Reducing Tension Part One: Dynamics

My hope is these set of articles will help alleviate tension in your hands and body as you play.  Tension can lead to injures, speed barriers, and it can lead to unexpressive music.  Today I’m going to discuss using dynamics to combat tension.

Signs Of Tension

Some signs of tension include gritting of the teeth, contorted faces, forearms with bulging muscles and shoulders pulled up towards the neck. In addition, one of the number one signs of tension is non-movement in the body. Holding yourself rigid and excessively still. Holding your breath. All of these things can lead to injury over the long-term.

Constant Pressure = Tension

When you play, there’s a good chance the pressure in your arms and hands are staying the same throughout and not fluctuating much.  This kind of locked in pressure transfers to the music and long-term to the body.  Suppose you have 2 pounds of squeezing pressure in your hand/arm, if you hold that weight long enough, you are going to get tired, and the body isn’t going to relax.  Imagine taking a breath and holding it at the same pressure, certainly not relaxing to imagine.

How do we relax?  Telling yourself, “Just relax” is most likely going to have the opposite effect.  You’ll concentrate on relaxing and your mind will actually tense up your body. 

How do we override this?

I like the following exercise to get students used to what tension and release feels like. 

Dynamic Exercise

Play the strings as soft as you possibly can (REALLY soft, don’t worry too much about the tone).  Gradually increase the volume until you are playing extremely loud.  Now, start from extremely loud and go down to extremely soft.  Don’t go from one to the other very fast, we are talking very minute sensitive movements in volume.  Create drastic swells of volume.  You might even want to time yourself on a scale and say, I want this volume swell to last 30 seconds or something.  Make the changes from one level to another extremely small, in some cases it will be barely noticeable.

Naturally, as your body changes the pressure to change the corresponding volume, this “weight” in your hand/arms goes in an up and down motion in your body.  This has a relaxing effect.

It’s kind of like your lungs and your ribs work when you breathe.  You take in air, the lungs fill up, and then you gradually let it out and there is a release.    We will talk more about breathing later on.

The point of this exercise is:

• Training you to have a variety of dynamic levels on recall as you see fit
• Get you used to how each of the dynamic levels feels in your body (a rising and dropping feeling not just in the music but physically)

Stay with me here and don’t think I’m crazy 🙂

Imprinting Via The Body

Another thing you can do to help the body remember this relaxing feeling is as follows:

Stand up with your instrument.  As you increase the volume, try to stand up straighter.  As you drop the volume, gradually drop from your knees.  Coordinate the SOUND with your body.  This motion will create a rising and relaxing & sinking feeling.

As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if you’d like one-on-one instruction.  I teach banjo, fiddle, guitar, and music theory online.  I also work with songwriters to improve their songs.  Lastly, I have 20 years of experiencing helping young people develop their musical potential.