Integrated practice: Coordination, rhythm & sound - Alcantara, Pedro De (Oxford Oxford university press, 2011)
To be a musician is to speak music. When you have something to say and you know how to say it, your gestures and sounds become both expressive and free. Offering an innovative, comprehensive approach to musicians health and wellbeing, Integrated Practice gives you the tools to combine total-body awareness with a deep and practical understanding of the rhythmic structure of the musical language, so that you can speak music fluently, healthfully, and effectively.The key to mastering the language of music is rhythm. Integrated Practice contains an in-depth study of rhythm in music and in coordination, with over a hundred exercises to help you infuse your gestures and musical phrases with rhythmic energy.The balance between structure and inventiveness is also essential to your wellbeing. Music 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.Integrated Practice covers the acoustic phenomenon of the harmonic series in detail, showing you how to produce big, free sounds without muscular effort. It also includes novel approaches to improvisation, with exercises that you can apply to daily practice, rehearsing, and performing across the entire repertory.In sum, it shows you how to discover your inner voice as a musician, so that you can become a skilled storyteller with something meaningful to say and the tools to say it.The book is accompanies by a dedicated website with dozens of video and audio clips that demonstrate the book's exercises.