The Technique Zone - creating a truly beautiful tone

“Spare the breath and spoil the tone”

— Walter Bergmann

Walter Bergmann’s pithy aphorisms about recorder playing result from years spent working with amateur recorder players; observing their habits. While some may sound a little facetious, they all contain at least a nugget of truth. Today’s blog is inspired by the golden rule quoted above - one I often repeat to the musicians I work with. Let’s explore the reasons why…

Which element of technique do you pay most attention to when playing? I bet there are many occasions when you get tied up with fast fingerwork, or moments when you feel you’re wrestling with some sort of tongue twister. But what happens to your tone while this battle is going on? Almost certainly it suffers as you struggle to multitask. In this second chapter of The Technique Zone my mission is to help you understand how to work on your sound - hopefully to the point where you develop good habits which will hold, no matter how fast the notes are

Setting good foundations

In part one of The Technique Zone I talked about the importance of good posture when playing. Hopefully you’ve been thinking about this in recent weeks but if you’d like a refresher you can find that blog post here.

The next step is to get you breathing efficiently. Breath is as vital for a good recorder tone as it is for life itself, so it’s worth taking a moment to consider exactly how our lungs work. Breathing is such an instinctive act - our bodies just get on with it and it’s often only when things go wrong that we become aware of it. 

Understanding the way we breathe

The most important tool for breathing is your diaphragm - a parachute shaped muscle which sits beneath your lungs, separating them from your digestive system. Like your heart, it does its job without conscious direction from your brain. This is vital or there’s a danger we’d forget to breathe if something more exciting distracted us! 

So what does your diaphragm actually do? Fundamentally, it pulls downwards, expanding your lungs and creating a vacuum in them. This vacuum pulls air in from the atmosphere via your windpipe, filling your lungs and providing oxygen to your brain - breathing in. When it’s time to exhale your diaphragm relaxes, pushing the waste products (carbon dioxide) and any unused breathe out of your lungs. All this happens between 12 and 20 times a minute at rest without us even thinking! There are other muscles in your rib cage (your intercostal muscles) which hep this process, but for the purposes of recorder playing it’s the diaphragm that’s the main focus of our attention. If you want to learn more about how your lungs work I can recommend this article from the British Lung Foundation which explains the complete process of breathing very clearly.

View fullsize

Learn to breathe efficiently

If you’re going to make the best possible tone with your recorder there’s one thing you need lots of - breath! We take our breathing for granted 99% of the time and it’s something we only really consider when under stress - perhaps when running for the bus or working out at the gym. At these moments our bodies need more oxygen so our breathing mechanism instinctively works harder, using the spare lung capacity which goes unused most of the time. 

If you’re to play with a beautiful tone you need to learn to utilise this spare capacity at will, really filling your lungs so allow for long, controlled musical phrases. The first step is to learn to inhale in a relaxed, open manner, really filling your lungs with air. 

The starting point is to be as relaxed as possible, especially around your abdomen. Take a few deep breaths in and as you do so imagine the air travelling right to the bottom of your lungs. To do this your stomach muscles need to be relaxed and soft - don’t try to hold your stomach muscles in to look thinner while you’re doing this. Allow your stomach and the soft tissue in your sides and back to expand as you inhale and your diaphragm pulls downwards, compressing the contents of your abdomen. When you exhale, do so in a completely relaxed way - just let the air go with no attempt to control its flow. 

It’s no bad idea to spend a minute or two doing this before you play each day so the feeling of really filling your lungs becomes natural and instinctive. This is of course the way you breathe when you’re asleep and you’re completely relaxed.

How to take active control of your diaphragm 

If the diaphragm is an involuntary muscle how can we control it to help our recorder playing? Although you can’t directly feel your diaphragm, it is possible to give it a helping hand by using your stomach muscles. We’ll begin by using these muscles in an extreme way and the gradually take control over the exhalation of breath.

Take a deep, open relaxed breath and this time strongly squeeze your tummy muscles to push the air out of your lungs really quickly. Imagine blowing out lots of candles on a birthday cake, trying to make sure none of them are left flickering. When you do this, the pressure from your stomach muscles pushes on the diaphragm, squeezing the air out of your lungs.

