On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Kevin Hollis wrote:
> I feel that I've worked too hard at breathing over the last 6 months and > want to figure out how to 'let breathing happen' rather than thinking about > every breath. Apart from taking Yoga/Tai-Chi classes can someone suggest > excersizes for taking my brain somewhere else while I breathe ?
Interestingly, working on fast Handel coloratura pieces has helped me make major progress in this regard. The only way to do the coloratura right is to make the brain do all the work musically, but just allow the coloratura to happen physically. Because of the speed of the pieces, I find there is no TIME to think about the breaths, or to collapse the posture, etc. As a result, things work exactly as they are supposed to - the breaths just go in when I allow the sound to stop. As a result, I find that - as the much-disputed William Shakespeare (the OTHER one) described - my throat is not tired at all, but my breath muscles get a major workout, only because they remain CONSTANTLY ACTIVE from beginning to end of the pieces. Right now, I'm torturing them with "Furibondo il spento" from PARTENOPE.
The other thing that helped me a lot on slower pieces is to stop thinking about how I take the breath in, and instead start focusing on how I allow the sound to taper off at the ends of phrases - a delicate balance between trying to "muscle" out that last bit of breath to sustain the sound/vibration to the very end, and totally "collapsing" (i.e., just shutting the breath down suddenly). The thing is to simply allow the breath to taper off gradually by gradually allowing the support to "release" - which, surprise surprise, creates a vacuum which is immediately filled as soon as the sound/vibrations stop.
Yes, of course there are still some "difficult" phrases that I still prepare for by "tanking up" (silently) beforehand. But I'm finding that these phrases are fewer and farther between. I'm also finding that "less is more" - and that feeling constantly "full of breath" is NOT always the ideal approach. When you finally reach a point where you're just allowing the breath in (instead of consciously drawing it in), you'll find that your body naturally allows in only as much as it actually needs to sing the next phrase - no more. I also find that it's becoming less and less conscious - the inhalation truly is "just happening", much to my great surprise and delight. I continue to be amazed by the fact that this actually works!
But I will say that I've been working hard for this Zen process (this non-effort) to work, with my teacher, for a year and a half - and it's only now that it is indeed working much more of the time than it isn't.
KM === On Neil Shicoff - http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html On yours truly - http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
+-------------------------------------------------------+ | For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that | | appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. | | - James 4:14 | +-------------------------------------------------------+
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