“Got this feeling in my body”
— from “Can’t Stop the Feeling”, by Timberlake, Martin, and Shellback
“If you don’t stand like that, it ain’t gonna sound like that.”
— Carlos Santana
Philosopher and educator Rudolph Steiner believed that we feel music as the urge to move. Sometimes we physically move with the music, other times we choose to feel the movement within our bodies.
Remember the idea that “Emotion is Energy in Motion”. Music stimulates us to feel energy movement within our bodies, and invites us to respond with our own physical action. When we desire to express our musical feelings from the inside out, this urge must be translated in part into bodily movements that produce sound.
Depending on the physical characteristics of our instrument or voices, even big emotions may actually need to be translated into quite delicate nuances of movement in order to produce the sounds we desire. When that movement isn’t enough to encompass the emotion we feel, we can hold it inside, or we may move, sway, or position our bodies to more fully express what we’re feeling.
Discovering the way to move which both produces the sound we desire and satisfies our innate urge to move with the music can open new doors of expression in our music. Earlier in this chapter we explored the physical movements on our instruments required to express the musical language of emotion through Timbre, Dynamics, Pitch and Rhythm. Now let’s fuse these movements with the more primal movements that originate inside us.
The following exercises will help us unleash the emotion in our bodies.
| TIPS: 1. With all of the exercises in this section, it can be very helpful to close your eyes. When we remove the visual sense, which is so dominant in much of our human experience, we heighten our focus on our senses of movement and hearing, which are more directly involved in music making. 2. The movement and “air play” exercises may seem awkward or silly. Try to suspend any self-consciousness or Inner Critic. Remember that feeling awkward or silly is a feeling, meaning you’re touching some deep emotion! It may be not be comfortable, but don’t let that Inner Critic cheat you of the profound musical possibilities that happen when you connect with music and emotion on such a deep level. If you have difficulty with this, it may be helpful to intentionally try an “as silly as possible” version of the exercise, where you make feeling silly the goal rather than something to be embarrassed about or suppress. |
EXERCISE: Dance Party!First, let’s loosen up by moving our bodies without the complication of playing an instrument. You can do this standing, or seated if you prefer.
If you’ve read Chapter 12: The Beat, you might like to experiment with the Rhythm Dance, letting your feet follow the meter and the rest of your body express any other urges, with swaying, clapping, bopping your head, wild arm movements, or whatever you feel moved to do, to express the energy you feel inside. |
EXERCISE: Air PlayWe’ve all heard of “Air Guitar”—but we can play any instrument in the air. And while some consider “air guitar” to be a joke, it’s actually an excellent way to visualise and feel expressive instrument playing without the usual technical restrictions or mental load of “getting the notes right”. It can help you to actually release and move beyond restrictions, bridging the gap between freely moving to the music and moving emotion into your instrument.
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EXERCISE: Moving into Your Expression
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Depending on the musical context, moving freely as you play may be desirable or a real faux-pas. For example, I remember vividly how irritated my high school orchestra conductor would be if he noticed anyone tapping their foot during practice or a performance. I learned to tap my toes inside my shoe instead! At the same time, the lead violinist, standing for their big solo part, would be admired for how they swayed evocatively as they played. And nobody who’s ever been to a live rock gig needs to be told that the way a band moves energetically on stage is a huge part of the audience’s experience of the music. This visual aspect of an audience’s experience is something we’ll explore more in Chapter 18: Performance.
The important thing here is that when we constrain our physical movement during practice, we are actually suppressing some of the emotional energy that could come out through our playing. When we learn to better recognise, appreciate, and channel that emotional energy, through allowing it to express freely through any movement you feel the urge for, we become able to express it more freely and fully through our instrument.
So for now, it’s fine to ignore any constraints there may be for your expected performance situations. Our goal is to get more deeply in touch with that instinct to move, and the way we can connect with the “energy in motion” emotions inside of us and start bringing them out through our playing—whether or not our wild, uninhibited practice-room movements are something we ever share an audience!