andrea sp en

Andrea

[Q] What’s your name? My name is Andrea Mantilla.

[Q] And you’re a music student, right? I’m a music student.

[Q] And do you play or do you sing? What’s your specialty? I’m a pianist.

[Q] You came to our Baseworks workshop last week? Yes.

[Q] Can you describe how your experience was with movement with Baseworks principles? It seemed very interesting to me because usually we in instrument practice have the need, if you want to have good technique, to be completely conscious of the movements the body is making. That way you avoid having tensions and having physical discomforts that currently what it generates is that discomfort when playing that you don’t understand what’s not allowing you to transmit as you’d like. But many times it turns out that physically you also don’t feel comfortable with how you’re doing it.

So it seemed very interesting to me that with the experience we had in the workshop I could see in a way my body awareness beyond the musical environment with the instrument. Which allows me to see a different perspective of how I would like to have awareness with my body and how I would like to apply that in instrument practice.

[Q] And after the workshop, do you think there was a change in your perception, or posture, or way of playing the instrument, or something like that? Yes. I remember that right after those days I was practicing the instrument, and constantly I was remembering to lower my shoulders. And it always happens to me that I have them like this [lifted shoulders] because since I’m a bit short, moving on the instrument makes me kind of keep them like that. But every moment I was thinking “No! Down!”

So yes, I found that even though it was two days of a short practice anyway, there were principles from what they taught us that did stay with me and that I know I’m definitely going to end up applying in the future with the instrument.

[Q] And when you’re playing the piano can you play doing this movement of lowering the shoulders? Yes, because I feel it comfortable. I feel much more grounded when I’m like this. So when I lower them I feel I release all this, and I feel that now I’m much freer to be able to do any movement because I don’t have this grabbed and restricted.

[Q] This movement of lowering the shoulders when you’re playing the piano, with this little movement, does the experience of what you experience when you’re playing change? Yes, definitely. Because having the shoulders up I feel I have all this tense. I feel like the arm is from here. It’s already telling me “I’m not comfortable.” Yes, and it hurts me to move on the instrument. I feel incapable of moving my fingers as I’d like, precisely because I don’t feel freedom. But having them down I already feel the relaxation of the whole arm, the shoulder, this part, the back, and I already feel I can have fluidity when playing, compared to when I’m not doing it that way.

[Q] Among the ideas and concepts we were talking about, what was the most new and interesting for you? For me the most interesting was thinking that you have patterns with movement, and that those patterns somehow will always remain stored within the system. And when you’re trying to fix the technique when playing, I had always had the perception of removing the previous pattern and putting in a new one.

But I realized that it’s something I have to do constantly, because the old pattern will never completely go away. It will always somehow be there, even in the smallest measure. So I had never seen it from that point of view, that it’s constant training for me to be able to achieve the awareness I want with the body, and to be able to achieve the type of touch I want, and how I would like the instrument to feel in relation to me.

So yes, that thinking that it won’t go away, but will always be there, what I have to do is work to make sure that the pattern I do want to maintain, the pattern that is healthy for me, that does give me relaxation and all that, that I have to constantly be making sure that’s the one I’m applying and not the other.

[Q] Even though we only had two days of practice, do you think some of the things, movements, techniques we practiced are relevant for your music profession or daily life? I feel it’s relevant for both things. Because at the end of the day, what you are playing the instrument can also be reflected in how you are in your daily life.

So the same thing they told us, that if you’re playing and when you play due to the economy of the instrument, so to speak, you have to be like this, you have to be a bit more hunched over. It’s that awareness of knowing that if I’m playing the instrument and I have to be like this, when I’m not playing the instrument I have to return to a central position, to a normal position. Which will prevent me from having injuries in the future from always being that way.

There are things that are inevitable, like I don’t know having to lean a bit forward too. But it’s thinking, I won’t always have to be like this. It’s also necessary to maintain myself in a normal way, in a common way.

So yes, of course, everything we experienced in the workshop helped me a lot to realize that I’m “someone with the instrument” and I’m “someone in my daily life.” But there’s a union between those two things that I also need to make sure that I’m taking care of my body and I’m taking care of myself in both facets of who I am.

[Q] Yes. And before the workshop, had you heard about body awareness? Yes, quite a bit. Because I suffer from tendinitis. So for a long time I had been looking at a lot of information about body awareness with my hand, with my shoulder, with my whole body. Because at the end of the day that translates into tension. So I had already had quite a bit of searching about what body awareness is and how to maintain it with me.

[Q] And do you think movement classes like Baseworks would be useful for music students? Yes, yes. Definitely. I think it would be quite useful because many times students ignore the importance of understanding how their body is functioning and how it’s functioning in relation to what they’re doing.

So I feel many times we believe it’s not so important and we only focus on playing. But there’s much more behind that. It’s not only the moment when you sit down to play, but there are many factors that have to do with how things are produced and how you’re attentive to all. So yes, definitely it would be a giant help if that were a constant practice we could have.

[Q] And when you’re playing the piano, to understand piano technique… The technique is of the hands, right? And for example, does the teacher talk about other parts of the body? That seems a bit negative to me about how they give us musical teaching. Because personally I have a teacher, she doesn’t focus much on talking to me about the body, about the importance of how I’m maintaining myself. The only thing she told me was about keeping the shoulders down. But there came a point when she stopped telling me.

So since I didn’t manage to internalize it, I kept maintaining them up. But she had already stopped telling me. So my brain already said “Okay well we’re already doing it right and that’s it, let’s do it like this.” And they don’t talk to us much about how everything is, about how we feel ourselves too. Because maybe it looks like you’re fine but internally you feel tension and you feel discomfort. And it would be good if they also talked to us more about that.