As you get used to this, gradually reduce the strength of contraction in your stomach muscles so you still exhale quickly but in a more controlled manner. This is still too violent for recorder  playing, but it’s part of the process of taking control of your breathing.

Finally, instead of tensing up your stomach muscles strongly, make it a gradual squeeze, noting how you can vary the speed of the air leaving your mouth with these abdominal muscles. This is where you want to be for playing the recorder. You’re now controlling the flow of air using these powerful muscles rather than creating tension in your chest, shoulders and neck. In the following video clip I demonstrate this technique.

Do you look happy as you play?

Even if recorder playing is an absolute joy for you (and why wouldn’t it be?!), you should always aim to look sulky and a little depressed! When you smile you engage lots of small muscles around your face and throat, creating tension - try smiling right now and note the way your face muscles tense up. 

Now take a breath and sigh heavily, consciously relaxing your lips, cheeks and throat.  This is the feeling you want while playing the recorder as any tension in your windway will have an adverse effect on your tone. Try yawning too, and notice how this opens up and relaxes your throat. 

Unlike all other wind instruments, there is no embouchure required for the recorder - the act of forming your lips around or against a mouthpiece. Instead you should aim to keep your lips and throat as relaxed as possible - no real effort is needed to seal the lips around the beak of the instrument. If you don’t believe me, try actively tensing up your face and throat and notice the effect this constriction has on your tone! 

Putting these new skills into practice

Now you know how to breath well, let’s grab a recorder and use these new skills to play.

Pick a recorder (perhaps a treble or tenor for starters) and try some of the exercises in the following video. Take some time to explore the extremes of your sound - from really weedy to overblown and violent. Don’t worry about disturbing your neighbours! 

Play notes in different parts of the instrument’s range and notice the way they demand different levels of breath. Low notes need gentle breath or they split easily - for these note you need to squeeze your stomach muscles very gently. 

In contrast, your breath needs to be moving faster for the highest notes - a firmer squeeze from those abdominal muscles. Thinking about these differences in terms of speed of air rather than being loud or quiet can be really helpful. To get a better sense of this, blow gently on your hand (slow moving breath) and notice how the air is warm, as it has time to pick up heat from your body before it leaves your mouth. Now engage your stomach muscles more firmly to move the breath quickly. As it touches your hand the breath now feels cold. This is because the air has less contact time with your blood vessels and doesn’t pick up body heat. You may find it helpful to think of low notes as requiring warm air, while high notes demand cooler air. 

How to develop your tone through practice

As with any new skill, it’s best to practise some simple exercises at first, so you’re able to give them your full attention. In time these techniques become habitual and you’ll need to think about them less while working on other things. Here are a few simple exercises to develop your tone.

1. Long notes. Ok, long notes aren’t the most exciting thing to practise, but they do give you lots time to think! Spend a few minutes at the start of each practice session playing long notes in different parts of the recorder’s range. With each one, aim to find the ideal speed of air to make a full, beautiful tone - slower air for the low notes, faster air for the high ones. Really listen to your sound (close your eyes - you’ll notice more!) and take care to keep the pitch of each note the same from beginning to end - don’t let them sag as you lungs begin to empty. As you feel you’re running out of breath, engage those stomach muscles a little more and you may be surprised at the untapped reserves of air remaining in your lungs.

2. Slow scales. Pick a really simple scale (no more than one sharp or flat) and play it really slowly - perhaps four steady beats on each note. As you rise up through the scale, you’ll need to gradually increase the speed of your breath to make the optimum sound. When you run out of breath, stop to breathe in deeply and restart on the same note you just finished. As you do this, listen carefully to see if your tone improves when you restart. If it does, that’s because you’d stopped blowing as efficiently as your lungs emptied. Instead, try to ensure the tone matches so you can be sure you’re always making the best possible sound.

Five or ten minutes spent every day on these two simple exercises will have a dramatic effect on your tone - as long as you really think about what you’re doing and listen critically to what your hear. 

