Have you ever stopped and thought about how you look on stage? Not how you look in the sense of how good you'd look on the front cover of next week's NME - but how you look in the sense of what you're actually doing to your body. Confused? Let's take a few examples…

Maybe you sit down to play. It's chilled, it's intimate, it suits the acoustic vibe man… Of course, there's the fact that you need your guitar to be raised slightly, and your legs aren't quite long enough - but that's okay, if you put your foot right onto its toe and sort of clench your calf muscles, it raises your knee enough to rest the guitar on… Or instead, you could cross one leg over the other and - hey presto - instant guitar rest! Both positions get a bit uncomfortable over the course of a full gig but what the hell, it's not like you're doing it all the time…

Of course the other good thing about sitting down is that the guitar's right there, near your face, where you can see what you're doing. In fact, if you kind of hunch over it a bit more, you can get your face even nearer for all those difficult chords you've put into your new song. You might have a vague sense that this hunched position isn't great for your voice, but better that than look like an idiot when you fluff all the chords - right?

But maybe you don't sit down to play. All that leg-crossing and hunching got a bit too much for you - or you played a few bigger venues where you wanted a bit of 'presence' - or maybe got a band. It's so much better for the voice, you can really project - and let's face it, you look cooler too. You can even put your foot on the monitor during your 'rawk' numbers. In fact, you'll look even cooler if you just sling your guitar that little bit lower. It's a bit tough on the wrists, especially when you play barre chords, but sometimes style has to come before comfort…

Okay, so the descriptions above are slightly exaggerated stereotypes - but I bet a lot of you recognised them. If not as something you do, then maybe something you used to do - or at the very least something you've seen someone else do. Take a look next time you're at an open mic. And while you're about it, take a look in the mirror while you play. Notice the subtle things. Do you stand more on one leg than the other? Next time you're on stage, notice what you do as you step up to the microphone. Do you stand with lots of your weight on the toe of one foot? What about when you're going for a difficult chord - what happens to your shoulders? Where else in your body do you suddenly feel tension? And then think about what happens when you sing. Do you furrow your brow and tense your forehead? When you go for that difficult high note, do you pull your head back, shortening your spine and constricting your larynx? (Yes, I know it sounds a bit over-the-top, but it's what happens when you pull your head back.)

How do we know that's what happens when you pull your head back? Ah, that's where we come to the Alexander Technique. About a century ago in Tasmania, there was a bloke called Frederick Matthias Alexander. He was an actor, and he started suffering from vocal trouble that threatened his career. Now, being a generally cleverer and more self-aware person than you or me, Alexander started to observe himself in the mirror and noticed that he was unconsciously pulling his head back whenever he tried to speak. He was also depressing his larynx and sucking air through his mouth in what sounded like gasps. Not the best for top quality vocal performance, you'll agree…

He found it pretty difficult to stop himself from doing this, but he realised after some more looking at himself in the mirror (surely a natural thing for any self respecting thesp to be doing on a regular basis anyway) that he could control the depressed-larynx and air-sucking issues just by stopping himself from pulling his head back. Sure enough, this got rid of the vocal trouble and his career continued successfully.

These discoveries eventually gave rise to what we now know as the Alexander Technique, based on the principle that the poise of your head on your spine is crucial to your overall functioning and performance as a person. But it's not about sticking books on your head and pulling your shoulders back, which is what most people associate with 'good posture'. Instead, it teaches you to get rid of patterns of tension in your body through careful attention to any activity (and by 'activity' we mean the basics of sitting, lying and walking as well as more exotic exercises like playing guitar) and through inhibiting your tendency to fall back on habitual patterns of movement. This can lead to relief from all sorts of things like back and neck ache, migraines and more general problems of anxiety and stress.

Still with us? Don't worry if that didn't all make sense - it's pretty hard to get it all across in an article like this. And don't worry if it seems from the stuff at the top that this is an article all about making you look as uncool as possible on stage. It's not. It's about finding ways to do what you do already, but to minimise the unnecessary tension that goes into it. Because unnecessary tension elsewhere means less energy going into your performance. And in fact, a lot of the people who look the 'coolest' on stage are actually the ones who are comfortable with themselves; relaxed rather than tense and grimacing every time they change chords.

Here's one example of excess tension going into your performance. When you change chords, do you actively remove your fingers from the strings before actively putting them on the new strings? Try just relaxing your hand. Because, if you use muscles in your fingers to push them onto the strings, it follows that by relaxing the muscles, your fingers will come away from the strings naturally. But how many of us actually do that? Instead, we double the amount of effort we put into every chord change. That's even before we've considered how we're standing, how we hold the guitar and what happens to our heads when we move up to the microphone….

All this is obviously particularly useful to you if you suffer from any sort of strain or pain that you're starting to associate with playing and singing, or if you're having any sort of vocal troubles. If any of this has been sounding familiar to you, it's really worth looking into the Alexander Technique. But even if that's not the case, you never know how much better you could be (yes, even better than you are already - imagine!) with all that useless tension removed, and the resulting energy channelled in the right direction.

Obviously, by just thinking about all this stuff yourself, you're not technically 'doing' the Alexander Technique. To learn about it properly, you need to have lessons with a qualified teacher. These last about 45 minutes and are taught on a one to one basis. For more information see the bottom of this article.

If that doesn't sound like it's for you, then at least think about some of the ideas in this article next time you play, both at home and on stage. You'd be surprised how much you do to your body without realising it. We're not saying that a few lessons in the Technique will leave you instantly able to make chord changes with all the effort of someone drinking a cup of tea, nor that if you previously sounded like Kermit the frog after a heavy night, you'll suddenly sound like Frank Sinatra. But you might start to notice subtle changes. You might even find that decreased physical tension is starting to lead to less mental tension before gigs.

Oh, and if you see one of the writers of this article on stage anytime soon, don't necessarily expect her to be a model of Alexander-esque stage presence. She hasn't been having lessons for that long!

For more information about the Technique, check out the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) website - www.stat.org.uk

Madelene Webb is a fully qualified teacher of the Technique and can be contacted at her own website, along with her teaching partner Annie Kaszina: www.nopain-gain.com

Tessa Ware is just a singer-songwriter who's had some Alexander Technique lessons and found them helpful. So don't contact her - she don't know nuffink.

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How the Alexander Technique can aid performance ©2004 Tessa Ware and Madelene Webb & The Virtually Acoustic Club
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