Limiting Extraneous Motion

While I was leaving the audition room after one of the auditions I took this year I had a sudden realization: I didn't miss, frack, or chip any notes. Not only did I not miss any notes, the issue of accuracy hadn't entered my mind throughout the entire round. In addition to that I realized that accuracy hadn't been something I thought about nor had it been an issue (only 1-2 mistakes) for the past several auditions I had taken.

After this realization I started to think about how I had gotten to this point. One thing I believe helped to improve my accuracy was my work on reducing extraneous motions. First, I tried to reduce the motion of my tongue while articulating notes based on the suggestion of a teacher I took lessons with this year. Second, I started to work on reducing the "chewing" action of my jaw while playing. Third, I started to work on being very still while I play because I noticed that many of my students who had accuracy and stability problems moved their bodies around too much. Finally, I began to seriously work on not moving my fingers off of the keys while playing, an issue that has been pointed out to me many times in the past.

In my case, all of the extra motions I made while playing can be attributed to my subconscious attempts to display musicality by the way my body moved instead of "displaying" it in the sound being produced. When recording myself I never felt that my phrasing was as apparent in the recording as I felt while playing. When I started to control my physical motions it caused me to open up my ears to the actual music I was producing and thus improve it significantly.

The side effect to all of this was the improvment in accuracy I experienced at the beginning of this post. For me reducing my extraneous motions gave my playing stability. This stability made it easier to hit notes.

Comments

[Dan Barrett]

"all of the extra motions I made while playing can be attributed to my subconscious attempts to display musicality by the way my body moves instead of focusing on putting that emotion into the sound. When recording myself I never felt that my phrasing was as apparent in the recording as I felt it was while playing. When I started to control my physical motions it caused me to open up my ears to the actual music I was producing and thus improve it significantly."

Right on, man. This has been a problem for me too, and I've had similar good results as I've worked on it. Thanks for putting it into words so well, this is real helpful.