Practicing Harp Happiness

“What can I do to make my music more expressive?”

If I’ve been asked that question once, I’ve been asked it a thousand times. This isn’t a beginner question, either. It usually is a question of an intermediate level player. Once harpists achieve a fair level of technical competency, they have enough bandwidth to consider how to make their playing more musical. Until that point, it’s all about getting the right fingers on the right strings.

Naturally enough, most of us look to the dynamics to make our music more expressive. It’s a good plan. Following the dynamic markings that the composer has included allows us a glimpse of what the composer intended the music to be. Dynamics create differentiation in the music that helps a listener hear the intent of the music as well. And dynamics add variety so our music is more interesting. Dynamics are a great place to start if you’re ready to make your playing more expressive. 

Usually, however, the harpists who ask me about making their music more expressive are already working at the dynamics. That’s why they’re asking the question; they aren’t sure why their music still doesn’t sound the way they want. 

Today, I’m going to share my ideas on the techniques of musical expression that lie beyond the dynamics. I’m talking big picture concepts here, ideas that will, I hope, change the entire way you approach your music from practicing to performing it. These ideas are for every harpist at every level; beginners can use them and advanced harpists can always use a reminder about them. 

Every piece, whether it’s super simple or virtuoso concert repertoire, can and should be played expressively and beautifully. It’s not about the number of notes you can play or the speed or facility of your fingers. It’s about finding the musical heart of what you play and not being afraid to put your own heart into it. Don’t let that scare you, though. I have some ultra-practical strategies for you that will help you make your music as expressive as you want it to be.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Join me at our February Getaway retreat. Register today!

Don’t miss our November Seminar Series, “On a Roll.”

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-182

When you think of harp music, is there a characteristic harp sound that comes to mind, a musical gesture that belongs to the harp more than to any other instrument? A glissando, maybe? That’s certainly one of them, and a favorite of mine. Another one that I find very powerful and very harp-y is a rolled chord. 

Harps were meant to play chords, especially rolled chords. They sound liquid and rich, even plummy. You can listen to an orchestral recording and when the harpist plays a rolled chord, you know it. It’s almost as if everything melts for a moment. If you want to check out some of those moments, just stick with me because we’ll be talking about a couple. But I also want to talk to you about how to make your rolled chords sound just that magical.

In my opinion, we often forget that our rolled chords play a significant role in our musical expression. I hear so many harpists playing their chords blocked or flat when the music clearly calls for a chord that’s more lush and romantic. In fact, this is one of my pet peeves and something I’m likely to go into a rant over given the opportunity. I’m not ashamed about this though. I felt totally vindicated when I was in a workshop given at the World Harp Congress by the famous French harpist Isabelle Perrin. She was talking about the opening chords of the Fauré Impromptu, and suddenly she was off on a rant just like mine. The frustration she expressed was that too many harpists play blocked chords all the time, when rolled chords would be infinitely more musical. She didn’t know it, but she was ranting to the choir, where I was concerned.

Rolled chords are part of the native language of the harp. Today I want to help you roll them well, to understand how to fit them in and most of all, how to use them to add expression to your music.  We’ll explore the differences between flat, cracked and rolled chords. We’ll deal with some of the critical technical aspects of rolled chords, too. But mainly, I want you to learn how to love them and how to use them to create more depth of expression, more beauty in everything you play.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Our November Seminar series on rolling chords is starting - join today!

Related resource: Podcast episode #92, Quick Fix: Roll Your Chords Right

Listen to Marilyn Costello with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherezade; the Pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and Debussy’s Danses sacrée et profane.

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-181

The sinking of the unsinkable Titanic still fascinates us all over a hundred years after the disaster. It’s the subject of all sorts of speculation and theories, and there’s one of those that is actually relevant to our topic today. The question is this: if the Titanic crew had performed all the safety drills they were supposed to, if there had been enough lifeboats and if the passengers had been drilled in lifeboat procedures, would so many have perished when the ship went down?

Some people have noted that a routine safety drill on the fateful Sunday morning was not held. This has been attributed to several factors including high winds and the morning church service on the ship. Even with that, however, there was only lifeboat accommodation for about half of the passengers and crew onboard. Was the ship thought to be so well-designed that safety preparedness could be relaxed?

Probably not. But the safety regulations for passenger ships that we have today came in part out of the hard lessons of the sinking of the Titanic. In fact, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) was established in 1914 following the disaster, and mandated, among other things, that ships carry sufficient lifeboats for everyone onboard.

So what’s relevant in this story for us? If you’ve ever worked hard to make your piece bullet-proof or crash-proof or otherwise “unsinkable,” you may have been ignoring some of the important preparation to help not only prevent performance disaster, but to recover from it. When you’re preparing to play a piece, expecting that mistakes will happen and learning to recover from them is the most important part of your practice. You can hope that you won’t make any mistakes, but if you haven’t prepared for how to meet them if they happen, you’re playing a dangerous game. The icebergs are there and you may or may not hit them. But just as some emergency preparedness may have saved lives aboard the Titanic, your harp emergency preparedness could save your performance too.

On today’s show, we’ll explore the myths around mistakes, perfection, excellence and safe performance preparation procedures. There’s a lot for you to learn in this episode, so grab your cup of coffee and let’s get started. And - safety first! - don’t forget to buckle your seat belt!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-180

A little while back, I did a podcast episode about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and why I believe studying and playing that music is so important for harpists. If you want to go back and listen to that episode, it is Episode 154, and I will put a link to that episode in the show notes.

Understandably, after that podcast aired, I was asked why I was emphasizing the music of Bach who didn’t write anything that we know of for harp, when there are brilliant harp composers whose music we could study. I agree that studying music written for the harp is important for every harpist. But the music of Bach has been considered foundational for generations of music students, and it’s no less important for us harpists. In fact, it is precisely because Bach didn’t write for harp that we need to be extra-intentional about including his music in our studies. 

There is a drawback, however. The difficulty factor of much of his music makes it inaccessible to beginning students, and beginning students, particularly adult beginners, could benefit so much from studying his music. So today, I have three goals. First, I’ll show you what you can learn, even as a beginner harpist, from Bach’s music and I’ll demonstrate how you can learn it. Second, I’ll share a practice page that you can use as a warm-up or for more practice on this material. And most importantly, in the course of our time together today, I want to help you connect with the beauty in Bach’s music. Even though he never wrote anything for harp, he surely did write music that is beautiful, even transcendent, when it’s played on the harp.  

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-179

There are plenty of things we can muscle through: fatigue, a headache, the last email, the last pot to wash, paying the bills. But we can’t muscle through harp playing, especially when it comes to our fingers. For all that we talk about strong fingers and considering how hard we work them, they and the bones, tendons and muscles that support them are relatively fragile. So when we talk about strengthening our fingers, we don’t want to do any more heavy lifting. 

Today on the podcast, we are going to talk about how to train your weakest fingers to be stronger by training them the right way, gently.

What do we mean by saying a finger is weak? How do you know if a finger, or even more than one finger, is weak? Weak fingers can manifest themselves in one of four ways. 

First, you may have knuckles that collapse or lock up. When this happens, your finger may feel like it gets stuck on the string or frozen; it won’t move when you want. Or it may play unevenly or unintentionally play more than one string at a time.

Second, it may not have the same tone or volume as the other fingers. It might be louder or softer. It can feel like the volume knob is broken.

