Musical Techniques

Training Exercises for the improvement of the aural perception Click to access a page with several exercises of musical theory. To me, the most interesting ones are those for recognition of scales, intervals, and chords (the last two in 2 possible ways, simultaneous or arpeggiatto, and only in fundamental position or in all its inversions). choose “Trainers” on the left side, and then at the bottom, “Trainer Ear Interval”, “Trainer Ear Chord” or “Trainer Ear Scale”

Muscular control and injury prevention Here we have some booklets with a few "Basic advices to musicians to prevent injuries", followed by some stretching, and neck and spine exercises, to be done before and after playing, and published by the "Institut de Fisiologia i Medicina de l'Art", in Terrassa, which is a place specialized in funtional problems of the performer musician. Everybody knows of someone who is going or has gone to "Medicina de l'Art",to heal that tendinitis, or that pain, or that hand whichs goes to sleep and out of control .... It's not always a magical cure, but at least you are not being told: Don't worry, just stop playing and do some other thing!

La majority of body injuries are caused by repetitive movements

More injury prevention This article, prepared by the "Conservatori Municipal de Música de Barcelona", was standing in a forum of musical discussion in Argentina, were I found it in September 2006! I copied the page into a .pdf file, available clicking the hand at left, because many times the information in a forum doesn't stand for long, but if you want to visit the forum, click at Club de Músicos, sure you will find other interesting things.

Hearing risks for the musicians This is the title of an article (in catalan) published in the February 2009 issue of the magazine: Revista Musical Catalana, written by Dr. Montserrat Bonet, especialist physician and professor at ESMUC, et al., who talk about the professional risk of hearing injuries and disorders on the musician. This paper begins with the following words: "Hearing is the most valued sense to the musician, because it is the organ which collects the sound sensation".

As usual, prevention is better than cure.

Alexander technique Webpage of Mireia Mora, teacher in Alexander Technique. In this page we find this comment: ... "when a musician plays an instrument, he/she uses his/her hands and arms, but also his/her breathing, with atention to his/her environment (the other performing members, the audience), his/her back, legs, feet, neck ... : all his/her body parts are interactuating. In spite of this, very often musicians are paying so much attention to the body parts which are directly involved in the musical performance (hands and arms in the case of violin players, lips in the case of wind players), that they forget to listen to the rest of the body".