The Guitar Hero Series: Pedro de Alcantara

Written by Ava

Pedro The Guitar Hero series on Jemsite features interviews with guitarists and musicians who may not have star status YET, but their current situations have shaped them to be who they are--determined, fond of their craft, and heroes in their own right. Perhaps you'll see in these upcoming entries the next Jimi Hendrix, Melissa Etheridge, or Duane Allman. Or perhaps they'll become household names by doing what they do best--ripping a mean riff!

Jemsite is experiencing a lot of firsts. We just interviewed a company that has to do with mobile devices and the music industry but are not musicians, teachers, guitarists, or performers themselves. Now, our first un-guitar Guitar Hero!

Let me explain. Pedro de Alcantara is not a guitarist. What he IS is a musician that has coached other musicians (including guitarists) with a special technique that he has become an expert in.

The Alexander Technique, according to Wikipedia, is an educational discipline focusing on bodily coordinatio, including psychological principles of awareness. It helps to recover freedom of movement, mastery of performing arts, and general self-improvement affecting poise, impulse control, and attention. Pedro now helps students use this technique to become better musicians.

Originally from São Paulo, Brazil, he went to New York and the Yale School of Music and trained to be an Alexander teacher. Now he is spreading the love. Seemingly a worldwide traveler, he currently spreads the message through books and other resources from his home in Paris, where he has been living since 1990.

As one of the few people to be featured in this series who doesn't actually play guitar, Pedro certainly is a Guitar Hero to us!

Tell me about your background in music, specifically guitars or guitar-related string instruments?

I grew up in São Paulo, a gigantic city of roughly 20 million inhabitants. In Brazilian music the guitar is so present that you “drink it” even if you don’t play it. I’m hardly able to listen to a single chord on the guitar without having it trigger memories of my childhood and adolescence… There are many cousins of the guitar in Brazilian music, including the bandolim and the cavaquinho. My psyche tingles with their tinkles!

What was the music scene like in Brazil? What did you learn from it?

When I was growing up in the sixties, the classical-music life in Brazil had more weaknesses than strengths. You didn’t learn music in school; you had to do it all privately, on your own (or your family’s) initiative. My formal music training was piecemeal and full of gaps, and I only began to build my musical foundation when I went to the US to attend college. In Brazil, however, music is in the air you breathe and the food you eat, so your whole being becomes infused with music. The spoken language is very musical, plus there’s a kind of universal tendency to “move your hips” to the beat of life. This makes you “fertile” for music, so to speak, and over the years I came to appreciate my “Brazilianity” (a feeling for rhythm, for the connection between words and sounds) despite the handicap of not receiving good training in my youth.

Why do you credit pianist Robert Levin with teaching you what you know today?

I met Levin in college, where he taught me solfège, theory, analysis, and chamber music. He has the broadest and deepest analytical mind of any musician I know. As a teacher he covered the musical ground from the bottom up, taking nothing for granted and leaving no gaps in information and knowledge: You learned A, then B, then C, all the way to Z and beyond. He was also passionate, dedicated, and extremely entertaining! He demanded of his students that they hear music attentively, that they think for themselves, that they bring analysis and performance together. It’s a lot of stuff to learn from one guy, right? I didn’t learn from Levin all that I know today, but I couldn’t do what I do ow without having gone through his processes. It’s foolish to think that the main thing in music is “technique.” Sensing, understanding, thinking for yourself, and having something to say: that’s where it’s at, and Levin pushed me in the right direction.

What is the Alexander Technique and why devote so much time, energy, material, and books to it? What does it mean to be an Alexander teacher?

As I see it, the Alexander Technique is all about connections: between body parts, between body and mind, between you and your instrument, your music, your audience. It’s a sort of “Zen for Westerners,” in which you learn to let go of habits, fears, misconceptions, and so on. In time you let go of your own “old self” in order to become your “true self.” If you go deep enough into the Technique, you can really use it to live an interesting creative life, where things are always flowing since you’re always letting go of them. Partly because of the Technique I’ve been able to add more and more creative endeavors to my life. By “letting go of the cello” as a fixed, narrow, rigid professional goal I became a writer, singer, coach, improviser, healer, and artist. And in the process I even became a pretty decent cellist!

As I see it, within the Alexander Technique physiotherapy, psychology, and metaphysics converge and disappear into a new, strange, wonderful way of doing things. To be an Alexander teacher means to accompany someone else in his or her search for identity. The Alexander teacher can be a witness, a guide, a taskmaster, and many other things beside.

Tell me about your books on the Alexander Technique.

The first one is called Indirect Procedures: A Musician's Guide to the Alexander Technique. It was published by the Oxford University Press (OUP) in 1997 and it’s been translated into French, German, and Japanese. (It was the strangest thing, looking at a book I wrote myself and not being to recognize a single word in it!) A French publisher asked me to write a book for the general public, and that was also published in 1997. Subsequently I re-wrote it in English, and it’s titled The Alexander Technique: A Skill For Life. My new book for musicians, titled Integrated Practice: Coordination, Rhythm and Sound, will be published by the OUP in the summer of 2010. It’s partly inspired by the Alexander Technique, partly by my wider musical adventures.