Third, it may feel awkward or uncoordinated, compared to your other fingers. It may not place accurately. It may not play well in combination with other fingers.

Lastly, it may not be independent. Actually, lack of independence is at the heart of some of these other issues, too. When your fingers can function independently, they have good dynamic control and can play evenly and equally with the other fingers in whatever combination is called for. Clearly, this doesn’t mean that every time you stumble over a fingering, it’s because of weak fingers. More likely, you just have a new finger pattern to learn. But a finger that causes you to constantly accommodate it, is a weak finger. And today, you’re going to learn exactly what to do about it.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get the Harp Mastery® app for iPhone and iPad.

Related resource Strengthen Your Fourth Finger blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-178

Do you have no sense of rhythm? Has someone told you that you have no sense of rhythm? Or do you sometimes wonder if you do?

Right off the bat, let me tell you that if someone said that to you, I know they are dead wrong. In the first place, I don’t believe that people can be so connected and drawn to music that they commit themselves to studying and learning an instrument for years without an innate sense of rhythm. Rhythm, like any other musical skill, is a subject that is studied intentionally in music schools. It’s not a topic that is merely left to chance with an “either you got it or you don’t” philosophy. The great Elvis Presley said, “Rhythm is something you either have or you don’t, but when you have it, you have it all over.” However, his meaning and our investigations into a sense of rhythm are somewhat different.

My point is that if you think you need to develop your sense of rhythm, you probably do; so do we all. A sense of rhythm is completely trainable. After all, we all live our entire lives with rhythm. Actually, we are rhythm - in our heartbeat, our pulse, our breath. Rhythm is as natural to us as breathing; in fact, it is breathing.

So why is it so hard? My observations have led me to the conclusion that although we have a sense of rhythm, we frequently don’t obey it. Even worse, we often actively ignore it. We actually choose not to play in rhythm. Our sense of rhythm is there; we just flip the switch and turn it off. It’s usually not intentional, and that’s the good news. All we have to do is find the switch to flip it back on, and it’s really not so difficult. All you have to do is believe and commit to one sentence, an attitude you need to adopt, at least for the duration of this podcast and, I hope, a lot longer. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get the Harp Mastery® app for iPhone and iPad.

Related resource Your Metronome Speaks blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-177

Ten years ago, I wrote a small book. It was my response to the frustration I observed some harpists experiencing. These harpists were diligent in their practice and dedicated to doing everything right. But they still weren’t able to play their music the way they wanted.

Some told me that they just couldn’t get the notes, the fingering and the placing correct. Others said they couldn’t get their music anywhere near an appropriate tempo. Some couldn’t look at their hands and the music at the same time. Others couldn’t make their music flow. And none of them seemed to be able to discover a solution to their problem.

I started asking harpists questions, in order to find out a little more about what the real source of each of the issues might be. What I discovered was that, although the symptoms manifested differently in each individual, there was really only one problem, one that all of them shared. No one had ever told them how to practice.

What I discovered in my own harp journey was that practice really wasn’t about what I thought it was. It isn’t enough just to play something over and over again until it’s right. The goal of practice isn’t perfection; it’s music. When your practice isn’t helping you make music, you can be pretty sure you’re doing it wrong. 

The right kind of practice starts with the right kind of focus. I’m not talking about mindset or concentration. I’m talking about practicing for the results you want, the results that are more than the right notes, results like flow, expression and musicality. 

That was the starting point for my book. Kaleidoscope Practice: Focus, Finish and Play the Way You’ve Always Wanted. I used the word focus to describe five focus areas which can serve to direct your practice so that you can actually play the music you start. I’d like to explain those focus areas to you today and give you some of my favorite practice tweaks that may revolutionize the way you think about your practice, the way they revolutionized mine.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get the Harp Mastery® app for iPhone and iPad.

Check out the Kaleidoscope Practice ebook and PDF workbook, The Harpist’s Playbook in the Harp Mastery® shop.

Related resource: Don’t practice for perfection! blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-176

If I had to give the shortest possible explanation of what a daily harp warm-up is, it would be this: your warm-up is the prelude to your practice. 

Why a prelude? A prelude is most often defined as a short piece of music intended to be an introduction to a longer one. It sometimes uses musical themes or ideas which appear in the larger work, but the prelude’s most important function is to set the scene, the mood or the tone for what follows. 

That’s how I like to think about a warm-up. It sets the scene for your practice. It allows for a transition from your possible hectic daily non-harp life to a more calm and focused musical space. My warm-up, which I will tell you about later in the podcast, is a moment I truly treasure in my practice. It is also a temptation moment, which I will explain later too.

I’ve talked about warm-ups on the podcast before. Episode 98 was a mini masterclass on warm-ups. Episode 120 was about three important skills that your warm-up could help you strengthen. I have linked to those episodes in the show notes so you can find them easily.

But today, I want to talk about the warm-ups I recommend most often to my students and why I think they are so good. These may be warm-ups that you already use, and if that’s the case, I will give you some tips on how I think you can use them to your best advantage. If you have another warm-up that you like, these tips will help you get more out of that warm-up too.

As I mentioned, I will also tell you what I do to warm-up. It doesn’t fit the conventional mold, but it does fit the main purposes that I believe are most important for any warm-up. That’s really the point of this episode today, to show you a different way to look at your warm-up so that your prelude to your practice can save you time, build your skills and be one of your favorite parts of your practice too.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-175

If you’re like me, you probably hate it when people change the rules in the middle of the game. I don’t necessarily mean in an actual game; that’s clearly wrong. But there are always new and better ways of doing things that require us to make a total change in what we do. Brush your teeth up and down, or side to side or in a circular motion. Drink 6 glasses of water a day, or 8 glasses or 4. Eggs are bad for you; eggs are good for you. It’s hard to keep up.

Of course, these aren’t really rules at all. They’re just conventions, best practices which change in order to keep up with advances or new discoveries.

Your practice is the same way. The habits and strategies that worked so well for you at an earlier stage of your harp life may not be as effective for you now that you have more experience. If you cling to those habits, you will likely slow down your learning speed, spending unnecessary time and energy. 

Today I will show you five habits, good ones, that may no longer be helping you. I am sure that you are committed to at least one of these five, and I want to help you move on to a new stage in your harp life. We won't just talk about the habits you should abandon, but we’ll talk about what new habits you should consider adopting to replace them. 

Remember, a habit should be a helper, an aid to doing what we need or want to do. But a habit is only a hindrance when we are ready for a better way. That’s what I want to help you discover today, a better way. 

Don’t think your practice habits need updating? If you’ve ever thought you could be learning music faster, or sight reading better or wished you had a stronger technique, then you’re ready for a refresh.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Register for my Learn It Tonight Webinar  on Wednesday, September 25.

Related resource 4 Harp Rules You Can Break blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-174

Do you remember the story of Chicken Little?

This is a classic children’s story and like a lot of the classic stories there are multiple versions. The basic story goes something like this:

An acorn falls from a tree and hits Chicken Little on the head which leads Chicken Little to conclude, erroneously, that the sky is falling. He decides he has to hurry and let the king know about this calamity. Along the way, he collects some of his bird friends - Henny Penny, Lucky Ducky, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey - who are similarly terrified by the idea of the sky falling and join him on his journey to see the king. 

The classic story then comes to a climax in classic gruesome children’s story fashion. They meet up with Foxy Loxy who pretends to join them but actually lures them to his den and eats them. 

