F.M. Alexander and Lennie Tristano
F.M Alexander was born in 1869, and Lennie Tristano was born in 1919. F.M. was born in Tasmania, and Lennie in Chicago. Lennie Tristano created in the field of jazz, F.M. Alexander created in the field of human development.
They both emphasized the importance of developing one’s awareness, and shared the idea of fully stopping before you start. F.M. Alexander’s and Lennie Tristano’s exercises involve simple motions, or notions, improving awareness, inhibition, and direction.
F.M. Alexander used the simple, available, common chair as a tool to teach. Lennie’s tools were scales, chords, and his improvisational exercises.
Starting slowly and methodically, their students would eventually move, or play, at the ‘speed of life’, or ‘up to tempo’. However, due to their studied, conscious, intentional approach, some people have wrongly labeled both men, and their students, as being rigid and dogmatic.
Improvisational Exercises
Here’s one step of one part of a Lennie Tristano improvisational exercise:
Play 3 bars of a standard song, and improvise on the next five bars. Rhythmically, play only sixteenth notes.
Accent the fourth sixteenth in each group of four for the entire five bars. Play the melody for the next three bars and repeat this five bar, three bar division for two choruses.
Melodic choices include, but are not limited to, chord scale segments, the blues, pentatonics, triad pairs, arpeggios, reharmonizations, melodic patterns, rhythmic patterns, quotes, and themes and variations based on the melody.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. It is extremely restrictive, but after time the restrictions are stripped away.
The goal of Lennie Tristano’s exercises? Freedom.
Alexander Technique Exercises
F.M. Alexander would have his students pivot back and forth in their chair, using their hip joints, (not their lower back), as a hinge. They would not progress to the later step of standing up until they could move without adding apprehension, muscular tension, or compression. Alexander Technique students would gradually stand, sit, walk, and do anything else with more poise and ease.
The goal of F.M. Alexander’s exercises? Freedom.
Mark Josefsberg-Alexander Technique NYC
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
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