The techniques I’ve covered here won’t make you a whizzy, virtuosic recorder player, but you’ll definitely sound better. Fast fingers and nippy tonguing can come later, but if there’s one thing I’m always imploring of musicians I work with it’s to play with a genuinely beautiful tone.

When Walter Bergmann said, “Spare the breath and spoil the tone” he was absolutely right. Blowing inefficiently will create a weedy, undernourished tone which doesn’t make good use of the your instrument’s design. If you want just one thing to focus on every time you play, you simply can’t go wrong by concentrating on breathing and blowing more efficiently. I often say to groups I work with that few things in recorder playing can’t be improved by using more air and I suspect I’ll be saying that until I retire! 

Now it’s your turn to do some homework…

If my words here have inspired you to work on your tone here’s a simple task for you. Pick a simple melody to learn, then record yourself playing it. If you own a smartphone the built in voice memo app will do the job just fine. If you’re not sure what tune to choose, why not try this one by Jacob Van Eyck:

Next, spend a few minutes each day working on the exercises I talked about earlier - deep breathing and controlled blowing, long notes and slow scales. Ten minutes will be enough to make a difference. Maybe think of it as the recorder playing equivalent of cleaning your teeth - one off those short tasks you carry out without fail every day!

In six weeks time, record yourself again playing the same tune and compare the two. I’m sure you’ll notice a difference and by this stage the techniques you’re using will be more habitual, freeing you up to concentrate on other aspects of your playing.

Do leave a comment below if you’re planning to try this (there’s nothing like promising something in public to make you feel more accountable!) and I’d love it if you could report back in a few weeks and let us know how you’re getting on. Why not join me in my mission to make the recorder soundworld a more beautiful place!

The Technique Zone - Are you sitting comfortably?

The new year is traditionally a time for making resolutions, often with self-improvement in mind. It might be a promise to get fitter or to eat less chocolate, or maybe an assertion that you’ll practise more and improve your recorder playing. If you find yourself making the latter resolution every year this new series of blog posts is designed to help you. 

The Technique Zone will be an ongoing series devoted to different aspects of recorder technique. I don’t have all the answers, but hopefully my tips may help you to better understand what you could do to become a better player.

How to use this series

It’s easy when you’re filled with new year enthusiasm to promise yourself you’ll work on every aspect of your playing this year. After all, the elements of recorder playing – breathing, tone production, articulation, fingering etc. – are all interlinked. However, if you wish retain some sanity I would warn against this! Instead, take a few minutes to think about your playing. Which elements of technique do you find hardest? Be honest about your weaknesses. Pick one area to focus on and hone for a while before you then move on to tackle something else.

We all know how difficult it is to multitask. Trying to work on too many things at once brings a distinct danger of doing nothing really well. Instead, take time to really polish one aspect of your playing – your tone, for instance – to the point where the good habits you’ve learnt become second nature. At that point you can consider another area of your technique, safe in the knowledge that you’ll maintain the good habits you’ve already built up while learning something new.

Alongside the Technique Zone I plan to run another series of posts, devoted to the thorny issue of practising effectively and efficiently. But more on these in due course….

The subject of this first Technique Zone post will be posture and remaining relaxed while playing, so let’s get started….

Let’s warm up

Photograph by Zoltan Tasi

It’s easy to throw yourself into practising without a second thought, filled with enthusiasm to make immediate progress. Don’t neglect the process of warming up first though. A runner would never begin their training with a high speed sprint. Instead, they’ll start with a gentle jog to warm up. Likewise, a gymnast or ballet dancer will do some stretches to limber up their muscles, ready for the demands they’ll make of their bodies. Even cats stretch when they wake up - they must instinctively know it’s good for their wellbeing!

Playing a musical instrument may not seem quite as physical as running a marathon or dancing a jive, but its repetitive nature can be equally damaging over long periods. It’s easy to get caught up in the music you’re practising and before you know it an hour has gone by, leaving you feeling tired and stiff. Instead, take a few minutes before you begin to stretch, making sure the key muscles you need are warm and relaxed. Tension is one of your biggest enemies and you’ll always play better when you’re relaxed.