I don’t think any of us are going to be eaten by Foxy Loxy today, but Chicken Little’s flurry of anxiety is not that different from what many harpists experience in their practice and performance. Chicken Little’s misperception of a perfectly natural phenomenon - the acorn falling - created widespread panic which could have been averted with just a little understanding. The panic, anxiety or even chaos that we can feel when we are overwhelmed by performance nerves or when we aren’t sure that our practice is getting us anywhere, can be relieved too. All it takes is looking at it differently. 

Today, I’m going to talk about ten things that may be causing you anxiety, hopefully not panic, in your practicing and in your playing. I’ll give you simple ways to change your thinking about each of these, along with definite action steps to counteract the chaos. Trust me; no matter how nervous or overwhelmed you feel, the sky isn’t falling. Every one of those painful acorns could actually grow into a mighty oak that will support your playing, if you decide to plant it rather than run from it.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-173

We are the product of our influencers. The current wisdom says that if you want to know what a person is really like, look at their circle of friends. The thinking goes further to posit that if you want to elevate yourself, whether in your income, your fitness, your intellect or your spirituality, you need to associate with those who have the attributes you would like to develop. It’s not just that you adopt the habits and thoughts of the people you associate with; your brain patterns actually change.

In the 1950’s a Swarthmore College psychologist named Solomon Asch observed an interesting phenomenon. A group of volunteer subjects was asked to estimate the length of a straight black line drawn on a white card. Asch discovered that each person’s estimate was dependent on the estimation of everyone else in the group. People actually saw the line differently based on the opinion of the people with them.

Physiologically, the brain craves reward, which it receives when we have our own ideas or thoughts confirmed by the people around us. When our ideas are opposed to those around us, the pain center of the brain, the anterior insula, is activated. 

We could choose to remain silent and not express our different ideas. Our brain, however, is wired to change our ideas to conform with those around us. A network formed of the anterior insula and the medial frontal cortex registers the difference between our ideas and those of others as an error and becomes active to try to eliminate the difference. Fascinating and a little scary. Our brain is more active in adjusting our choices and our attitudes than we are aware.

This is why it is so important to choose your circle of friends wisely. This is also why it is important to choose your circle of harp friends, and your harp role models, wisely. 

Today, I will share the qualities that I think are important in a harp role model, starting with the qualities I admired in the harp role models I had early in my harp life and how they influenced me in ways I am only just beginning to realize. My hope is that this will help you discover more harp role models to inspire your harp life, and maybe even help you be a role model for other harpists yourself.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-172

Do you think of yourself as creative?

From time to time, a harpist will tell me that she doesn’t feel she is very creative, at least not in a musical way. I instinctively challenge this, because I believe that anyone who persists in studying the harp for more than a few months is nurturing a gift and a desire that is, at its essence, creative. I also believe, though, that much of our practice and pedagogy shifts us away from the creative spirit. This is unfortunate, to say the least. We risk drowning our enthusiasm for the joy of creating music in the hard work that is part of studying it and learning to do it well.

There are endless ways to add more creativity into your harp playing. Certainly, musical expression is creative, but that’s just scratching the surface. I’ve linked in the show notes to a blog post in the Harp Mastery® archives that outlines just a couple ways to add creativity to your practice. But there are so many ways that the harp can not only be an outlet for our creativity, but can actually help our creativity develop. One of those ways is arranging music.

Today we are going to explore arranging music as a creative exercise. Maybe you’ve never tried arranging music, at least not beyond adapting a piano piece for the harp. Maybe you’ve arranged lots of pieces and even published your arrangements. Whichever group you fall into, the approach we are going to take today will help you stretch your creative powers in a logical step-by-step, but still creative, way. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it is, but that’s where the artistic process of music lies, at the intersection of intuition and intention. 

If arranging sounds like something you’d like to do but haven’t tried because you’re not sure how to go about it, you’re going to love this simple step-by-step approach which will work with classical pieces, folk tunes, hymns, pop songs, any kind of music. If you’ve done arrangements before, you’ll find this approach may really simplify your creative process and give you some new ideas to try as well. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-171

I don’t know if you know this, but most Mondays I hold a live video call. I call it our Live Monday Warm-Up, and that’s how it started, as a simple warm-up for anyone who wanted to join me. But like most things, it has morphed over time and now it’s actually a warm-up and a mini-masterclass on harp technique. 

I love these Monday calls and look forward to them each week, not just because I love to teach, but because I love to interact with the harpists that show up and participate with me. They are a pretty loyal group and I will take this opportunity to give them a shout out for showing up every week. You can join us any Monday you like. The calls are free and we stream them through the Harp Mastery® Hub and live on our YouTube channel. 

On a recent Monday, though, the call went a completely different direction from what I had planned. We were going to practice fourth finger slides, but a chance comment in the chat started me off on a 25 minute discussion about performance nerves. It was an incredible discussion with many powerful ideas on that call, not just from me but also from the other harpists on the call, and I wanted to share the recording with you here on the podcast.

I’ve edited out the actual warm-up portion of the call, and please remember that this was a live call so you’ll hear me talking off the cuff, totally extemporaneously. You’ll also be able to tell how passionate I am about this topic, one that is absolutely vital to every harpist’s harp happiness.

You will definitely want a pen and paper to take notes, because there are lots of words of wisdom here, from me and from the others on the call. And I’ll be back at the end with some final thoughts for you.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-170

Juggling. Patting your head and rubbing your tummy. Walking and chewing gum. 

Coordination challenges come in all levels of difficulty. Playing hands together is another one, but it’s one that we harpists eventually get comfortable with. Your right hand does one thing and your left hand does another. For the most part, everything works out, until we encounter polyrhythm, that is.

What’s polyrhythm? The technical definition of polyrhythm is one of those dictionary definitions that cause more confusion than it clears up. According to the New Harvard Dictionary of Music, polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. I warned you.

In terms that are probably more meaningful to you, 2 against 3 is an example of polyrhythm. In a general sense, it is two rhythms that don’t normally go together and that, as a consequence, present a rhythmic coordination problem when you try to play them. A group of two notes, as in two eighth notes, played with your right hand at the same time as your left hand plays an eighth note triplet is a very common example of what I’m talking about. And these rhythmic challenges crop up everywhere from the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms to Chopin and Debussy to folk music. 

So today, I’m going to help lower the difficulty factor of these rhythms for you. We’ll start with a perspective which may be a different one from the one you’re used to. Hint: it’s not all about the math. I’ll show you the best ways to practice them and how I think you shouldn’t practice them. If these rhythms always stop you in your tracks, we will try to clear the tracks and get you moving today. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-169

Today I’m doing something different on the podcast.

I don’t usually talk about what’s happening in my life because this podcast is not all about me; it’s really all about you, me and our harp playing. That means I talk about what I think is important for you to be able to enjoy your harp playing at every step of your harp journey. But a few weeks ago, I participated in an event that reminded me about some essential truths, concepts that have made the difference for me in my journey, and which I think may make a difference in yours as well.

That event was the first, and likely the only, reunion of harpists who attended the Salzedo Summer Harp Colony in Camden, Maine. In terms of numbers, the alumni who attended the event represented a small fraction of the harpists who studied there between its founding in 1931 and the early 2000’s when the program ended. But for those of us who were there, the reunion was an event like no other.

