Integrated Practice

Integrated Practice proposes a new approach to musicianship, health, and well-being. Containing dozens of exercises and supported by an extensive online library of video and audio clips, Integrated Practice offers tools for instrumentalists, singers, and conductors to use music itself as their guide toward unity and freedom of mind and body. 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 well-being, 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 dozens of exercises to help you infuse your gestures and musical phrases with rhythmic energy. The balance between structure and inventiveness is also essential to your well-being. 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 harmonic series in detail and includes novel approaches to improvisation, with exercises that you can apply to daily practice, rehearsing, and performing across the entire repertory. The book is accompanied by a dedicated website with dozens of video and audio clips that demonstrate the book's exercise.