An excellent resource for this is a sheet of warm ups published by the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine. Why not print a copy to keep in your recorder case for reference?

Before I move on to talk about posture, can I also urge you to take regular breaks whenever you’re playing. This is important whether you’re practising alone at home or playing with others. Sitting still for too long takes a huge toll on our bodies. It’s important to get up, walk around and stretch for a few minutes every half hour or so. Your body will thank you and your concentration levels will benefit too.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Most of us do much of our playing sitting down, especially when rehearsing with others. If you generally sit to practise I encourage you to sometimes ditch the chair and stand for a while if you can. Standing restricts your breathing less, encourages you to move more often, increases blood flow around the body and will help your concentration too. Give it a try. There’s no need to ban yourself from sitting entirely, but it’s good to change things up from time to time.

Having said all that, a lot of what I’m about to say is equally applicable whether you’re sitting or standing. But let’s take a moment to think about the part of our posture which does change when we sit – our lower body and legs.

Setting good foundations

If you’re sitting down, please stand up for a moment and consider your lower body posture. You don’t need a recorder for this – just your body and some self awareness. You might find it helpful to stand in front of a long mirror if you have one.

Stand as though you were about to play the recorder and look down at your feet. Are they close together or spread far apart? Move them into different positions and note the effect this has on your stability and balance. With your feet very close together your core muscles have to work harder to maintain your balance. Remember, you use these same core muscles to control your breathing, so you don’t want to overwork them.

Now move your feet a little further from each other – about hip width apart – and see how much more stable you feel. While you’re there, spread your feet even further apart and note the way your upper leg muscles then have to work harder.

While you’re standing, consider your knees. I know you don’t use your knees to play the recorder, but if you have them locked and stiff that makes your leg muscles work harder, increasing tension. Instead, keep them slightly soft so you’re not stiffly locked in position.

Please take a seat….

Now we’ve set the foundations, let’s sit down and consider the effect this has on our balance and posture.

When you play sitting down do you use the back rest of your seat? In many places recorder players meet to rehearse we’re provided with cheap, moulded plastic chairs. Heaven knows who such seats were designed for, but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t the human form! If you sit back in many of these chairs it’s almost impossible not to slouch. Instead I encourage you to sit forward a little on your seat. You don’t need to be perched on the edge, but leave a little fresh air between your back and the chair so you can use your body’s own balance mechanisms.

Now you’re sitting down, keep your feet about hip width apart and place them beneath your knees, so you have a right angle at both your knees and hips. Note how this gives you a feeling of stability and balance. Now try tucking your feet beneath your chair or stretching them languidly out in front of you. Both of these actions deprive you of balance, don’t they? Tucking your feet under your seat tips your upper body forwards, while stretching the legs throws you backwards. Either way, you have to engage your core muscles (the ones you’ll be using to breath and blow) much more to maintain an upright playing position.

Bring yourself back to that balanced position – feet beneath your knees, with right angles at knees and hips. Now gently rock your upper body back and forth a little, gradually reducing the movement until you come to rest in the centre. Think of the Weeble toys made for children from the 1970s and you’ll have an idea what I mean. If you’re of the wrong generation to recall Weebles you can see what I mean here!

When you reach the centre you’ve found your ischial tuberosities – your sitting bones. You’re now sitting in a balanced way, as nature intended. By doing this you minimise the work the muscles in your back and core need to do.

Let’s return to the back of your seat again for a moment. If you can sit back and use the backrest for gentle support while sitting well, that’s great, but remember this isn’t possible with all chair designs. I almost always sit forward on my seat while playing because doing so puts less strain on my body than fighting a badly designed chair. Don’t forget you can always relax back into the chair during rests!

If you’d like to see a visual demonstration of the ideas I’ve just talked about this short video may be helpful:

Find a balance between relaxation and sitting up straight

We’ve all been told at some point in our lives (often by parents or school teachers) to, “Sit up straight!” But just how straight should you be? If you actively try to straighten your back you’re almost certainly going to end up with tense, sore muscles after a while. Our spines have their own natural curves which we shouldn’t attempt to expunge. Instead, try a method often espoused by Alexander Technique teachers. Imagine a thread running right along your spine, through your head and out of the top of your crown. Feel this thread gently lifting you, so you feel taller, but without straining to do so. Sitting well should use as little effort as possible, while avoiding being so relaxed that you slouch!

