Passing on and sharing
The joy of effort
Zero pain, zero anxiety: just the joy of playing!
The functional disorders that affect musicians are now well documented:
The functional disorders that affect dancers are also well documented today:
Actors’ disorders are, of course, not as specific as those of dancers and musicians.
Other problems just as disabling exist, even though they are not classified as disorders:
“Tendinitis” is a misused term that still causes a great deal of confusion. These complaints can be truly disabling.
Another example: a lack of flexibility as you descend into the low register comes from an embouchure that is too relaxed. This problem makes you compensate, creating unnecessary tension and fatigue.
Let’s not forget that the quality of the embouchure and lips depends on the dynamics of the tongue and the breath. The tongue is directly involved in controlling the airflow and spares the embouchure and lips from having to compensate.
Focusing on the embouchure alone creates tension:
To optimise your embouchure or your lips, you need to adjust your shoulders, your vertical axis “from head to toe”, your breathing and your tongue.
Prevention is essential to avoid or reduce the onset, development and severity of the functional disorders that affect the youngest players and the most seasoned alike.
Tailor-made training that takes into account your goals, your schedule and where you live.
Together we build the content of your training around your needs and as you progress. The topics covered are listed below, all directly linked to your playing:
There are several ways to organise your training, depending on where you live and when you are available:
We work together in Paris in a space dedicated to artists. The videos let you watch specific content again and again and take it in even faster. We follow an action plan drawn up at our first meeting, which evolves over time to meet your needs.
Group sessions in Paris, made up of 3 to 5 professionals, speed up the learning process. These sessions are especially rich because everyone’s questions benefit the whole group. Depending on where you live, we can also work remotely and combine all of these options.
All these formats naturally complement one another, so you can choose whatever suits you best and progress at your own pace.
Please call me, or reply by email leaving your phone number. I will be delighted to support you personally in your projects.
In Paris or remotely, at your own pace
The following courses can be funded for performers with French intermittent du spectacle status, teachers at music schools and conservatoires, and orchestral musicians.
We take care of the paperwork, so you can focus on your training and put it into practice straight away.
Leave me your phone number and I will answer all your questions: contact@marcpapillon.com
See you very soon,
Marc, 06 62 23 61 03
Our first sessions will be devoted to assessing how you organise your work (technically, mentally and strategically) and to building a personalised plan that meets your needs and goals. In groups or one-to-one, online or in person: I love to travel and come and meet you.
Everyone has weak spots on the road to excellence. I will work closely with you to climb those mountains once we have clearly identified and prioritised them. Going on stage and playing with your flaws, while making full use of all your resources, is liberating.
Being an artist is about more than practising and improving your playing, so I will share other useful tools with you, such as motor imagery, mental imagery, mindfulness and all the tools to be integrated step by step (zero pain, zero anxiety) for complete freedom of expression.
Trios, quartets, quintets · classical, jazz, contemporary
Do you play in a chamber music, jazz or contemporary music ensemble? Invite your ensemble to go even further. Funded training for intermittents du spectacle.
For the members of such ensembles, playing together requires not only high-level instrumental and artistic skills but also a shared search, by every musician, for cohesion that is both technical and aesthetic. Group practice fosters exactly this kind and degree of commitment, at once personal and collective.
Such groups are, by nature, built to last. An established ensemble is not just three, four, five or six musicians performing a score: it is human beings in musical dialogue. And, in professional ensembles, they do it for an audience.
Physical · Technical · Strategic · Mental
away from the instrument
The keys to physical preparation before playing (rehearsals, auditions, concerts, competitions). Building endurance, flexibility, reactivity, stability and power, and managing the body in space.
at the instrument
Linking the technical demands of the instrument to the principles of functional anatomy: tone, vibrato, shifting, tempi, dynamics, air column, embouchure flexibility, attacks and so on. Spreading your effort, saving your energy…
organising your work
Learning to organise your practice time and your priorities, becoming more efficient, taking breaks… An optimised strategy frees up time.
mindset
Developing concentration and playing with confidence in all circumstances, with clear goals. A subtle, ergonomic approach develops the qualities you are looking for: velocity, endurance and the joy of playing together.
The workshops are designed so that individual musicians and the ensemble as a whole can use the tools explored during these days from the very next rehearsals and concerts.
With group coaching, you get access to the video workshops a month before we meet, giving you time to watch them as many times as you need.
Prevention is essential to avoid or reduce the onset, development and severity of the functional disorders that affect the youngest players and the most seasoned alike.
These training and coaching days take place at your usual rehearsal venue or in Paris.
In a group, each musician benefits from the others’ experience. The mirror effect is constructive both for teamwork and for the musician’s physical and mental health.
The morning is devoted to clearing up functional misconceptions in individual meetings, while the rest of the group is already working on the directions set out at the start of the day.
In the afternoon, we all come together to apply and develop your new tools within a new group dynamic.
The work can then continue throughout the year to go even further, for example to prepare an upcoming concert.
Contact me by email or phone and we will plan the programme for the day together.
Each of us has the resources to “cope”: how can we identify and refine them so as to use them to the full on stage or whenever we perform in front of an audience?
Participants are given tools to carry out this self-assessment. Developing new techniques for coping with performing in public, and putting them into practice at the right moments.
The course is based on putting into practice the various psychological resources we have for achieving the best possible performance, and on practical techniques that give you greater control and greater self-efficacy on stage or in front of an audience.
This course focuses on practising mental and physical techniques to achieve an optimal musical performance.
Conservatoires, orchestras, schools
Marc Papillon helps artists learn quickly how to perform at their best:
so that, in the end, they become ever clearer about their needs, abilities and direction.
