Your Fingers And Tongue Sculpt Your Sound

The radiating sound column appears as the material to be worked out, and actually sculpted by the articulation between your fingers and your tongue, which materialize the link between

• your body / transmitter
• and your instrument / amplifier.

As A Chatty Player With Skillful Fingers

down to your fingertips

Your fingers interact with the instrument from the initial emission, for the note pitch, and are driven by your musical intent, as Dominique Hoppenot recalls it in Le violon intérieur.

« (…) fingers transmit the expression of what is decided elsewhere, and the difficulty in developing a gesture is more often due to the confusion of a mental image than to a mechanical inability. »

Dominique Hoppenot, Le violon intérieur (Translated by Guy Robert)

Your fingers get positionned before your tongue interacts, without disturbing this first note.

let your tongue take language

« The first note is played without the tongue, thanks to your back muscles ; the following one extends it by letting the tongue go back down. »

Robert Pichaureau, Expressions favorites (Translated by Guy Robert)

Then, only the light tip of your tongue (Joe Allard would rather talk about the « edge ») is sufficient to detach notes, withdrawing backwards and aligned with the reed : the tongue edge lets the reed vibrate, which you must still feel and visualize deep in your belly bottom.

We would begin the tone with no tongue, get very loud and while the note was still going on, he’d have us barely articulate. We would touch the reed as lightly as possible, so that the tongue would interrupt the vibration of the reed without stopping it, teaching us to barely tongue. He’d have us practice it loud so that we’d learn to use a light articulation even though we were playing loud.

Lots of students tongue hard when they play loud ; Joe’s exercise separated that. 

Kenneth Radnofsky about Joe Allard

« Allard preferred the nomenclature “edge“ rather than tip, because “tip means an extreme point“. He purported that speech books with which he was familiar described the tongue as having an edge and a blade, the blade being the surface of the tongue.  »

Debra Jean McKim about Joe Allard

« The actual sounding of the articulation comes with the release of the reed. Conceptually, the tongue can be seen as an extension of the reed. »

David Liebman, Developing A Personal Saxophone Sound

Finding Your Personal Style

The dynamics of this musical sculpture stems from the speech consistency built on your musical idea (being the mental driver, as George Kochevitsky explains it in The Art Of Piano Playing), carried on by the sound vibration, your fingering, and finally the tongue acuteness of the wind player.

following your fingers and ears

As seen in other topics (the instrument, highs & lows, the sensations, the convergence), your proprioceptive sensations drive the instrument, following the path :

• brain > internal vibration > fingers & embouchure > instrument.

At the last step, your fingers stay close to the instrument keys, your mouth behaves as an extension of the mouthpiece, and the tongue as an extension of the reed.

Thinking your sensations first (from your natural breathing), while forgetting your connections with your instrument (i.e. your fingers – and embouchure), make your fingers work out your musical idea and not disturb it. In other words, your musical intent drives your expression, through your technique.

{ Ludwig Deppe (1828-1890) wrote that tone must be produced, not by finger stroke (…) but by coordinated action of all parts of the arm. }

Ludwig Deppe was opposed to hammering the keys, saying that one should not strike but should caress the keys. (…) Each finger had to work under the conscious direction of the will.

He spoke of a mental map of the entire route from brain to fingertips and stressed that, together with fingers and hands, the mind should practice also.

(…) Training the ear went hand in hand with technical training.

« { Amid all the noise made by those who came after Deppe, a pianist and teacher by the name of Oscar Raif made some extremely interesting experiments. }

Raif concluded that it would be worthless in developing piano technique to attempt to augment the agility of each individual finger.

The difficulty lies not in the movement itself, but in the precise timing of the successive movements of the fingers. Since timing is the product of perception and will, it should be clear that technique is initiated in the central nervous system. From there, movements must be coordinated as part of one action and governed bv our will.

(…) The finished performance must be preceded by frequently repeated, consciously willed primary movements. »

« Any normal bone-muscle apparatus is sufficient for the development of a high degree of technique because of the brain behind the hands.« 

« (…) first, fingers are prepared on the keys to be pressed. Each finger then presses with a light downward movement only, never leaving its key. (Thus the size of finger movement is equal to the depth of the key). And playing proceeds very slowly, pianissimo, with the whole attention concentrated on fingertips.« 

« The musical idea, always going slightly ahead, should stimulate technical development. If technical aspects take the leading role, there is the danger of degradation into superficial virtuosity.« 

George Kochevitsky, The Art Of Piano Playing

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The Sound Trunk

Where you realize you are perched on top of a virtual trunk.

