THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE AND  VIOLIN/VIOLA

 SHOULDER REST ERGONOMICS

As a method for developing and maintaining a balanced coordination, the Alexander Technique has grown enormously popular among students and professionals in the performing arts. It is taught at leading music and drama schools such as Juilliard, the Royal College of Music, and the Paris Conservatory; and Alexander teachers are employed at such performing centers as the Metropolitan Opera and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, to mention only a few.

The Alexander Technique provides musicians, in particular, with a refined understanding of the obstacles they must contend with in mastering their instruments or their voices. Thus, it inevitably confronts the difficulties that many violinists and violists find in dealing with current designs of shoulder rests—particularly the common “bar" type.

The Problem

Upper string players studying the Alexander Technique develop a keen awareness of the muscular dynamics involved in supporting an instrument between the chin and shoulder areas. They usually realize that they have to raise the shoulder and hold it tense to conform to most types of rests. Then they often find they need to bend and tense their necks to make a matching effortful contact on the chin rest above. They see how these combined tensions block the free flow of coordination between the torso and the arms and hands—a flow that the Alexander Technique develops and enhances throughout a person’s carriage in every aspect of living. Sustaining shoulder and neck tensions during practice, rehearsal, and performance can result in permanent tightnesses that may lead to any number of musicians’ injuries—injuries which Alexander lessons often resolve after therapies fail because they only treat symptoms instead of addresing the underlying causes that may be rooted in a player's general carriage and manner of control.

Once violinists and violists experience the balanced flow of coordination that Alexander lessons cultivate, they realize how poorly they are being served by current shoulder rests. Many players try to deal with the situation either by adding extra padding to their shoulder rest or by increasing the height of their chin rest, or both. But most still long for a better, more strategically located support that will leave the shoulder, arm, and hand free to function in a way that is fully integrated with a balanced neck, head, and torso dynamic. 

The Solution

Through close scrutiny over thirty years of teaching the Alexander Technique to professional violinists and violists, I and my collaborators have developed a perspective on adequate support underneath an instrument. We have found that a primary contact, of an appropriate height for each individual, can be established at the collar-bone, right beneath the chin/jaw and can extend out along the collar-bone and slightly over the top of the shoulder, short of the shoulder joint itself. This primary collar-bone contact allows for a directly-aligned oppositional pressure to be made by the chin at the chin rest above that requires very little neck muscle effort to sustain. Once this collaborative relationship between the collar-bone and chin contacts is established satisfactorily for each shape and size of player, a corresponding, supplementary source of support can then be more accurately established on the chest (rib cage).

This secondary contact on the chest seems to function best if it is situated on the rib area just beneath the collar-bone. In most cases, only a small area of contact (about 2 to 2 1/2 inches in diameter) at the chest seems necessary, as long as it is positioned in the most complementary relation to the collar-bone portion of the rest and is adjusted to rest evenly on the player's chest/rib cage. From this combination of balanced contacts between the chin, collar-bone, and chest, we have found that it removes the need for constantly supporting the instrument with the thumb, hand, and arm. They are enabled to remain completely free to serve the basic demands of playing: fingering, shifting, vibrato, etc. Of course, the relationship between collar-bone shape and chest shape often differs from player to player according to physique, style of playing, size of instrument, and type of chin rest; therefore, a considerable variety of adjustment options in angle and height of both the collar-bone rest and the chest rest is essential. We feel the Portabene Rest meets all these requirements.

Joe Armstrong, B.S. Music Ed., MA, Teacher of the Alexander Technique
Certified by the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique, London, England
www.joearmstrong.info
November, 2006

November, 2006