Friday, August 20, 2010

Michael Newman Teaches Breathing on the Classical Guitar

Welcome to the Master Guitarists blog.  Here you will find direct insights into the playing styles of the greatest men and women ever to play the classical guitar.  Through weekly entries I will relay the wisdom of our most eminent teachers and professionals.



Let us begin.



The inaugural address of Master Guitarists will consist of Michael Newman teaching me to breathe.  Michael (www.guitarduo.com) teaches at the Mannes College of Music (www.newschool.edu/mannes) and is a seasoned veteran of the classical guitar world.  He is as cool of a cucumber as you are going to find, no matter what stage he is performing on.



Breathing: it certainly seems easy enough!  You have been doing it this entire time, without even being aware of it.  Of course I am assuming you are like myself (always a dangerous thing to do) and just now remembered that air is constantly flowing through your nostrils and down into your lungs.  The act of breathing is so rudimentary and persistent in fact, that it is often forgotten even in moments of stress.  Only the occasional inability to take in air alerts us to the fact that we are breathing!



As many of us have seen, the act of breathing can take many forms.  One popular method among musicians is a stilted and gasping approach which involves large gulps followed by extended periods of inactivity and holding of breath, to be released in microscopic amounts throughout the performance.  Somehow the musician manages to take in more air than they are exhaling, and the result is a swelling human balloon of tension and nerves.  When the difficult passage approaches, our performer is primed and ready to flub the scale or chord change with spectacular inaccuracy.



Let’s think about that analogy.  The performer is filling up like a balloon, gathering tension as his or her surface slowly (or rapidly) expands to withstand the increasing pressure of air (and nerves!).  I will give you three breaths to figure out our solution.



One….



Two….



Three….



Breathe out!  When we breathe out, we are expelling tension, just as the skin of the balloon is relaxing when its air is released.  What happens when we release tension?  We relax.  Why is relaxing important?  Everything seems easier when we are relaxing.  Life is great!  The scale is but a trifle in the grand scheme of music, and our fingers could never be more ready to hit that chord at the top of the fretboard.



“Daniel, take a breath!!”  says Michael Newman, somewhere in the middle of my performance of the Bach Allegro BWV 998.



OH YEA, BREATHING,  I think.  Good thing I had Michael there, because I sure wasn’t going to remember to let go of that tension.



The many benefits of breathing during playing, and a short guide to its usage:

   1. Release of tension from the body
   2. Mental relaxation
   3. Musical phrasing



What does breathing have to do with phrasing?  Let us begin again.



Music is on the page, yes, but we must create the music in our minds first before we can play it on the guitar.  The music is first created in our body and then on the guitar.  If you were deprived of your six strings and ten fingers, you would be able to sing, grunt or more than likely hum your song.  That is because your body is the primary instrument.  You are going to take a breath necessary for the entire musical phrase to be completed.  Just as you take a breath long enough for one or two sentences to be completed, you must prepare to sing aloud the entire musical idea.



Use this to play your music.  Take a breath long enough to sing the phrase.  Sing it.  Do it!  Then sing and play it on the guitar simultaneously.  You should be out of air at exactly the end of the phrase.  If you’re not, you took too much air and you have left over energy.  The music will feel stagnant.  If you had to take a breath somewhere in the middle, you underestimated the amount of energy needed for the music and rushed to finish the phrase before what you prepared ran out.  Not a winning solution.



Breathe as though you are going to sing the music.  Always.



When you breathe with the music, it can also breathe.  Music is ALIVE.  It is a manifestation of your brain’s activity and therefore is a direct expression of you, just like the thousands of words that fall out of our mouths every day.  Music that can breathe is understood by humans, because they also breathe.  We understand each other’s conversations because we are used to the requirements of breathing and pausing.  It’s a natural tempo of life that we start learning the first time we hear speech patterns as an infant.



Music is a conversation.  Let there be pauses and breaks, and you will be telling the listener a story.  Rushing through music leaves the listener feeling like you just sold them a shiny used car with an altered odometer.  Serious listeners’ remorse will result!



As Michael taught me, let the music come out of you at the pace of your breath and everyone will be the better for it.  Play with your lungs, not your brain, and SING, SING, SING!



Thanks Mr. Newman!



Daniel Hallford is a classical guitarist in New York City.  Visit him at www.DanielHallfordGuitar.com

DHGuitarist@gmail.com

Thanks for reading!