Good Posture While Playing - Conn

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July 8, 2014
Greetings. In this edition of Touchpoint, Bernhard Scully, Horn player for
Canadian Brass and Horn Professor at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign discusses the importance of and strategies for obtaining
excellent posture.
Finding and Maintaining
Good Posture While Playing
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Brass players, have you ever thought about the fact that
a brass instrument is not really our instrument at all?
What I mean to say is that WE are the instrument! The
brass instrument is simply an amplifier of the sound and
musical ideas we are putting into it through the use of
our vibrating embouchure (i.e., our vibrating lips inside
the mouthpiece). The lips are connected to the WHOLE
body and so everything we do while playing impacts
what is coming out of the bell. I will talk more about
embouchure and breathing in my next article, but
suffice it to say, we cannot have a functional vibrating
embouchure without proper use of our body.
I’ll come right out and say that I want to encourage
everyone to take some Alexander Technique and/or
Feldenkrais lessons with a teacher who is comfortable
working with brass players. This is by far the best route
to finding optimal posture for anyone and is one of the
most helpful things I have ever done for myself as a
player. So, here are a few basics to consider as you set
out to establish your best posture.
You always want to feel as relaxed and comfortable as
possible while playing. You should be able to move
around, and your body should feel very flexible while
holding the instrument. A good exercise to test this is to
walk around and play at the same time. You simply
can’t do this while being tense or unbalanced! Your
head should be held high and your spine should be in an
erect pose with no excess tension. You should feel the
weight of your body centered in your pelvic region (the
same concept of Chi or Qi in martial arts). Our goals in
finding our ideal posture are to only use the muscles we
need to hold and play the instrument and to focus our
weight in our center of gravity (the area in the lower
belly right above the pelvis).
When you sit down, make sure that your “sit
bones” (the two pointy bones on your bottom) are
touching the sitting surface, so your weight is centered
over them. When you sit, do this exercise: Find your sit
bones and make sure you can feel them touching the
surface of the chair; then rock on them gently,
By Bernhard Scully
moving your pelvis forward then backward. When you
do this, see how it shifts your center of gravity. Find the
point where you are most balanced. You can tell by
doing this what a difference it can make in your use of
your body when you are balanced and centered versus
off balance with posture that is compromised.
Another exercise (one I do with my students often) is
to stand up and once again allow yourself to center your
weight in your lower belly, above the pelvis while
equally distributing your weight across the bottom of
your feet. Have someone push you lightly, and notice
how it would take a great amount of force to move you
from this standing position. Then shift your center of
gravity away by becoming less balanced and have
someone once again lightly push you. This will likely
cause you to lose your balance and have to re-stabilize
yourself. If this is how slight shifts in our center of
gravity can affect our balance, just think how much this
affects how we play in terms of being able to breath
properly and maintain control of our body.
Once we find our optimal posture for playing, we should
be able to maintain this posture and not compromise
our center of gravity in virtually any playing scenario.
Whether you are sitting, standing, lying down, walking
around, or standing on one leg (I actually do most of
these things on stage at some point or other in
Canadian Brass!), you can find your center of gravity and
maintain your best posture while playing.
Happy practicing!