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My sophomore year, I was a great player and I was incredibly relaxed. My junior and now senior year, I feel as if all eyes are on me playing-wise and I can't help but tense up while playing and it closes my sound up. My private instructor helps me with explaining Arnold Jacobs quotes to me and talks about relaxation and my sound opens up and I enjoy music much more. Sadly, this feeling does not linger and I end up reverting to my old ways. Is there any technique or method I can use that will maintain relaxation and decrease tension in my playing?

Thanks,
-Nick Rood, Senior

Just today I was referred to a web site pstc.org by a friend. He says the peak performance module is phenomenal. There are two free click tracks. Tim Phizerackerley us the web site person if I got it right from the conversation. My friend is a high level European pro horn player who found it useful when he was having a hard time with something similar to what you are dealing with. I haven't looked at it yet but plan to.

I suppose what I'm about to detail might seem a bit foreign or esoteric. It is always difficult to try to put in words only a complex idea. But here 'goes.

Not all that long ago I was reading material on the Asian practice of yoga. Buried in the paragraphs was a section on what is referred to as the "chi." I do not pretend to be an expert on yoga or for that matter anything Asian, but I was fastinated with this concept of there being a focal point of life's energy somewhere identifiable on the body. The chi is represented by a spot a couple of inches below the navel. I began to focus on this spot as I played, and made attempts to keep it in a soft or relaxed state. I figured if I could maintain that smoothness down there in the lower abdomen, chances were pretty good that the muscular/skeletal appartatus above could avoid unecessary tension. It seemed that basically all the problems came about when I would begin to think about the mechanics of playing. How to breathe, where to place the tongue, how to form the embouchure, the tilt of the head, etc., etc. With all that attention to thinking, there was not much faculty left for actually making artful sounds and playing a musical idea. It was then that my attacks sputtered, my tone was less than beautiful, phrases were rigid rather than smooth, and lip flexibility was barely functional with it really being a 'crap shoot' as to whether or not a slur would actually happen.

Taking the thinking aspect out of playing requires something in return. That is acquiring a very close relationship with the music, wherein every pitch and phrase is very well understood and under the fingers, and for that matter perfectly worked out with the lungs and all the other muscles groups.

Bud Herseth used to say something about practicing like (I paraphrase) ""I need to practice this so slow so that even Bud can play it without a mistake.""

Then when we really know the piece, we can drop the thinking aspect and simply blow and play. Think of the tennis serve or the golf swing. When we just "do it" there is a certain smoothness. As so as we begin to let the mind begin to think about what we are actually doing, there is a type of task oriented dystonia that creeps into the picture. That ,along with fears and other tensions, begin to chip away at the fluency of our playing, and pretty soon we sound horrible.

Actually helping your body learn how to perform is the responsible thing to do. You owe it to yourself to afford this gift to yourself.

You sound like you are having physiological reactions that are associated with stage fright. In addition to Paul's excellent recommendations, the simple act of taking a few deep, slow, quantitative breaths will help to alleve these symptoms.

Weed.

Have your Dr. give you an RX!!

Some of my colleagues say, they have found great benefit in "Alexander technique". There are plenty books and self-help-guides on this subject.
Perhaps a way to explore?
All the best,
Hubert

Read: "The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallway.
An excellent resource for musicians!

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PaulMaybery wrote: The chi is represented by a spot a couple of inches below the navel. I began to focus on this spot as I played, and made attempts to keep it in a soft or relaxed state.

Hmmm...many tuba players have a naturally soft spot (area?) a couple inches, all around the navel, extending forward and around the sides of their bodies.

I remember hearing that about 20 percent of the polish comes off your playing when you are under working under pressure. Solution is to just expect it and prepare accordingly.

If you rarely perform, little imperfections ruin your focus. If you perform a lot and miss something, the concentration stays and the thing you missed was at least isolated to one note or phrase.

Maybe not so far off. Any time you reach into the head, it gets complicated. As you mentioned in post #2, "concentrate on the music" - and I sometimes doubt that school band music programs are really successful there.

I mean, so many seniors playing an assortment of band instruments; so few of them playing, one year later, or ever again. Those of us who played in school band (not me) and whose interest in music survived seem to be exceptions to the rule, so you have to ask yourself what kind of musical experience the normal ones are getting. If you're really into playing music, "concentrate on the music" is a focus that can work wonders, but could you get years into a band music program and somehow sort of miss what that means?

Folks have offered up a lot of stuff here. From what I gather from your post is that with your teacher you have managed to solve the tension issue and relax except you then end up reverting back to playing tense. I assume this is under the stress of performance.

I'm not a teacher but over the years I did attend many of Arnold Jacobs masterclasses and I remember him addressing this particular issue. He talked about how under pressure of performance we revert back to our old habit and folks try to change that habit. But he felt it was not unlearning the bad habit but learning the new one and drilling that over and over until it became "the habit". I think this site has many of his masterclasses and I think Brian Frederiksen's site does as well and you may find some useful advice in those tapes. Brian's book "Song and Wind" may have some of AJ's insight on this - it's been years since I read it so I can't remember. It's worth reading anyway.