The University of Sydney Medical School has had this announcement about a wind and brass study they are undertaking up for a couple of years now.
The purpose of this proposal is to investigate a wider research design whereby several variables that may have an effect of the performance of brass instrumentalists are simultaneously evaluated. The aim of this study is to evaluate respiratory mechanics and facial muscle activity patterns in skilled wind and brass instrumentalists, and to further assess whether posture has an effect on the functional activity of breathing and embouchure.
Whenever a someone publishes something like this there are always some in the community who will call such research meaningless, but I think it’s neat to take a scientific look at what we think we know. One of the neat things about research is sometimes we learn something new that’s completely unrelated to the original purpose of the research. For example, when Lloyd Leno first began his high speed filming of trombone embouchures he was doing so to see if the lips vibrated at the same frequency of the pitch (he found they do, by the way). Along the way he was surprised that while most of his subjects had downstream embouchures, one was upstream.
Another good reason do conduct research like this is because while it’s common knowledge that poor posture while playing inhibits your playing, it hasn’t been really subjected to an honest test.
Research on pulmonary function, sound production and physical aspects of performance in wind players is scarce and current practice remains based on opinion of the teacher or health practitioner. . . Poor posture is frequently cited as an intrinsic risk factor leading to injuries occurring in musicians and that posture is an integral part of the mechanics of breathing for optimal performance of wind players, but there is no scientific evidence to substantiate this claim.
The emphases in the above quote are mine. I would predict that this study should find that posture indeed is integral to good brass technique, I have to admit that this is merely my opinion (and that of pretty much any other brass teacher and player as well). However, I have to admit that this common knowledge is really subject to our own confirmation bias. Wouldn’t it be interesting if after all the numbers are crunched they found that posture has a negligible effect on breathing and embouchure? Or maybe breathing but not embouchure?
Even should the results end up being a no brainer, there is still something that will be gleaned from looking closely at it this topic. We can learn more about how much posture should be emphasized and when to move on. When dealing with technique issues or injuries having a clear understanding will allow us to put posture into context with other mechanical issues.
A scientific approach to kinesthetics and motor skill development has done a lot to improve the state of athletics, to name one example, and there’s no reason why taking a similar approach to music performance and pedagogy wouldn’t do the same. While the music field tends to have a passing interest in this sort of research at best, I think we limit the tools of trade by doing so.
While this research proposal indeed sounds prosaic, some of the greatest advances occur when someone systematically investigates commonly held beliefs. Interesting this comes from Australia. One other example comes from down-under. The entire medical community “knew” that excess acid production alone creates ulcers. An Australian doctor was ridiculed for proposing and researching a hypothesized bacteriological basis. Turns out he was right.