Mastering Your Perching Up

Merging yourself with your instrument makes you vertically work out your sound column, letting your relaxation rolling downwards ; then, the part of your body located above your diaphragm gets oblivious, while you can visualize the embouchure at the sound source, as your vital center in your belly bottom.

« You feel your upper body components to become lighter, as if they were freed from gravity, while you get invaded by an immovable, but not heavy, stability feeling in your abdomen. »

Michel Ricquier, L’utilisation des ressources intérieures – André Lysbeth, Revue mensuelle Yoga (Translated by Guy Robert)

{Grigori Kogan in his lectures and later (1958) in his small book U vrat masterslva (“At the Gates of Mastery“) put forward as psychological prerequisites of successful pianistic work three basic principles :

(1) The ability to hear inwardly the musical composition which has to be realized on the instrument — to hear it extremely clearly as a whole, as well as exact in all its details.

(2) The most passionate and persistently intense desire to realize that glowing musical image.

(3) The full concentration of one’s whole being on his task in everyday practice as well as on the concert stage.}

The psycho-technical school advocates the free and complete use of all parts of the pianist’s apparatus, beginning at the fingertips and including the torso. This technique is universal, or in other words, the really natural technique of coordination.

George Kochevitsky, The Art Of Piano Playing

get rooted

Hence, your real physiologic trunk fades out behind the sound column, while your pelvis and lower limbs appear now as a virtual tree trunk, the roots of which ensure your posture stability and propagate the vibrating sound.

Grass cannot grow without its roots. Same thing with your sound : if you don’t provide it with roots, it crashes down, it’s as simple as that.

You can hold on to this natural breathing only if you stay relaxed. For that, you need to stand grounded on your feet, well balanced around your center of gravity.

When seated, you should consciously feel your buttocks and your feet. Anyway, you must be grounded, then you can let your relaxation spread downwards.

Robert Pichaureau, A tous vents (Translated by Guy Robert)

« You feel as if you were changed into a statue. You hang to the ground and not to your trumpet.« 

Robert Pichaureau, Expressions favorites (Translated by Guy Robert)

The main idea consists in using gravity, instead of struggling with it, and in pulling power from the ground.

To achieve this, the musician should picture himself getting rooted like a tree : he then pushes downwards and the ground sends this input power back to him.

Marie-Christine Mathieu, Gestes et postures du musicien (Translated by Guy Robert)

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The Sound Springs From Its Source

Mastering your internal vibration progressively makes you precisely localize its source.

Spreading Pleasure

You should internally visualize the source of your sound at the bottom center point of your diaphragm, down to your heels and even beneath : this is the Japanese Hara or the Chinese Tan Tsienn, representing the location of universal energy, or of your original breath. This inner process is unveiled in George Kochevitsky‘s Art Of Piano Playing.

down to the roots

Concentrating on the source of vibration, you can imagine it is located as deep as possible in the ground. Then, you let the vibrating sound flow around, and do not push it outwards so that it keeps its fullness while resonating in the instrument.

Avoiding any unnecessary stresses, the wind player, or the pianist as well, can imagine and picture his vibration spreading in the ground.

« { Grigori Kogan in his lectures and later (1958) in his small book U vrat masterslva (“At the Gates of Mastery“) put forward as psychological prerequisites of successfulpianistic work three basic principles :

(1) The ability to hear inwardly the musical composition which has to be realized on the instrument — to hear it extremely clearly as a whole, as well as exact in all its details.

(2) The most passionate and persistently intense desire to realize that glowing musical image.

(3) The full concentration of one’s whole being on his task in everyday practice as well as on the concert stage. }

The most thoughtful and advanced musicians (…) insisted that “the technical training from the ‘outside’ must be replaced by technical training from the ‘inside’. “

Grigori Kogan called this third main trend in the theory of piano playing the psychotechnical school.»

« Hugo Riemann (1849-1919) wrote :

It is impossible to develop velocity otherwise than through exercise of the telegraphic apparatus from brain to muscles. The process from within-outward cannot be replaced by anything.“

George Kochevitsky, The Art Of Piano Playing

From this point down, your back muscles extend the inhalation process towards exhalation, converging from the diaphragm to the transverse abdominus muscle, and the sound column enters into vibration along its whole height, feeding the vocal cords, as  Alfred Tomatis shows it in The Ear And The Voice.

customizing your sound

The real singer or instrumentist triggers his inner vibration on the « ah » vowel – mentally visualized at his heels level – thanks to his down-flowing relaxation extending his natural inhaling : he should then maintain this tension-free feeling, regardless to the pitch height, thereby ensuring an homogeneous radiating sound, through the whole tessiture of his intrument.

