A few months ago I helped organise an online Alexander Technique Music Conference. One of the contributors was Peter Buckoke, a professor at the Royal College of Music who teaches both the double bass and the Alexander Technique.

You can watch Peter’s video here:

Peter covered the following topics in his video, and I’m going to summarize briefly the points he made below:

  • Standing in balance with the instrument. Avoid your ‘double bass posture’, because when you’re balancing you will be constantly moving. That means that when the double bass leans on you, you lean on it just as much as it leans on you. Allow your body to re-balance – it’ll just happen.
  • Breathing freely while playing. Breathing well means the oxygen goes into your blood and that travels to your brain and your muscles. What happens to stop good breathing? It’s probably an anxiety response, and that will interfere with the proper functioning of your brain and muscles. Try talking and playing at the same time to see if you’re breathing well.
  • The impact of vision on playing. Make sure you’re not over-focusing your vision when you’re playing. I believe the last thing we should be doing is actually looking at our hands when we’re playing. If you want to see your hands, take a video of yourself. There’s nothing on the fingerboard which shows where you’ve got to put your finger. Your kinaesthetic sense is the best sense for musicians.
  • Body-mapping how to bow the instrument. If we work out where the joints are that we use to the play the instrument, and embody that knowledge, then we get better coordination. For example, map the two elbow joints and the shoulder joint for the bow arm.
  • The importance of comfort when playing the bass. It’s possible to be totally comfortable when you play the double bass. You will never play your best unless you are totally comfortable. Once you’ve got to the point of pain or discomfort, you’ve already lost some of your coordination because you’ve put pressure on the nerves, and the nerves are responsible for telling your body how to move.