Head up, chin in, shoulders down!

It’s very easy to get into bad habits with your upper body while playing the recorder. We naturally feel an instinct to reach for the mouthpiece, stretching our chin forward. When we get tired and tense our shoulders will rise and in moments of stress (such as that tricky bit with all the accidentals!) we forget to check our posture.

Use a mirror to observe the position of your shoulders when you’ve been playing for a while. Now roll them in a circular motion, back and forth, dropping your arms at your sides, so gravity pulls their weight gently downwards. Are your shoulders further from your earlobes than they were a few moments ago? I bet they are! While you’re here, are your shoulders back and inline with your body, allowing your shoulder blades to form a V shape? Or maybe they’re rounded and pulled forwards. If you’re not sure, try rolling them forwards and see how much more strain that puts on your upper back muscles. A physiotherapist who used to treat my back would often say, “Shoulders back, boobs out!” to remind me to maintain good upper body posture. Now I realise this phrase only works for 50% of the population, but gents can try “shoulders back, chest out” instead!

Finally, think about the position of your chin. We spend too much of our lives today with our heads down over computers and mobile phones, often sticking our chins forward. The average human head weighs 5 kilos, so sitting with your head stretched forward puts enormous strain on your neck, often resulting in tension and headaches. As someone who has an unusually flexible spine and neck I’m frequently painfully aware of this fact because my natural vulnerability to overextension.

Try instead to tuck your chin in and keep your head lifted rather than bent forward. Doing this not only allows a freer path for the air passing through your windway when playing your recorder, but also helps you avoid tension headaches and knots in your neck and shoulder muscles. It may be you need to lift your music stand a little higher to encourage a healthy head position when playing, although I’m aware this can cause problems seeing the music with certain types of glasses.

Next time you play your recorders, try to be more aware of your head, chin and shoulders, focusing on keeping your chin tucked in, shoulders low and relaxed. Most importantly, make sure you always bring the recorder’s mouthpiece to you, rather than stretching your body towards it. This is particularly important for bass recorders and larger.

Knick basses or those with crooks have lots of points of adjustment and don’t overlook the way you support the recorder either. A sling can be helpful in taking the weight of the instrument, but maybe try it slung diagonally across your body if it causes discomfort when hung around your neck. Another option is a spike attached to the bottom of your bass, so the floor takes the weight, rather than you. With bigger basses make sure your seat is at the right height to allow you to play comfortably without having to actively stretch to reach the mouthpiece.

Are you now sitting more comfortably?

All the tips I’ve shared with you today are things I’ve picked up during over forty years of playing, as I’ve learnt to be comfortable in my own body. None of them are groundbreaking concepts, but they are easily overlooked.

When music making is your passion it’s easy to get caught up in the moment, neglecting your physical wellbeing. We spend many hours of our lives making repetitive movements. This can be damaging, but it needn’t be if you simply think about what you’re doing a little more.

How to practise what you’ve learnt…

Practising good posture shouldn’t be something you only consider when playing your recorder. Instead, make a point of sitting really well for some time every single day. OK, there will be times when you just want to lounge languidly on the sofa, and that’s absolutely fine! But find moments in the day when you’re doing something simple (maybe while you’re eating breakfast or as you sit on the platform waiting for a train) and consciously check your posture. Find your ischial tuberosities, drop your shoulders, lift your head and take some deep, relaxed breaths. Doesn’t it feel marvellous?! Try to bring this habit into your practice time too. Maybe follow some deep, relaxed breathing with a few minutes of long notes or a simple folk tune where you can think about how you’re sitting without the distraction of other technical challenges.

Have you picked up other useful tips on maintaining good posture while playing? If so please do share them with us in the comments below so others can benefit too. I’d love these Technique Zone posts to become an interactive resource where we can all learn from each other. In the meantime, keep relaxed and tension-free and I’ll see you again soon in the Technique Zone!