So today, I want to tell you a little about the Colony itself, about what studying there was like, about the impact it had on me as a young student and most, importantly, the powerful lessons I learned - or perhaps relearned is a better word - at the reunion. These lessons aren’t exclusive to classical music harp players or those who use the Salzedo technique; they are for us all. And I guarantee you will enjoy learning a little about this unique harp experience, one that no longer exists and will never be replicated.

I would like to also state clearly that although I am no spring chicken, I never studied with Carlos Salzedo. I did study with his pupils for almost all of my harp life, including my summers in Camden. I just wanted to be clear about that in case you try to put a timeline together in your head as you listen.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-168

Right now, I’m in a tug-of-war with myself. 

Usually, I’m all about helping my students and pushing myself to set goals, to find the next level, to discover more harp happiness through progress and growth. But it’s summertime, and I’m facing a tough choice between leveling up or lazing in the sun. I will admit that sometimes the sun wins.

This struggle isn’t just a summertime struggle, though. In our harp playing, we are continually caught between two opposing ideas: to achieve and accomplish or to simply enjoy. It’s not just about lazing in the sun. It’s really the conflict between the two ways we approach the harp each day. Do we practice? Or do we play?

Ideally, of course, we do both. Playing the harp means exactly that - playing music. Practicing the harp includes all the woodshedding, the repetition, the struggle to clean up notes and fingers and rhythms and make our playing (note that word again!) the best it can be. In a perfect world, our practice would be balanced between the two, with both in fair, if not exactly equal, measure. 

This idea of harp balance is one that I like to revisit from time to time. It helps me keep or maybe regain my perspective. Am I doing enough in-depth work, or too much, or not enough? Mostly, it helps me remember why I am sitting at the harp in the first place, because I love to play the harp. That’s what underlies every moment I spend improving my technique, or drilling a few tricky measures, or memorizing a piece for a recital. It’s the motivation for my teaching and even for this podcast. I know you love playing the harp and I want to help you continue to love it.  

So that’s what we are going to dive into today, how to regain your harp playing balance. We’ll talk about how the various parts of your playing and practice fit together. And I’ll share how to make sure that your harp playing goals don’t get in the way of your harp playing contentment.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-167

Many harpists can remember the first time they saw someone play the harp. The harp itself looked magnificent: tall, majestic, maybe gold. The harpist might have looked magnificent too, maybe a lovely lady in a flowing gown. The harp and the harpist together made an impressive picture. No wonder people want to play the harp. More than any other instrument, the harp is decorative. It makes a visual statement just sitting in a corner. And when it speaks, it’s magic.

We can all agree on that much. But there’s more to a harpist’s appearance than just sitting behind the harp in beautiful clothes. There’s a more important visual aspect to  playing the harp, one that draws a lot more debate, and that is what we look like when we play. I’m not talking about any funny faces we might make. I’m talking about how we gesture with our arms.

To an audience, harp gestures look graceful. We harpists know, though, that there is musical purpose behind them. While different harp playing methods have varying ideas about the look of harp gestures, most agree about their importance to our playing. And while they look lovely, those gestures aren’t easy. They are awkward to practice and they feel unnatural at first. 

Today, I’ll talk about how to make your harp gestures graceful and musical. We’ll review how to practice them and why you should. Trust me, you absolutely should. It doesn’t matter what harp method may be in your background, the basic principles are the same. And if you’ve always felt just a little awkward or self-conscious trying to be graceful at the harp, this discussion should make you feel a lot more comfortable.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-166

I was googling around the internet the other day when I ran into an article that began with this question: “I have completely different fingerprint patterns on both hands. On my right, each finger has a very distinct and similar loop pattern. But on my left hand each finger has a distinct whorl pattern. Why does this happen?”  According to the article,  there is not a definitive scientific answer for this, but the question still intrigues me, particularly in light of our topic for today. 

In harp playing, our right and left hands have very distinctive roles, at least most of the time. Our right hand usually plays melody while our left hand plays an accompaniment. Most of the time, the melody that our right hand plays is made up of connected notes. Our fingers need to place from one note to the next to make the melody sound singing and smooth.

Our left hand accompaniment, though, is often made up of chords and low notes, so that our hand needs to lift to negotiate the necessary jumps between octaves. Our hands may be playing the same harp, but they’re doing very different things. 

Usually it’s our right hand that gets the spotlight, but today we are going to focus on the left hand. I want to walk you through the technical details of some of the most important patterns the left hand plays, as well as help you prepare your left hand for those moments when it gets the spotlight. These five key techniques will help your left hand be ready for anything that comes its way.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-165

I love riddles. Here’s an oldie but goodie for you. What’s the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

So what’s the best way to learn a piece? One bite at a time, obviously. It’s just that what constitutes a bite isn’t very obvious. How big is a bite? Is it a measure, a phrase or a page? Is it hands separately or hands together?  And how come the bites that worked for that piece don’t work for this piece? 

Dividing your pieces into sections is the way you create your “bites,” but there are lots of ways to section a piece, and no two pieces will have exactly the same sections. 

Sometimes finding the sections is easy. We can look at the piece and see an introduction, a first verse, a second verse and an ending. Those are the kind of sections that help us understand the piece.

Then there are the sections that help us practice the piece. These are typically fewer measures and a little more bite-sized, if you will.

Lastly, there are the spot practice sections, those measures in the piece that are sticking points for us and take extra work.

Of course, it isn’t just about labeling the sections. Understanding how to section your pieces at those three levels, why each of those is important, and how to practice each kind of section will make the difference. Correct section practice will save you practice time, help you structure your practice and help you prepare for performance. Many of the most common mistakes we worry about in performance, like losing your place in the music, recovering from a missed fingering or pedal, and going on autopilot, are easily resolved when you’ve prepared your piece in sections properly.

That’s why I know that sections can supercharge your practice, and that’s what we’re talking about today. So grab paper and pencil and get ready to take some notes. Even if you’re an experienced section practicer, you’re going to get a slightly different perspective on your sections today.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Be the first to know. Join the Harp Mastery® Hub.

Enjoy some Fall Freedom Florida-style at our Fall Retreat. Learn more here. 

Podcast Episode 107: A Cure For The Spots: How To Solve Those Problem Measures

Related resource No More Memorization Mistakes blog post 

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-164

In my family, my grandmother’s sister was pretty much our favorite aunt. Aunt Dolie was sweet and generous, although she never had very much of her own and worked very hard all her life for what she did have. She was a gentle soul and totally without worldly savvy. She lacked a lot of practical knowledge, what we would call “know-how,” But that didn’t mean she was without courage. Hence, this family legend I am about to relate to you.

When Aunt Dolie was in her fifties, she decided she wanted to learn how to drive. As a city person, she had always used public transportation or relied on my grandparents for rides to the store or to the doctors. My grandfather helped her find a driving instructor. He knew that teaching her himself would likely push his patience past the breaking point. 

The driving instructor showed up for Aunt Dolie’s first driving lesson. They successfully navigated the difficulties of starting the car and pulling away from the curb. The instructor made sure she stopped at the stop sign at the corner, told her to signal for a right turn and then turn the corner. Aunt Dolie hesitated and asked him, “How many times do I turn the wheel?” At that moment, it became clear to the instructor that she would never become a confident or even a safe driver. It was her last driving lesson and her last attempt at driving.

