Comments

Greetings,
>Trying to sit up really straight used to give me serious back pain in orchestra rehearsals.

That`s for sure. You immediately start using whta my Alexander Teache rrefers to as `doing` muscles when you do that. To use yourself well you use your being muscles which are only efificent when the primary control is okey dokey. thus it is quite possible that the slumped guy is acually doing rather better with good primary control within a slump than the forcedly upright player. Its pretty unlikely though...
Cheers,
Buri

I found the A.T. pretty much by chance about 10 years ago, looking for something that would help my lower back pain during orchestra rehearsals. Growing up, I had always wanted to look like that particular woman when I played (and had not succeeded). In addition to sitting up very straight, she was beautifully dressed, coiffed, etc. I couldn't hear her individually, but from what I saw she looked like she had good technique.

The experience reminded me of the last chapter of _Blink_, in which the author writes about the rationale for modern orchestras to conduct auditions with the auditionees behind a screen so that only the sound matters. Given how much it seems I was affected by my visual impressions of the players, I am very supportive of that practice.