, how do you move the embouchure without the jaw? This is where Body Mapping is really helpful!
Be curious today, dump what you don’t need to play using the movements that bring your ideas to life!