So what’s the point of this story for us? I am often asked a question that is just as difficult to answer. Fortunately, though, if it’s a question you have had - and most of us have wondered about this sometime - just asking the question doesn’t mean you have to give up harp playing, the way my aunt had to give up the idea of driving. The question is this: how many times should I repeat a passage or a piece in my practice? 

It’s a good question, even if it doesn’t have an easy answer. The key lies in understanding what repetition can and can’t do for you. We’ll talk about how to avoid repetition burnout as well as how to be efficient with the repetitions that you really must do in order to play with accuracy and security. Can I give you a magic number? Nope. But I will show you how to find a number that works for you.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-163

I rarely have guests on the podcast, but today I’m so happy to be sharing the show with my dear friend and my former student turned colleague, harpist Candace Lark, If you’re a My Harp Mastery member or in our coaching program, you will already know and love Candace, because she is one of our Certified Coaches and helped me to found our Harp Quest program for young student harpists. But if you haven’t had the chance to meet her yet, you are in for a treat.

Candace isn’t only an extremely busy professional harpist, playing with all kinds of ensembles and in all kinds of venues (spoiler alert: she’ll tell us later about playing at Will Smith’s house), but she has another aspect to her musical life as well. Utilizing her years of performing and teaching experience, she created an online business called The Happy Musician Coaching. Her coaching helps musicians, not just harpists, create and meet specific goals while cultivating a mindset for musical success. That’s what we will be talking about today, success, specifically being successful as a gigging harpist by avoiding some of the career-ending pitfalls and mistakes. Let’s face it; sometimes knowing what NOT TO do is even more important than knowing what TO do.

If you’re an experienced harpist who’s played a lot of performances, you will find a lot of our conversation will resonate with you, and you will find some new ideas to help you make your gigging life easier. If you’re just starting out, Candace’s tips will save you tons of frustration and anxiety. And if you’ve never played a gig because you aren’t sure how the whole thing works, trust me, you absolutely need to hear this.

Be sure to listen to the entire interview, because at the end, Candace has a couple of great resources just for our podcast listeners.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-0162

They say that only two things in life are certain, death and taxes. But if you’re a harpist you know there is a third certainty; at some point, often at the wrong point, you’re going to break a string.

I remember one performance with my flutist friend Joan when one of my high strings broke as I played it at the end of a glissando near the end of the piece we were playing. When we had finished the piece, I began to change the string while she joked with the audience that the string had broken on time and in tune. We had been playing concerts together for years at that point so she also gave the harp talk to the audience while I finished changing and tuning the string. 

Not all string breakage is so convenient, of course. A few years ago, I was playing a big flashy solo piece as part of a program with various performers.  The piece was Salzedo’s “Variations on a Theme in the Old Style,” The piece is in G Major and it’s about 12 minutes long. I was less than a minute into the piece when I broke the last string I would have expected to break, the lowest wire G string on the harp. In many pieces, that wouldn’t have been an issue, but this string was part of every variation from beginning to end, and in fact, was in the last chord of the piece. It was critical. 

Two thoughts flashed simultaneously through my mind. First, I’m going to have to stop and fix this string. Second, I had not only broken a string, but I had broken the most important rule for any harpist playing anywhere. Instead of having all my strings with me backstage, I had left my wire string set in my car which was in the parking garage a couple of blocks away. Not good. 

While a broken string is a fact of every harpist’s life, it doesn’t have to be a disaster, even in a performance, as long as you have the right replacement string and you know how to tie the all-important knot. On today’s show, we’ll review string care, string storage, the different kinds of strings and which to choose for your harp, and I’ll even give you some knot-tying tips. All of these are really important as we here in the northern hemisphere come into high summer, which is a season of high string breakage.

But how did I resolve my broken string dilemma?  Here’s a hint: it was solved in a most surprising and simple way and without running to the parking garage. I’ll tell you the whole story later in the show. As they say, stay tuned!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Plan ahead for some focused harp time. Register for the Fall Retreat 

Related resource What’s Your SPF- String Protection Formula? blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-161

Maybe you’ve noticed or maybe you haven’t, but these podcasts are organized into three different categories. One category is “Practice and Performing” and another is “Music and Meaning.”  The third category is “Technique and Musicianship.” Technique is one of those self-explanatory items, but musicianship probably needs a little more description. 

A common dictionary definition of musicianship is “the skill or artistry involved in performing music.” Other definitions include the word “knowledge” along with skill and artistry. Musicianship as a category is so broad that it actually encompasses everything about playing music except for technique, although technique obviously has a role to play in musicianship as well.

I like to define musicianship as the craft of music. It is the part of playing music that is common to musicians whatever instrument they play, or whether they sing or compose. For us harpists, it’s everything about music that is not specifically related to the harp. It’s note reading and music theory, rhythm and expression, music history and interpretation. There is so much to musicianship that it can feel overwhelming. Where do you begin to start developing your personal musicianship skills?

For our discussion today, I want to start with two important ideas. First, you already have a level of musicianship skills. You’re not starting from scratch. Developing your musicianship is a process, just like developing your repertoire or your technique. 

And secondly, I want to offer a new way to consider musicianship. It’s a slightly different perspective, one we will work with today that will help you identify specific things you can do and are already doing to become the musician - and harpist - you want to be. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-160

At one of our Harp Mastery® retreats several years ago. I presented a workshop called “Learn Anything Fast.” That sounds like a pretty ambitious topic, and I imagine that some of the retreaters were a little skeptical. After all, learning a piece of music takes time. But my point in that workshop was this: does it have to take as much time as it’s taking you now?

There’s no golden rule about how long it should take you to learn a piece. That’s something students would often love to know, and it would be wonderful if each piece came with a guarantee, like all those infomercials have: Learn this piece in 30 days or your money back!

There is no “30 day guarantee” for a piece, because each harpist approaches each piece with a different set of individual skills and strengths. Each piece requires specific skills, either technical skills or musicianship skills or both. How long it takes you to learn a piece is a combination of the demands of the piece, your own skill development relative to those demands and the systems or learning habits you bring to the piece. That’s where I think we can make big changes, the kind of changes that could drastically shorten your learning timeline for any piece.

So on today's show, we are going to look at what exactly goes into learning a piece, skills you already have in your pocket that can help you learn that piece faster, and I’ll give you some tips to tweak your learning system so you can leapfrog ahead and start playing that piece sooner. In one day? Maybe. Let’s find out.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Our next Harp Mastery® retreat is in Kissimmee, Florida from October 9 to October 13. Learn more and reserve your spot here.

Related resource Practicing Differently: 4 Steps to Faster Learning blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-159

In a world of sticky notes, Gorilla Glue and tape that can hold a leaky boat together, why can’t we make a piece of music stick in our fingers?

Does this sound familiar? We sit down at the harp on Monday with fresh spirit and energy and we dig into the music we want to learn. Tuesday we repeat the process, feeling very virtuous. On Wednesday, we are a little disappointed that we don’t see any progress from our practice. Thursday, we decide that it just needs a little more effort. On Friday, it seems like our fingers have forgotten everything we’ve been trying to teach them, so we take the rest of the weekend off and hope that next week will be better. 

And if we’re trying to memorize a piece, it can feel even more frustrating. It takes so long to see any progress. Our music just doesn’t seem to stick. 

We can put the blame in lots of places: the music is hard, we don’t have enough practice time, we’re too distracted to focus, we’re too old. Any of those things could be contributing factors. However, there are three important components in stickiness. One of them we understand; one of them we reluctantly accept. And the last one is the one I want to talk about today. 