You can then appreciate your personal tone.

« Because of this activation and the special ability of the skeleton to transmit sounds, the control adopted by the bony voice is direct, conserves energy and maintains the integrity of the full spectrum of sound.

This production has nothing in common with ordinary vocal emission, even if that emission sounds easy. This degree of control is difficult, if not impossible, when we use only air conduction. Bone filters for higher sounds at the expense of lows, making sounds that are particularly rich and dense.

(…) It is easy to see the advantages of an emission that is easily controlled and rich in high frequencies. It has a propensity to align the spine. This in turn facilitates emission, releasing progressively more energy.

If [the sound] is not going to come from the mouth or nose, where will it come from ? You make it with the whole body through the excitation of the spinal column and the contact between the larynx and the cervical vertebrae.

Bone conduction has a special timber, rich, heady and colorful. It has an ethereal quality and seems to come from outside the body. It literally awakens the environment with a smooth, vibrant and dense sonority. It carries with ease.

What is more, when you have it nailed, this sound can be quickly modulated over the entire vocal range without costing you any effort.»

Alfred Tomatis, The Ear And The Voice

center yourself to better focus

On her side, Dominique Hoppenot shows us how your downward letting-go sets free your internal vibration control.

The player knows how to observe himself breathing lower and deeper in order to pick up his sound at its source, at the very end of his natural inhaling : to achieve this, he internalizes his feeling at the bottom-point of the diaphragm and lets it propagate down to his heels.

The relaxation flows down to the effortless vibration starting with full grain and fat : this is sound laying.

«As for a singer, the violinist sound comes from inside. Your job is actually to free your sound, the sound that you virtually have, that is to say your voice.

There is nothing to search elsewhere than inside yourself.« 

« (…) you can never escape the inner searching of your sound, the “deep dive“, as the only process able to reveal your sound asa demonstration of your “being“.« 

« Il faut concevoir son émission comme si elle libérait une conception sonore latente, déjà intériorisée, un son pouvant en quelque sorte se propager dans l’espace sans le secours de l’archet.« 

« You must understand your emission as if it freed a latent sound, already internalized, a sound which can somehow spread in space without the aid of the bow.« 

« You should know how to wait until the last second before landing smoothly. (…) When you start a sound, you must precisely know how to stop it in every imaginable way.« 

« (…) seating and concentrating in your Hara are meant to radiate as much energy as possible to give maximum musical power to your tactile ends.« 

« The virtual center of this process – which is the true breathing center – is thus in the middle of the belly, and not at all in the chest containing the lungs (which are nonetheless the real physiological location of the breathing function !…).

Concentrating is primarily going back to the center of the body and settling there, instead of being played by divergent and opposing forces.

Hara, from Eastern people, and especially the Japanese, is the crucial point of our body. Located at the lumbosacral junction, it coincides with our center of gravity. Hara is not a specific organ that could be located anatomically, but it is the physical area where our strength is concentrated, where our stability is anchored.

Being positioned means to settle in one’s Hara, together with one’s center, as the concentrum point.»

Dominique Hoppenot, Le violon intérieur (Translated by Guy Robert)

Concentrate on your diaphragm : you can feel it abasing itself while inhaling and pressing down on your viscera, then flexibly raising back up while you expire. You should unveil this focal point of your breathing, but how can you locate it ? Just feel the precise point where the pressure generated by the lowering-down diaphragm converges.

(…) at about 5 cm under your ombilic and 7 to 10 cm inside your belly.

Michel Ricquier, Traité méthodique de pédagogie instrumentale – André Van Lysebeth, Revue mensuelle Yoga (Translated by Guy Robert)

« When you have found this center point out, just keep your body weight concentrated there.« 

Michel Ricquier, L’utilisation de vos ressources intérieures dans votre activité instrumentale – André Van Lysebeth, Revue mensuelle Yoga (Translated by Guy Robert)

« You should feel and watch the point where inhaling becomes exhaling, realizing that you do not actually work your inhaling out. Visualizing this process is the whole point.« 

Robert Pichaureau, A tous vents (Translated by Guy Robert)

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