Practice Part 1 supplement — Finding Relaxation Through Procedure

 
Jazz maestro Alan Dawson, whose teaching has reached generations of drummers.  Image via blogorhythms.wordpress.com.

Jazz maestro Alan Dawson, whose teaching has reached generations of drummers.  Image via blogorhythms.wordpress.com.

 

As one works to locate and remove effort, it becomes clear that effort is easier to spot in its physical manifestations.  Someone practicing a musical instrument may have an easier time isolating points of effort (tightening fingers and wrists, for instance) than, say, a novelist who labors over a particular plot point (though her posture and strained facial muscles might tip her off to the presence of effort).

Many artists develop procedures to facilitate their own relaxation, physical and mental.  Their rituals and procedures reduce decision making and thereby simplifies the practice agenda.  Some examples include . . . 

  • The procedure of copying work by others and then letting this give way to ideas of one's own.  This is the basis for Clark Terry's "Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate" formulation.  In earlier posts, I have pointed to examples in writingpainting, and filmmaking.  
     

  • Joan Didion's writing routine is to start by retyping the last few pages of her previous day's output.  This gets her into a flow, and then she keeps doing.
     

  • Bill T. Jones's dance process starts with a perfunctory execution and naming-out-loud of the dance moves, and then he proceeds through various steps toward full-blown expression.
     

  • Sanford Meisner's Repetition Exercise is a procedural method of accessing one's acting intuition. 
     

  • Establishing a practice schedule, so that the question "when and where and for how long shall I work?" has been settled in advance.  This removes the moral effort of asking and answering the question "shall I practice?"
     

  • Establishing a practice routine, so that the question "How shall I start?" has been answered.  For instance, Hemingway always ended his writing day at a point where the starting point for the next day was clear.  He didn't have to make a decision first thing in his writing day.  It had been made at the end of the previous day.  

    Here, Drummer Alan Dawson demonstrates a warmup exercise he developed called The Rudimental Ritual.  

 

The term ritual is worth noting, as this exercise helps a musician enter into a mindset focused on work, so that she gets warmed up and in a flow, ready to engage some particular problem.  Some writers begin their day with 30 minutes of free writing—nothing to do with their current work, simply a way of getting the words flowing onto a page and opening the conduit from their intuition.

  • Establish practice rules.  For instance, "I will take a five-minute break every half hour," or "No email before noon" or "I will stop after three pages."  Again, this relieves the conscious mind from answering questions that might otherwise distract the artist.

We think of procedures as confining, but as we see here, well-defined procedures can be vehicles of expressive freedom.


Thank you for reading.

Practice part 1 — Practice to Remove Effort

 
Jimi Hendrix, who was said to have had his guitar slung around him at all times, allowing the constant practice that produced the effortless virtuosity with which he changed rock and roll.  Image via reddit.com.

Jimi Hendrix, who was said to have had his guitar slung around him at all times, allowing the constant practice that produced the effortless virtuosity with which he changed rock and roll.  Image via reddit.com.

 

This series on practice is aimed at exploring not only the practice of performance (musical instruments, voice, dance, acting, and so forth) but also the practice of making (writing, composing, painting and sculpting, choreographing, and so forth).  In both realms of activity, practice might be viewed as a gateway to more fluid creativity.


When a beginning drummer enters a practice space, her first impulses (like those of the beginning writer, dancer, painter) are to 'let it out,' though what it is may not yet be known to her.  The thrill of doing something with this newfound medium is foremost in her mind, and this inevitably leads her to go for it, to smash and crash and rock out.  Doing so, she hopes to find expression.

And then this goes nowhere.  The drummer is disheartened.  She doesn’t feel she is quite letting it out, perhaps because she has not yet realized how much effort she has inserted between herself and her ideas.  She’s gripping her sticks tightly, making faces, hitting loudly.  What awaits her is the discovery that progress will come with the removal of effort.

The point is made brilliantly in this Ted Talk from classical pianist Benjamin Zander.   The relevant segment is found from 1:15 to 4:15 in his presentation.

Thus, whenever we creators are in our practice room, writing desk, or art studio, we might constantly ask ourselves, “Where am I feeling effort, and what happens when I remove it?”  Answering those questions illuminates the way forward.

The point of practicing any creative activity is to align one's output with one's intuition.  And too often, what stands between those two is effort and all of the inefficiency it interposes between the artist and her intuition.  Effort seduces us into thinking we are smashing through some wall.  Too rarely do we realize that this wall is the effort we are injecting into the process.  By removing it, we learn to get out of our own way.  We find that our deepest expression is within us and that we access it not through effort but through relaxation.


Thank you for reading.