The three factors are time, persistence, which I am going to call pushy patience, and observation, which I want you to think about as active understanding. The three of these factors together will make your music sticky whether you are memorizing it or not. They aren’t hard to understand in a theoretical sense, but you’ll want to hear the practice strategies I use to help my music stick, so that yours will stick too.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Chorale Challenge is wrapping up! Send in your entry by posting it in the Week 5 Challenge Post in the Hub or emailing it to amy@harpmastery.com. 

Related resource The Case for Memorization: Why It Matters More Than You Think blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-158

I was going through some old music the other day and came across a notation that made me smile. It was written in my best elementary school cursive script and read, “Thumbelina’s having trouble with her thumb.” I don’t even remember what piece of music it was on, but it could have been on just about any one. I always had trouble with my thumbs. In fact, most of my music has the words “Thumbs up” in my teacher’s handwriting somewhere on the page.

I am double jointed, not to any circus freak level but in the more or less usual way. My thumbs bend backwards at the first knuckle. It’s not a big deal, not unless you’re a harpist, that is. It took me until I was sixteen to finally learn how to control my thumbs and have them play properly.

What I learned in the process was exactly how crucial our thumbs are for our harp playing. Our thumbs actually have the ability to free our fingers to be relaxed and supple; used another way, our thumbs can just about immobilize our hands. They can play ringing melody notes or trip us up in a scale. A simple repositioning of your thumb can make all your other fingers sound better. 

So we are all thumbs, or maybe it would be better to say, everything you need to know about your thumb, on the podcast today. We’ll talk about how the position of your thumb affects the rest of your fingers and how a “long and strong” thumb can make everything you play a little easier and a lot prettier. And I’ll share 10 things you need to know about how your thumb works and how to make it work better.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-157

Are you a free spirit, a rebel? Or maybe you just hate being told what to do?

I have to admit that sometimes one or more of those labels fits me. Most of the time I toe the line but there are moments when I just don’t want to do the thing I know I should do. Now I’m not talking about anything illegal, immoral or dangerous. It’s more like sometimes I just don’t feel like practicing. Or maybe I’d rather play the new piece of music I just bought instead of slogging through those four measures that are giving me so much grief. Going over and over those four measures doesn’t feel like making beautiful music. It doesn’t feel creative, and even though it may make me feel a little virtuous when I’m finished, it doesn’t always bring me joy in the moment.

Because playing the harp is not only as important to me as breathing but it’s my job, I know I need to buckle down and do the important work, and so I do. But that doesn’t mean that I have to shut my more creative side in a box somewhere. It does mean finding ways to nurture my more artistic side, feed those creative impulses and get my work done too. 

I’ve worked with students who struggle with trying to tame their own free, creative spirits and most of the time, trying to tame it doesn’t work. Creativity shouldn’t be, and truly isn’t, a force that hinders your practice. It can fuel your practice, helping you make progress faster at the same time that you’re enjoying it more. So if you’re one of those free spirits who resists having a practice plan, or just has trouble sticking to one, I’m here to help. I want to help you get a new perspective on what your practice could be like if it didn’t feel so much like homework and not like making music. This is also going to help those of you who battle shiny object syndrome and have stacks of music you’ve bought because you heard it and wanted to play it NOW. (Actually, I have to admit I fit into this category myself.) And if you are on the other side of the fence and the practice plan is no problem for you, but you’re not sure how to feel more creative, you’re going to find some interesting ideas in this show too.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-156

Have you ever had one of those moments when you wonder if you’ve been doing it all wrong? It might be something you have taken for granted, a habit maybe, or a process, something you thought was the perfect system. You always have done it that way, but suddenly you have a moment of doubt. Maybe it felt like a blinding flash of clarity; the clouds part and suddenly you see the thing in a new light. But just as quickly that clarity fades, and you are left with a nagging feeling that you’re missing something important. 

Maybe it’s just me. But I don’t think so. I think we all encounter things that we thought were working, until we see that maybe they aren’t.

I think that many of us actually feel that way about our harp technique. We go along just fine for a while and then we hit a wall. There’s a piece or a performance that shakes things up and all of a sudden our technique doesn’t seem so trustworthy any more. We need to strengthen it, to sharpen our skills, maybe even rethink our technique altogether. 

I think that’s the right time to take a step back and look at what we really want from our technique. I’m not just talking about playing faster or with more control or having fingers that work better under pressure. Of course, we want all that. But at the most fundamental level, we don’t want a stronger, more reliable technique itself. We want what that technique will do for us. We want our fingers to make beautiful music.

So today, we’re going to talk about technique a little differently. We are going to look at what our technique should do for us and then look at any changes we might want to make to our technique through that lens. And I have a new way to consider this, with the three s’s. I’ll give you some practice ideas too, and I promise - no exercises today!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-155

Johann Sebastian Bach is a name every musician knows. He is revered as a composer whose music defined musical practices in the Baroque era and whose compositions still influence music and musicians today. Learning about his music and learning to play his music is required study for any music major.

But we harpists do feel a little neglected. We play one of the instruments that Bach did not write any music for. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from borrowing extensively from his keyboard music, his violin and cello sonatas and partitas and his lute music. Much of Bach’s music is well-suited to the harp with rippling scale passages or rich chords. 

My first in-depth encounters with Bach’s music were in my piano lessons when I was about 12 years old. My teacher was insistent about how the preludes and inventions I was studying should be played: how long each note should be, how the music was made up of melodies played together, or how the harmonies moved in progression. It was my first exposure to the real building blocks of music, besides simple key signatures and chords. Somehow Bach’s music seemed to define and explain much of the rest of the music I encountered.

In my studies in college, at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, I learned much more about the inner workings of Bach’s compositions and the lasting impact it has had, not just in terms of the wealth of beautiful music he wrote, but also in the effects his music had on every composer since his time.

What I want to share with you today is not simply how learning more about Bach will make you a better harpist and all-around musician, but specifically how three familiar pieces by Bach can work together to help you improve your finger agility and evenness, your chords, your melodic flow, and your understanding of a couple of key musical concepts.  You probably already know and play at least one of these pieces, and possibly all three. What I want you to come away with today is a new understanding of how these pieces are constructed and how to use this information to become an even better harpist.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-154

Today’s podcast is all about tempo, and I have to start by saying that tempo is a funny thing. We define it with numbers or with the familiar Italian words, or less familiar French or German ones, and it still seems elusive.

Much of the time we try to pin a piece of music down to a number, a mathematically precise ratio of beats per minute. Perhaps the composer put it there as a guide for the performer. Perhaps it was added by an editor, an arranger, or a teacher. But it still doesn’t necessarily satisfy us. In fact, everything about this feels wrong. How is it possible to limit a piece of music, a creation that lives in a single moment, to one number? 

I remember reading the liner notes to a CD recording by legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein. This recording was made toward the end of his life. He was already in his 90’s, but the producers of this recording wanted to preserve Rubinstein’s interpretations of piano masterworks for generations to come who would not have heard him. The producer writes in the liner notes how he was moved to tears by Rubinstein’s performance in the recording studio of the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. He felt he had witnessed a definitive performance. 

The next morning, however, Rubinstein returned to the studio for that day’s recording session and asked to re-record the Beethoven, saying it was too slow. The change in tempo was apparently barely discernible, if at all, to a listener, but it made a difference to Rubinstein. 

