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ab ut he y
The
Practical Application
of Body Mapping
to Making Music
Revised Edition
by
Barbara Conable
designed by
Benjamin Conable
Andover Press
Also distributed by:
GIA Publications, Inc.
Chicago
Also by Barbara Conable:
How to Learn the Alexander Technique: A Manual for Students
The Structures and Movement of Breathing
Also available:
What Every Pianist Needs to Know about the Body
by Thomas Mark
with supplemental materials for organists by Roberta Gary and Thom Miles
G-6518
Andover Press
4427 N.Willis Blvd.
Portland, OR 97203
Thi_s book is published by Andover Press in Portland, Oregon, and is
available from Andover Press, www.bodymap.org. It is also distributed by
GIA Publications, Inc., Chicago, www.giamusic.com, in agreement with
Andover Press.
Also distributed by:
GIA Publications, Inc.
7404 S. Mason Ave.
Chicago, IL 60638
© 1998, 2000 by Barbara H. Conable and Benjamin J. Conable.
All rights reserved. Published 1998. Revised Edition 2000.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0:-9622595-6-X
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Musician Needs to Know about the Body is the name
are reading. It is also the name of a six-hour course for musicians.
E courses are
taught around the country by Andover Educators, a network of teachers
saving, securing, and enhancing musical careers with accurate
information about the body in movement. The course content is:
HOUR ONE: PUTTING MUSIC TRAINING ON A SECURE SOMATIC FOUNDATION.
Training musicians' movement by cultivating an accurate and adequate Body Map. Training
sensory discernment and responsiveness. Training inclusive attention, a musician's essential
skill.
HOUR TWO: MAPPING THE CORE OF THE BODY ANDTHE PLACES OF BALANCE.
How to stand and sit.
HOUR THREE: MAPPING THE ARM STRUCTURE.
Your four arm joints and how to u-se them. Whole body support for arm movement.
HOUR FOUR: BREATHING.
Mapping the structures and movement of breathing, including a dynamic, lengthening and
gathering core.
R FIVE: MAPPING THE LEGS.
Leg movement in playing and singing, with particular attention to pedaling. The reflex that
gives us a spring in the step (very useful for musicians in action).
HOUR SIX: PRACTICAL APPLICATION.
Bring your instruments.
For more information or to register for a course in your area call Andover
Educators at 503-286-8184, write to us at 4427 N. Willis Blvd., Portland, OR
97203, or visit us on line at www.bodymap.org.
COPYRIGHT Barbara Conable 2000
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Section heading ICON-section subject
Definition ICON-key terms defined
Instrument ICON-information specific to a
particular instrument, in this case piano
THE LEGS
THE HEAD
THE BRAIN
AND MOVEMENT
SUPPORTING
PRIMARY CONTROL
THE INSTRUMENT
BODY MAPPING
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This book is dedicated to beloved daughter and sons,
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Margaret, Paul, and Benjamin. 0
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I am continually thanking these people for being so smart: Bill Conable for comprehending
the presence and power of the Body Map, and its potential for change and refinement; Don
Zuckerman for describing the spinal dynamic in breathing and figuring out how to liberate it;
David Darling for introducing the joys of improvising to so many musicians (Music for People:
Toll free 877-44MUSIC); Michael J. G~lb for bringing Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping to us in such
a smart and engaging way (High Performance Learning, (703) 757-7007); and Benjamin
Conable, Andover Educators' sterling designer.
I am continually thanking my friends for their love, their support, and the joy of their
company: Azaria Akashi, Marty Buck, Melody Kornacker, Moira Logan, Alex Matthews, Diana
McCullough, Mary Schafer, Susan Stratton, Susan Van Pelt, and George and Kerry Zack.
Special thanks to Jenny Floch and Arthur Efland not only for their love and support, but also
for the use of their home and equipment, and their assistance in the design of this book.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I am continually (in my mind) thanking neuro-physiologists for what they are learning about
the brain in movement. If the mind is the felt-perception of what the brain does, then the self
is the felt-perception of what the whole body does. The mind and self in movement is what
this book is all about. My thanks go especially to Dr. T. Richard Nichols of the Emory
University School of Medicine, science advisor for Andover Educators.
I am continually thanking the pioneer Andover Educators who are teaching the course
WHAT EVERY MUSICIAN NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THE BODY, for which this book is the
text. Their spirit, their dedication to music, and their inventiveness are delightful. I am proud
to know them.
