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I dont know any low brass players, but trumpet player John Henes, formerly of the Lyric Opera and Symphony II in Chicago now teaches Alexander at Northwestern.

at the open house for my university SOM we had an Alexander Technique introduction.

The teacher (Lawrence Jones) told us all to stand up. We all stood up except for one person.
He asked her why.
"Because I thought about it and I didn't want to"
"Great, you tought about it! Now everyone sit down."
Everyone starts to sit down then stops hafway and looks up at the professor to find out whether he actually want us to sit down.

One of the trumpet player in the university does it too.

mattwatts wrote:I have tried it and had several lessons, but I found that I couldn't live my life by it. Too much like hard work!

I suppose you could get Rolfed instead:

http://www.rolf.org/

Rolfing back in the 70's used to be a pretty drastic manipulation (reminded me of tying someone into a pretzel) to bring the body into balance. Very New Age and neo-Reichian.

Nowadays, it seems to have been toned down to a rather mild massage claiming the same benefits.

Alexander reminded me of this because several folks I knew back in the 70's were doing Rolfing, Kinesiology, Alexander, TA, est and LSD...

Chuck(G) wrote:several folks I knew back in the 70's were doing Rolfing, Kinesiology, Alexander, TA, est and LSD...

... so you were chased by that big, purple spider, too? Did you see where the "inventor" just turned 100?

The Alexander of the technique was an actor who had lost the ability to recite his roles. He developed his method as a result of this speech pathology. It has to do with alignment of the head and spine, elimination of non-neccessary body tension, etc. The famous breathing teacher, Keith Underwood, uses the Alexander Technique as part of his teaching. At its best it can improve your posture and playing tremendously, at its worst it is the work of the most dogmatic witch doctors. Take the best from a lesson and see what you can do with it. If you want mystical solutions to your playing problems, instead try 5 hours a day of consistent practice. (and keep your back straight) John

Attention to posture (and especially neck position) for singers is very important, as it has a very dramatic effect on a vocal onset, resonation, and thus a singer's sound. Because of this, the Alexander technique is quite popular in classical singing circles. In brass playing, the resonating chamber is the horn, so it isn't as popular.

Singing students often feel "weird" or even have some slight neck and back pain from standing up straight and effectively balancing the eight to ten pounds of brains/skull/hair etc..sloshing around on their necks for a half-hour or hour. This is because after years of slouching, muscular systems compensate and becomes accustomed to holding up the weight of the head in an inbalanced way. I "grew" about a half inch taller during graduate school from just practicing Alexander and similar techniques.

LV wrote:And here I thought Rolfing involved one of these...

I have always gotten great sounds when rolfing in one. The acoustics are great!!

Doc wrote:I had a mouthpiece like that once...

I thought you just said it smelled like that...

To the sponsor of this thread:

I voted "Who is Alex" because although I had heard of this topic before, it wasn't memorable enough for me to remember anything about it except for the name. If that qualifies for me to have voted for the previous response, feel free to tweak your data.

Fortunately, the evolving thread has provided a good mental refresher course (he types with characteristic bad posture ...)

Cheers,

Aaaaand then there is this Alexander technique
http://www.brandialexander.com/



(and it's all real)