What made the tempo difference important to Rubinstein? Clearly it wasn’t the metronome mark. Beethoven didn’t include one; the movement is only marked “Adagio sostenuto” and so a range of speeds would seem to be allowable. So from this we can conclude that tempo is more than a metronome marking. But what is it and how do we know what tempo is right or wrong? 

Do we have to play a piece at the metronome marking, particularly if we can’t play it at that speed or we don’t think it sounds right at that speed? What do we do if there is no metronome marking? How do we know how fast or slow the piece should go? With so many recordings available to us, it is clear that harpists can play the same piece at very different speeds. Does that make some of the performances correct and the others not correct? 

Okay, I just threw a bunch of difficult questions at you, but you don’t have to come up with the answers; that’s my job. I think it’s important, though, that you have a clear idea of what the parameters are for finding your tempo for a piece, a tempo that you can play that sounds appropriate for the piece. In fact, that’s the secret right there. But I have lots more ideas and practical advice for you on this topic so don’t go anywhere.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Harp Mastery® Fall Retreat registration is open now!

Related resource Tempo is Not a Number blog post

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Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-153

When I was preparing for this week’s show, I couldn’t help being reminded of a couple of tired old jokes.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Doctor: Then don’t do that.

And,

Patient: Doctor, it hurts and I don’t know what’s wrong.Doctor: Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

When we’re thinking about our harp lessons, we may sometimes think of it like a doctor-patient relationship. Something is wrong with our playing and we want to get it fixed. Give me the prescription and let me go home.

Or we may think of our lessons in a less transactional, more relationship based-way. Our teacher isn’t just our expert harp guide but our friend as well. We look forward to our lessons as a time to reconnect with our harp and with our teacher too.

While both of those scenarios may be accurate to some extent, neither one truly describes what a music lesson is or should be. If our lessons are transactional - just give me the scrip, doc - we’re missing out on the deeper experience and knowledge our teacher can offer us. If our lessons are mainly relational, we may find ourselves meandering through a succession of pieces and wondering if we’re really making progress. Fortunately, most teacher-student interactions have a little of the best of each of those scenarios, plus a whole lot more beneficial instruction and guidance. 

But all that can sour quickly if you have a bad lesson. That’s what we’re going to discuss today.

First, let me say that I don’t like the term “bad lesson.” Oh, yes, I had plenty of them in my student days, the kind of lesson that would leave me in tears, frustrated, angry and wanting to quit the harp. From the perspective I have now, though, with decades of teaching experience, I can see that most of those bad lessons were the best learning opportunities. They were the times when my teacher’s expertise and guidance made the most difference for me. They were the lessons that taught me the most about harp playing and being a harpist. I simply didn’t have the perspective at the time to understand it.

I believe adult students bring a more sophisticated and mature viewpoint to their lessons and usually, so-called “bad lessons” aren't an issue. But they still happen. Occasionally you have a lesson that leaves you feeling demoralized or frustrated, and that’s what I want to talk about. I want to help you sort out the facts from the feelings, help you set clear expectations for your lesson outcomes, and give you my not-so-secret tips for preparing for a lesson so you know every lesson will be a good one. And I won’t ignore those bad lessons; I’ll share my best pep talk with you too. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-152

It’s high time I got up on my soapbox. It’s not often I do a rant on the podcast, but there’s an issue that has me so fired up that I had to talk about it with you.

I believe it’s the result of how we are learning now. There are so many opportunities to learn online, everything from individual live lessons to Youtube videos to video courses to coaching to online masterclasses. And before you mention it, yes, I am obviously a contributor to those online learning opportunities, which makes me part of the problem. I’d rather be part of the solution. Hence, the reason for today’s rant.

You may have heard me talk about the leveling up involved in playing four-finger chords if you’ve been playing mostly three-finger chords. I’m not changing my opinion on that. 

But recently I’ve seen that the main stumbling block for many students isn’t just the addition of one more note to the chord. It’s actually more about the way their technique has developed. Their entire technical approach, particularly in the right hand, is based on playing three-finger chords. This means that when they begin to play four-finger chords, their entire technique must change. And with so much learning happening online, particularly without the personal attention of an experienced teacher, harp students don’t know they’re doing anything wrong.

I’ve also very recently come across some hand injuries that could be attributed to the development of a three-finger technique. This is the part that has finally pushed me to think about this topic in a more comprehensive way.

In short, a technique based on three-finger playing can: 

Impede your technical progress, especially if you are an intermediate level player.

Cause stress from incorrect technique which could lead to injury.

Prevent you from learning more advanced music.

That sounds to me like a good reason for a rant! 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

You’re invited to my special Live Monday Warm-Up on Four Finger Techniques on Monday, April 22nd at 11 AM Eastern. Join me in the Harp Mastery® Hub or watch on Youtube.

Related resource How to Play Four Note Chords Without Finger Fumbles blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-151

This podcast episode goes live on April Fool’s Day, and I probably couldn’t have picked a more appropriate day to release it. I didn’t do it on purpose, but today’s topic lines up very nicely with April Fool's. It’s about the fool’s game of self-criticism.

I think the most dangerous pitfall for harpists, or for any musician, doesn’t have to do with performance nerves or losing your place or not having a strong technique or being able to sight read. I think it is being overly or inappropriately critical of our efforts. 

Now before you say that you are skilled at keeping your perspective and you don’t let your drive to achieve lead to frustration, I want you to stop and really think. I run across harpists every day, every time I teach a webinar or an intensive, who describe themselves as perfectionists. Most of these harpists know that their perfectionism is slowing them down, possibly even preventing them from enjoying their playing or sharing it with others. Maybe that sounds familiar to you.

Other harpists get caught up in the “shoulds;” I should be playing this piece or working on these skills. Maybe that much is  true, but when they start telling themselves they should be better than they are by now, they’ve started down the slippery slope.

Even if this kind of negativity isn’t a regular part of your harp life, it still may show up from time to time and cause you to doubt your skills, your musicality or even if you should keep playing the harp at all. Obviously, that’s not a good thing.

So today, I’m going to discuss self-criticism, how it shows up in our practice and our playing. No more fool’s game, playing around with criticism and calling it “constructive.” We will reframe the way you talk to yourself so you can keep the negativity at bay. Plus, I will give you some strategies that will help you combat it so you can keep your outlook growth-oriented and positive, even when things aren’t going the way you want.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-150

We harpists take our finger placement seriously. Getting the right fingers on the right strings at the right time is paramount. One misplaced finger and a whole passage can go wobbly.

One of the quotes of Johann Sebastian Bach that comes to my mind at this moment is this one: “It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”

Bach was known for his sense of humor and so, without knowing the context for the quote,  I like to think that this was not intended to downplay the difficulty of playing an instrument but was more tongue in cheek. But it’s still a little depressing.

Our physical connection to the harp strings is key, not just for playing the right notes, but for our speed, our tone, our range of expression, our relaxation, even our confidence. When our fingers are too loosely placed on the strings, they can slide up or down or even off the string. This makes for uneven rhythms, a weak sound and inconsistency. Of course, if we grip too hard, we end up with too much tension to play well.

I’ve often wished for magical mini-magnets that would stick my fingers to the right strings at the right time so I could play without concern, almost carefree. But I had wonderful teachers who taught me that I didn’t need magic magnets; I just needed to make my placing stick.

