Review: Unleashing the Potential of the Musician's Body

by H. Murray April 14th, 2021

It is no lie that we’re big fans of Timani around here. It is a modality rocking little musical ships, and we’re confident it will soon be moving mountains with its gentle brilliance and straightforward intelligence. Tina Margareta Nilssen, the creator of Timani, is releasing her first book this Spring. It is titled “Unleashing the Potential of the Musician’s Body: Timani - Anatomy and Exercises for Healthy Playing and Singing,” and we were fortunate to receive an advance copy to review.

This book holds so many missing pieces to a complete music education. As musicians, we spend years learning how to play our instrument but very little time addressing HOW to use our body to do this. We marvel at greatness, yet it remains a mystery locked in the bodies of the masters. We struggle with pain and discomfort, accepting it as part of our music-making experience.

That is going to change.

It is time to fill in the blanks, to understand how to not only use our body to make music pain-free but to make music joyfully, with inspiration and intention. Many -dare I say, most- of these secrets exist in our own bodies; it’s simply a matter of learning how to use them to our greatest potential.

This book offers a comprehensive approach to using your body to make music. It includes personal anecdotes from a dynamic range of professionals, testimonials, practical and research-supported advice, accessible exercises, and anatomical information about joints, muscle fibers, fascia, and more. Tina doesn’t just explain how the body functions. She reveals how musicians can best take advantage of our complex systems to make beautiful music. If you’ve ever had a question about how things are connected, what muscle does what, how to train the brain or the fingers, then you will gain multitudes from this book and plenty of ways to implement the information easily into your own practice, performance, and teaching routines.

This book should be required reading for every music educator, student, and professional. Through this information, musicians will be empowered to take their education to the next level and create a different soundscape in the future that moves away from pain, celebrates individuality, and cultivates renewed joy in music-making.

This book will be available in English on June 1st, 2021.