Supporting artists and giving them a practical view on how to integrate new knowledge:
Marc shares his work with you and keeps creating new, specific tools every day.
The hand · the embouchure · the back · the shoulders
The hand is an incredible, complex piece of architecture.
Every day you take the time to develop better sensations.
Technically, wrist stability is the key to finger freedom. Yet wrist “flexibility” is all too often what gets taught.
Another example of misconception: people often try to “relax” the thumb. Yet the thumb is the pillar of hand stability: whether moving or still, it gives the other fingers their freedom.
When these reference points are disrupted, the hand loses its balance, causing pain and anxiety.
Regaining a stable, sensitive and powerful hand gives the fingers back their agility, independence and precision.
A stable embouchure, a relaxed jaw, supple lips, a well-controlled tongue.
For wind players, finding a balance between the constrictor muscle (orbicularis oris) and all the dilator muscles is fundamental.
While the dilator muscles pull in every direction, radiating out like the rays of the sun, the lip depressor muscles are all too often neglected.
An embouchure that is too relaxed leads to compensation (tension in the neck and throat, a clenched jaw), limiting flexibility in the low register and encouraging fatigue.
Focusing on the embouchure alone creates tension:
The quality of the embouchure and lips depends directly on the dynamics of the tongue and the breath. It is the whole system (tongue, breath, posture) that needs adjusting to preserve freedom of expression.
A vertical axis that is “toned and relaxed”, from head to toe: stability, grounding and endurance.
Whether we are sitting, standing, walking or resting, our spine is part of our axis.
“I need to sit up straight” is a common and tiring thought. Settling into slackness, or even slumping, is no less tiring. Lifting the head and pulling the shoulders back is not the right answer either: it causes fatigue.
Add to that breathing too low, and the result is inevitably a slack abdominal wall and tension in the lower back or neck.
Muscle tone is the key to physical and mental relaxation. Abdominals, glutes, back muscles, feet, pelvis, back, breathing: a toned axis for a balanced head.
Stop fighting and play with gravity! The right balance is active tone: abdominals, back muscles, pelvis, breathing. This tone lets the head balance effortlessly and frees the musician from the struggle against gravity.
Powerful shoulders free the lips and the hands.
Playing means holding your arms up in a relatively static position. Your shoulders and neck get tired, so you try to relax them. It is a common refrain, but by “relaxing” them you actually tense them! Because the weight of the arms bears down on the muscles of the upper back.
The shoulders play a fundamental role. Held in suspension, they carry the arms and determine how freely the hands and breath can work.
Excessive relaxation tires the neck and restricts breathing. Pulling the shoulders back causes pain between the shoulder blades.
Conversely, engaged, toned shoulders take the load off the neck, free the embouchure and the hands, and build self-confidence.
Passing on and sharing. The joy of effort.
Functional mistakes are often absorbed far too young: the search for excessive physical relaxation leads to a great deal of compensation. The shoulders, wrists, belly, thumbs, tongue and throat are the areas most targeted in this quest for relaxation.
So much advice handed down from generation to generation keeps these misconceptions alive, with consequences for comfort, velocity and endurance.
With a more conscious approach to functional anatomy, received ideas are gradually replaced. The tools needed for expression, velocity and enjoyment make this learning easier.
Music teaching is advancing rapidly and can now draw on functional anatomy. It is essential to bring this knowledge into teaching.
It is time to unpick these misconceptions and to realise, for example, that immobility is one of the main causes of functional disorders. Excessive repetition and a lack of stability are the other factors that favour functional problems.
Poor movement ergonomics, perfectionism, forcing and skipping breaks are all reasons that show how important it is to organise your work.
Playing music and dancing involve repeated biomechanical strain, which can lead artists to give up their practice or slow it down considerably, weighing psychologically on their health.
The generally accepted criteria for defining repetitive work as a factor of occupational strain are as follows:
This is not about teaching anatomy, but about offering artists shortcuts in response to the problems they face (back, neck or shoulder fatigue, difficulties with hand position, independence, fingers, hypermobility, anxiety, and so on).
Body technique can be simplified by taking functional anatomy into account.
These balances, which serve dance, music and every other art form, must be preserved and optimised so that you can go on performing for a long time with your whole body.
Going on stage while struggling to manage your emotions takes you away from the joy of playing and dancing.
Playing and dancing without (overwhelming) emotion does not mean playing without musicality or without a sense of movement.
Develop your physical reference points, the ones that ground and stabilise you.
Poorly managed emotions limit technical ability and expression. You limit your own endurance, and that is precisely what stresses you.
So you have a choice: go on stage calmly while staying connected to your sensations, or lose yourself in your emotions. It is one or the other.
Breathing is also often used to manage emotions. But in the moment, breathing too low (abdominal, deep, belly or diaphragmatic breathing) does not relax you.
All this knowledge helps artists and teachers become more effective in their own practice and bring it into their teaching.
Technically, wrist stability is the key to finger freedom. Yet wrist flexibility is all too often what gets taught.
Another example of misconception: people often try to “relax” the thumb. Yet the thumb is the most important finger of the hand: it contributes to the stability of the wrist and palm, just as the big toe is the most important toe of the foot.
A stable thumb, whether moving or still, gives the other fingers freedom of action.
Ankle stability is fundamental, as are the intrinsic muscles of the foot.
Losing your reference points and your “good” sensations is, of course, a source of great anxiety.
Becoming aware of these misconceptions makes it easier to optimise movement and to recover, and also increases the joy of playing.
These misconceptions disrupt how the hand works and encourage “tendinitis” and other dysfunctions.