Have you ever watched yourself play? Do you wiggle a lot when you perform? Are you moving all over the stage? Well, you’re probably not walking around, but moving your body all over when you perform?
Sometimes, that’s very distracting from the audience’s perspective.
Sometimes, that can be damaging to your tone as you perform.
You don’t normally see a trumpet player moving a lot when they perform, because that would bother their embouchure too much, it would shift and change. They can’t do that.
It does hamper our embouchure development when we’re performing as well. Moving too much can change our intonation.
So, a good rule of thumb is to learn to practice your solos without any movement at all.
If you can perform, if you can play without any movement, then you are allowed to add some back in. Hopefully you’ll make that movement be part of the piece, not an abstract type of movement that’s going to inhibit our pleasure of listening to you perform.
So, look at movement as a tool that can help you express the music. Make sure it’s not inhibiting the audience from listening to you. I saw William Bennet perform one time, many years ago, and he stood up there on stage and I feel like, in my memory anyway, he moved not at all. Yet, his performance was very powerful.
So, I think that we can perform and have a powerful performance, without a lot of added movement to it.
Try it and see what you can do.
Make your movement enhance your music.
Watch yourself perform and let me know how much you move.
Have Fun!
DoctorFlute
Watch me demonstrate this: FluteTips 15 Movement
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