This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Singing (Singers’) Technique, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the accurate singing technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
The goal of the Alexander Technique is to help the singer create the most effortless and balanced singing technique and posture possible, so that the singer doesn’t have to struggle to sing. This isn’t always easy, because many singers bring misconceptions of what they are doing physically when they sing. In other words, the singer thinks they are doing one thing, when they are doing another thing.
What does this mean? Singing, as with most musical instruments, has a history of the rules of singing that has gotten passed from teacher to student etc., over generations of teachers and students. What is taught isn’t always an accurate representation of what is physically happening in singing.
Here are a few of my corrected misconceptions of movement in the body. You can’t lock the knees, you lock the thigh muscles to lock the knees. When you rotate the forearm, turning the hands over up and down, it is the biceps that rotate the forearms. When you move your hand side to side in relationship to the forearm, it is from long muscles tied to the elbows. When you move your fingers, it is from the forearms – the flexors and the extensors. When you support bent forearms, it is the brachialis, not the biceps for the most part.
Here are two misconceptions that are critical for the singer to change, to make singing more effortless. When the singer is aware that he or she does not have to hold any tension in the shoulders, they can sing with much more freedom. There is no muscle in the shoulders that assists in singing. In other words, when you have a misconception of how the body does something, then that belief causes the body to move with tension, because of the conflict between the believed lie and what is really happening.
A second misconception is that the diaphragm expands when it descends to draw air into the torso. It doesn’t. The diaphragm contracts and moves downward to draw air into the lungs, as the external torso musculature gently supports the ribcage open in classical singing.
Returning back to the first paragraph of this article, if you believe the body does one thing, and it actually does another, then the conflict between your misconceptions and what really happens will contribute to pain, strain, and injury. So, when a singing teacher tells a student something that is not true about how the body works, then it seems to really cause physical problems. Because the student is stacking statements from authority to back up misconceptions of what he or she is doing as they sing. This can really lead to strain and injury. It may take years, but many singers get in trouble eventually over a career of teaching and/or performing.
It is an extraordinary feeling when you are made aware of what you are really doing on an instrument. Every time I was given accurate information from an Alexander Technique teacher on what balanced posture and accurate movement in my guitar technique were, my classical guitar playing always improved dramatically.
It was truly as if I took off blinders, and could clearly see and experience how easy and free playing the guitar could be.