Thanks to David Gorman for The Body Moveable (available from Ampersand Printing Co. in
Guelph, Ontario), from which some of the images in this book are derived. Thanks also to his
sources, specifically I. A. Kapandji and Richer. Thanks also to Blandine Calais-Germain,
Stephen Rogers Peck, Werner Spalteholz, Clem W. Thompson, and Edward R. Tufte for their
books on anatomy, movement, and design.
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this book
This book is a primer, by the classic definition, a small book of elementary principles. In
this book, the principles (the fundamental, primary, or general truths) are those principles
on which a musician may reliably base a lifetime of playing. These principles will protect
a musician from injury, promote the physical freedom and sensitivity for technical
mastery, and secure the embodied intelligence that grounds musical power and subtlety.
The principles in this primer are the elemental foundation of music education. Musicians
teaching from these principles will see their students thrive. Students studying and
restudying these pages will find delight in their enhanced performance.
SOMATICS: The study of human movement; the study of the coordination of mind and
body in movement.
PRIMER: n., "a small book of elementary principles." American College Dictionary
PRINCIPLE: n.,"a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend; a
rule or law exemplified in natural phenomena, as in the working of a system, or the like; a
determining characteristic of something; an essential quality; an originating or actual
agency or force." American College Dictionary
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The Body Map is one's self-representation in one's own brain. If the Body Map is accurate, movement is F
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good. If the Body Map is inaccurate or inadequate, movement is inefficient and injury-producing. In
Body Mapping, one learns to gain access to one's own Body Map through self-observation and self
inquiry. One carefully examines what one believes to be true about his or her own body by comparing it 5
to accurate information provided by kinesthetic experience, mirrors, books, pictures, and teachers. One
thereby learns to recognize the source of inefficient or harmful movement and how to replace it with
movement that is efficient, elegant, direct and powerful based on the truth about one's structure,
function, and size.
Body Mapping was discovered by William Conable, professor of cello at the Ohio State
University School of Music. Conable inferred the Body Map from the congruence of
students' movement in playing with their reports of their notions of their own
structures. He observed that students move according to how they think they are
structured rather than according to how they are actually structured. When the
student's movement in playing becomes based on the student's direct perception of
their actual structure, it becomes efficient, expressive, and appropriate for making
music. Conable's observations are currently being confirmed by discoveries in neurophysiology
concerning the locations, functions, and coordination of body maps in movement.
Body Mapping is the conscious correction and refining of one's Body Map to produce efficient, graceful,
and coordinated movement. Body Mapping, over time, with application, allows any musician to play like
a natural.
he lexan er
This book is informed in part by its author's many years as an Alexander Technique teacher.
The Alexander Technique is a simple and practical method for improving ease and freedom
of movement, balance, support, flexibility, and coordination. It enhances performance and
is therefore a valued tool for musicians. Practice of the Technique refines and heightens
kinesthetic sensitivity, offering the performer a control which is fluid and lively rather than
rigid. It provides a means whereby the use of a part-a voice or an arm or a leg-is
improved by improving the use of the whole body, indeed, the whole self.
The benefits of the Alexander Technique are accomplished by the application in one's own experience of
what F. M. Alexander called constructive conscious control. Constructive conscious control is a process of
self-observation and self-analysis wherein one becomes intimately knowledgeable about one's own habits
so that one can suspend habitual muscular tightening (sometimes called downward pull), where it exists,
and gradually consciously replace it with constructive behavior. Often one simply suspends unnatural
movement and waits for natural movement to emerge. Natural movement is discovered to be that
movement which is most supported and sustained by the body's whole complex of postural reflexes,
including the much prized "primary control", the natural lengthening and gathering of the spine in
movement, which depends on a dynamic, initiating relationship of the head to the spine.
H
E
A
D
&
N
E
c
Every musician needs to
K
know that when neck
6 muscles are free the head
E
balances beautifully at its
T
center on the spine. w
E
E
II
T St
There's a joint there called the
A.O. joint because the atlas
(the top vertebra) meets the
occiput (the base of the skull.)
As the A.O. joint goes,
so goes the world!
THIS - IS
-
distance distance
If your head already balances beautifully on its spine,
a party!
H
E
A
D
&
musician needs to
N
know that neck muscles must E
c
stay very free in playing, because K
Freeing
when neck muscles tense, the
your neck is - whole body tenses, and that's 7
bad. Free is good.
the key to
freeing the
whole of
Some of these
are neck muscles,
too!
Food goes here.
Air goes here.
This is the thyroid gland. All the rest of the neck,
~- everything in dark gray,
is musclel
Blood moves through here.
elebrat;e!
If you already have a very free neck,
