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Tone Starts with the Legs

Something I've been working on with my students of late is "using the legs to create tone."  No, this doesn't mean holding the bow with the legs!

It's more along the lines of lifting a heavy object.  While it's easy to focus on just the arms, lifting something heavy is a full-body activity.  The same goes for an instrument.  It's easy to think of music as "just" an intellectual past time.  But that's the trap!

So if we approach the instrument with the same mentality as we would approach any other physical activity then focusing on the legs makes perfect sense.  Using the legs and core muscles promote good posture and breathing.  Good posture and breathing allows all muscles to function more efficiently and fatigue at a slower rate.

This increased efficiency allows us to create a more relaxed, powerful sound on our instrument.  Almost all of the weird sounds that happen on a string instrument (and, I'm sure, any instrument) are the result of unnecessary tension.

This concept is at the very core of most martial arts.  Practices such as kung fu or tai chi are all a study of body movement and learning to harness the energy coming from within yourself.  The classic example being the "little old man" able to redirect the energy of a much younger man and throw him simply by using his body efficiently.  A rooted stance that, essentially, uses physics to your advantage, is always preferable to "muscling" an action.

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