{"id":1792,"date":"2014-03-31T08:14:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T15:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/?p=1792"},"modified":"2018-03-03T08:15:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-03T16:15:23","slug":"more-about-shh-tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/archives\/1792","title":{"rendered":"More About (shh!) Tension"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cKeyboard Teaches Hand\u201d<\/a> spoke of physical tension and <\/span>relaxation. Now I want to point out something about two kinds<\/i> of tension: physical and emotional. They\u2019re separate, but it\u2019s all too easy to confuse them. This tires us, and robs us of technique.<\/p>\n

When a piece is ebullient, triumphant, tragic, dramatic, joyous\u2014or intense with any emotion\u2014our natural physical response helps teach us to express and convey the feeling. But when we\u2019ve learned this lesson for a given passage, we should also use another lesson that applies to all passages: that conveying emotional tension does not require physical tension.<\/i><\/p>\n

Of course playing requires tension, as we\u2019ve said elsewhere. I\u2019m talking about tension beyond the minimum necessary<\/i> to play the notes and create your desired sound. Required tension good. Spurious tension bad.<\/p>\n

Try this experiment: play the passage using every means in your power to convey its feeling with full intensity. Record your playing.<\/p>\n

Listen to the recording, and notice how<\/i> you conveyed the feeling. With an intensely dance-y rhythm? A specially well-chosen tempo? Detailed shaping of dynamics, or extra-wide dynamic range? Hesitations at crucial moments? Voicing of chords? Shaping of melodies? Sharp staccato? Luxuriant legato?<\/p>\n

Now record yourself again doing, as best you can, the same things as before, but without lifting your shoulders, tightening your neck, tensing your forearms or hands, arching your back, or any of the 101 things that we do and don\u2019t need to do.<\/p>\n

Listen to this second recording and see how you did. Not good enough? Play and record again, still with as little spurious tension as possible. Perhaps aim at only one or two of the points in your original recording. If you succeed in one, continue the experiment tomorrow. Keep it up till you get all the way there, and you\u2019ll have really taught yourself something! For help on the way, find yourself an Alexander Technique teacher<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cKeyboard Teaches Hand\u201d spoke of physical tension and relaxation. Now I want to point out something about two kinds of tension: physical and emotional. They\u2019re separate, but it\u2019s all too easy to confuse them. This tires us, and robs us of technique. When a piece is ebullient, triumphant, tragic, dramatic, joyous\u2014or intense with any emotion\u2014our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1793,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792\/revisions\/1793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}