How can the Alexander Technique be applied to guitarists specifically?

Think of it this way: The Technique allows you to become focused and centered. Obviously this has the potential of affecting everything you do. More prosaically, you can start by using the Technique to sort out your basic posture at the instrument, the “space” you occupy when you play; the coordination of the arms and hands, and in particular their collaboration; and the production and projection of sound, which becomes much easier when you open up your “space.” My new book will have a dedicated website, with 70 video clips and 25 audio clips illustrating the book’s exercises and principles. Guitarists might learn a lot from my clips on pronation and supination (the basic rotation of the arms).

According to the description of your series The Integrated Musician, you developed a musical philosophy over the past 25 years for singers, pianists, guitarists—tell me about that philosophy.

To encapsulate it isn’t easy, but I’d like to invoke the concept of Logos. One definition of it is “the divine wisdom of the word of God.” Another is “the principle of divine reason and creative order.” Etymologically, logos comes from Greek, where it had several different meanings. One was as an instance of speaking: “sentence, saying, oration.” It also meant the inward intention underlying the speech act: “hypothesis, thought, grounds for belief or action.” In English, logos also gave us “logic” and “logical,” and more indirectly “legend.” You become an integrated musician when you have something of your own to say, to recount, or to tell, and when an intention or a belief animates your discourse—in other words, when your music-making springs from the Logos. To connect with the Logos is a lifelong pursuit full of risks and dangers, and without guaranteed results. You could lose your sanity in the process, maybe even perish and die. But it’s really worth trying!

How are you able to teach other musicians certain musical techniques even if you haven’t played the same instruments?

You know how biologists are always telling us that humans and chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA (or some very high number like that)? All musicians share 99% of their musical and technical DNA. Coordination, rhythm, and sound are the three pillars for all musicians. Aspects of all three are absolutely universal, and if you figure them out you can share them with guitarists, pianists, cellists, and anyone else. Questions of posture, balance, dexterity, timing, the collaboration of left and right hands—these are just a few of these universally shared issues that I’ve been studying and teaching for decades. It’s the same with rhythm: There are basic rhythmic principles that apply to all musicians without exception. It’s been said that there are no advanced techniques, only advanced applications of basic techniques. You can become a good diagnostician when you understand the basics: you watch or listen to someone play and right away you start sensing where the “applications of basic techniques” is going wrong and why. Remedies too can be universally shared: Everyone benefits from becoming focused and centered, from listening more closely to their own selves, from using energy rather than muscle power in playing, and so on.

What has been the feedback from your workshops? What sort of coaching do you offer?

I’m blushing, since to share feedback with you is to sell my fish! But here’s what a guy said recently after a three-session workshop in NYC: “The workshops were off the wall, crazy, like nothing I had done and yet they touched me in a profound way that I know I will never understand... but that is fine! I know that somehow my sound at the cello is different... maybe more clarity, more intention because something inside me is different. I am more aware and more present from your teachings. Perhaps that is a common thread to all the exercises you taught us—they all require us to listen and attend to ourselves and objects in the world with greater attention, which of course is the essence of mindfulness.”

I adapt my coaching to the wants of needs of the student. Some people are looking for a certain physicality in their lives, and the Alexander Technique can help them re-connect with their “inner animal.” Others have unwarranted fears, for instance a phobia about improvising (very common among classically trained musicians!)—then my coaching brings together musical procedures with some subtle psychological work. Aspects of my work have healing properties, and if the student is open to it, we go there. I’ve re-trained a certain number of musicians, for instance a fine player of the zarb (the Persian drum) who was willing to listen to my ideas and who re-worked his playing from top to bottom. I’m forever inventing new procedures… in the past couple of years I’ve created a series of vocal exercises using the harmonic series. Their effect is profound, on the voice itself and on the whole person; sound becomes energy and vibration, and the vocalist (who doesn’t have to be a trained singer at all) becomes a sort of shimmering, shining fountain.

Who are your own musical influences?

My first love within classical music was the Baroque: the Scarlatti piano sonatas, which my mother played often; Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, which I used to play on the recorder, my first instrument. At age 12 or so I discovered the greats of the early 20th century: Debussy, Ravel, Prokofieff, Stravinsky, who remain cherished favorites; I’ve recorded a CD of 20th-century music for cello and piano with works by Debussy, Hindemith, Samuel Barber, Villa-Lobos, Bohuslav Martinu, and a couple of others. At age 14 or so I discovered jazz. My absolute favorite CD of all time is Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue,” which I’ve listened to hundreds and hundreds of times without ever tiring of it. As for my guides, I’ve mentioned my mentor, Robert D. Levin, who was trained by the great French pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger; I never met her, but I consider myself a “second-generation Boulanger disciple.” I had a wonderful singing teacher, Cornelius L. Reid, who passed away in 2008 at 97 years of age. And I had first-rate cello teachers, including Robert Gardner (principal cellist of the New York City Opera), Daniel Morganstern (principal cellist of the Lyric Opera of Chicago), Aldo Parisot, and William Pleeth.