A musician's freedom and wellbeing

My book INTEGRATED PRACTICE: COORDINATION, RHYTHM & SOUND is in production at the Oxford University Press in New York. Here's a very brief description of the book's main points.

A musician's freedom and wellbeing come from many sources. To be a musician is to “speak music.” When you have something to say and when you know how to say it, your gestures and sounds become both expressive and free. Understanding the language of music, then, is essential for your health. The key to mastering any language is rhythm. INTEGRATED PRACTICE contains an in-depth study of rhythm in music and in coordination, and it presents dozens of exercises to help you infuse your gestures and musical phrases with rhythmic energy.

Another aspect of your wellbeing is the balance between structure and inventiveness. Music, for instance, is based on predictable grids of chords, scales, and time signatures, and yet your music-making ought to be unpredictable and fluid. INTEGRATED PRACTICE shows you how to establish an imaginative dialogue between the relatively inflexible structure of music and your own individual style as a singer, instrumentalist, or conductor.

Most sounds contain multiple vibrations or partials, which together form the harmonic series—an acoustic phenomenon that determines timbre, consonance, dissonance, and much else beside. Knowing how to sense the partials’ shimmering vibrations and how to maximize them will help you make big sounds with little muscular effort, thanks to the power of resonance. INTEGRATED PRACTICE covers the harmonic series in detail and offers many exercises to release your innermost vibrations.

Much as you can improvise a last-minute dinner for six friends, you can use the skills of improvisation—and its creative frame of mind—to solve musical and technical problems. INTEGRATED PRACTICE includes novel approaches to improvisation as a sort of lifestyle, with exercises that you can apply to daily practice, rehearsing, and performing across the entire repertory.

INTEGRATED PRACTICE has a dedicated website with dozens of video and audio clips demonstrating the book’s exercises.