- #YOUTUBE VIDEO GRAVIT DESIGNER ALEXANDER TUTORIALS HOW TO#
- #YOUTUBE VIDEO GRAVIT DESIGNER ALEXANDER TUTORIALS PROFESSIONAL#
We've arrived at this perpective in collaboration with numerous professional violinists and violists who have been my students in the Alexander Technique and who had expressed dissatisfaction with most models on the market. While reckoning with this issue for over thiry years, my partners and I have developed what we believe to be a more effective design that is based mainly on supports both along the collar-bone and on the chest just below. So it often involves a close examination of the demands that they face in supporting their instruments, especially when when it comes to dealing with current shoulder rests-and particularly the common "bar" type (Kun, Wolf, Resonans, Comford, Everest, Mach One, etc.) as well as the demands of using no support beneath their instrument at all.
#YOUTUBE VIDEO GRAVIT DESIGNER ALEXANDER TUTORIALS HOW TO#
It's from this broad perspective of excellence in overall balance and poise that we have attempted to address the issue of violin and viola support -as opposed to looking at it as a more localized issue of neck, head, torso, and arm musculature.Īs the Alexander Technique gives violinists and violists a more refined understanding of how to contend with the obstacles they may encounter in mastering their instruments, it teaches them how to address these obstacles on a moment-to-moment basis during both practice and performance.
This more balanced overall supportive action of our musculature that functions in relation to gravity's constant downward pull from moment to moment, both in motion and at rest, establishes a basis for a high standard of excellence in all that we do and often provides us with a choice over how we react and how we direct our energies from moment to moment -particularly when it comes to activities such as musical performance that require a refined and superlative control. As these, often unbalanced, patterns of tension are revealed and transformed into a more unified coordination, people find that they experience a new-found power of control in all that they do and in all that they react to in life. The hands-on work in Alexander lessons with an experienced teacher often unmasks "hidden" tightnesses that have built up in people's musculature over many years of subconsciously managing their general balance and poise in daily activity as well as in specialized tasks. Both research studies and real-world experience have demonstrated its value (**see notes below).
Alexander teachers are also employed at such performance centers as the Metropolitan Opera and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, to mention only a few. The Technique is taught at many music and drama schools, including Juilliard, the Royal College of Music, the Royal College of Dramatic Art, and the Paris Conservatory. Numerous professional violinists and violists -as well as other instrumentalists and singers -have also undergone the intensive three-year training to become qualified Alexander teachers in order to better help their students in understanding how to manage themselves while performing. As a method for developing and maintaining a balanced and integrated coordination in movement and at rest, the Alexander Technique has become highly popular among students and professionals in the performing arts.