That’s our topic for today’s show, sticky placing. If you’ve never thought about your placing as being sticky or otherwise, you’re going to find this discussion interesting and probably very enlightening. I’ll talk about what sticky placing is (other than a term I think I made up), what it can help you with and how to practice it. The practice techniques may even be ones you’ve heard of and not used because you didn’t see the point. I hope to change all that for you today, so stay tuned.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-149

Call me crazy if you want. I know your ideal day might be a day at the spa, or sitting on the beach with a good book, or going for a hike in the mountains. Although those all sound good to me, my ideal day - or at least one of my ideal days - would be a day when I could practice all day. A day when I only had to practice would be a true luxury for me. That's really not that crazy. I think a lot of harpists would feel that way. Maybe you would too.

Of course, the reality is that most of us are too busy most of the time for that ideal practice day. Usually we are sandwiching practice in between the other parts of our lives and often our harp playing ends up taking a back seat to tasks that are more urgent or the care we give to others. And when we do have time to practice, we don’t feel that we have time to get to everything on our practice list. 

It’s not uncommon to feel a little frustrated that we can’t spend the time we would like to with the harp. We sense that our progress is hampered by a lack of consistency or time. On the flip side, too much practice can actually be physically damaging, but it still would be nice to have an uninterrupted hour to really focus on our work or even just enjoy playing.  

The solution seems to be to use the time we have, to practice in those small chunks of time in between other tasks or obligations. Achieving focus and getting something accomplished in fifteen or twenty minutes isn’t easy, though. Being realistic, these small steps are often all we have.What I’d like to talk about with you today is how to stop thinking of your short practice spans as a practice compromise. 

Rather than thinking of these practice sessions as too short, we are going to give them a makeover. We will call them “practice bursts,” and they can be valuable practice opportunities when we use them strategically. I’ll show you how to get in gear and focus more quickly so you can feel that you are still on the path to progress, even if you have to take small steps. And I will show you 10 ways to make your practice bursts effective, fun and satisfying. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-148

My husband’s family is German, and even before we were married I discovered that one of the things I had long heard about German housewives was true, at least in my mother-in-law’s house: Germans take a clean house seriously. 

By American standards my own house isn’t filthy. I keep it fairly neat and decently clean. But my mother-in-law saw clean in a completely different way. There was no dust in her house, not even in the corners under the beds. She used paste wax to keep all the wood surfaces gleaming. And the only exceptions she made to the “keep your feet off the furniture” rule, were her grandsons. Cleaning didn’t just mean mopping the floor; it meant scrubbing it on your hands and knees. 

So why am I talking about this on the podcast? Because just like there are different levels of clean, there are different levels of knowing a piece. Sometimes we find this out the hard way, when we think we know a piece and then try to play it for someone else and discover that we lose our place or can’t make it musical or even forget how it starts. 

One of the ways we learn our music at a deeper level is by studying it away from the harp. You know the basic idea: listen to recordings, study the printed music and look beyond the playing of the notes to what the notes might actually mean. Just like deep cleaning, this approach helps you reach the places that regular practice doesn’t reach, like seeing patterns or chord progressions or repeated sections. But studying your music can do much more for you than that, as long as you know what to look and listen for. It can actually help you develop important skills that will apply beyond one particular piece to all your harp playing. Plus, it’s not nearly as taxing as scrubbing a floor. 

So on today’s show, I will show you what to look for, what to listen for and how you can speed up your learning with some specific study methods. You don’t need specialized knowledge of music theory to do this, and you don’t need to take a lot of time. But I can pretty much guarantee that you will find this both interesting to do and rewarding. And it’s fun too!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-147

See if you can guess the answer to this.

What can sometimes feel gently rocking like a boat on a lake on a calm summer’s day, and other times puts a lively spring into your step? It isn’t hard, but it’s never simple. You’ve almost certainly encountered it in your harp music, and even though you may be able to play it easily,  you may not be able to explain it. You might think of it as double trouble or as a triple threat in the way it compounds the challenges in your music. Can you guess what it is? If you’re the type who likes to figure things out, pause the podcast here for a moment and then come back when you’re ready for the answer.

Ready? Here’s one final hint: the answer is a meter signature, and I know it’s one you know. Maybe you’ve guessed it. The meter signature or time signature I mean is 6/8. I know you’ve seen it and played it. “Greensleeves” or “What Child Is This?” is a melody that is most often written in 6/8. It has that gentle lilt to it, like the rocking boat I mentioned a moment ago. Irish jigs - think “The Irish Washerwoman” - are very often in 6/8 time. That’s the other side of 6/8, the rollicking dancing side.

Today I’d like to discuss some of the important characteristics of 6/8, not just how to count it, but why we count it that way. We’ll touch on the other time signatures that share those same attributes, ones that may puzzle you when you first encounter them like 6/4 or 12/8 or 3/2. We’ll also talk about the practicalities of these meters, what kind of fingering or placing strategies are best and why. And along the way, we’ll clear up some of the music terminology that may be confusing. I want you to come away from the episode feeling like you’ve learned something useful and practical, something that will help you play the harp better not just today, but over the long term too.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-146

I am always interested to hear what first attracted harpists to the harp. It’s fascinating to learn the many ways that the harp can draw a potential student. My own story is that I heard the harp on the radio and told my parents that was what I wanted to do. The important part of this story for me is that it wasn’t a gold harp or a pretty dress that drew me to the harp, but the sound that pulled me in. Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with the gold harp or the glamor look, but the sound was - and is - important to me. 

Whether or not it was the harp’s sound that first attracted you, sound is important to us. So why don’t we spend more of our time listening to our playing? We devote a lot of energy to reading the notes and teaching our fingers to play the right strings. Somehow there isn’t always time to just spend listening. But it’s an important habit and one that we are going to spend a little time with today.

This is a playalong episode, meaning that I will play and you will be able to play along with me. I’m going to lead you through a warm-up that will help you focus on your fingers and your listening skills. There’s no printed music for this; just follow my directions. If you’ve participated in one of my Live Monday Warm-Ups, then you know how this works. 

I realize that podcast listening time is probably not usually harp time for you, but even if you’re not at your harp, you can still benefit from listening now. And of course, you can come back to this episode and play along with me later. However, if you’re driving or doing something that requires your concentration, perhaps anything more focused than stuffing envelopes, be sure to keep your wits about you.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

Register for the Finish It! Live Intensive.

Related resource, The Practice of Listening: Why It’s Essential for Every Musician blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-145

Let’s take this as a given: our technique is at the heart of everything we do at the harp. Intellectually, we know this to be true, but that doesn’t prevent us from being surprised when we run into a passage in a piece we’re learning that our fingers just can’t manage. What the heck? We’ve been doing our daily exercises and most of the time our technique is up to the challenges in any new piece. So what happened this time?

If you’ve had that experience, rest assured, my friend, that you are not alone. We’ve all been there. Sometimes a moment like that is just a wake up call, reminding us that we’ve slacked off a bit and we’ve been taking our technique work a little too casually. Technique practice done correctly requires our attention and focus. It also requires a plan for growth.

The basic drills or exercises we rely on are scales, arpeggios and chords. In theory, keeping those skills fresh should enable us to play about three quarters of anything we encounter. But I don’t have to tell you that’s not the way it seems to work out. Keeping those skills sharp is just the beginning. We need to keep them growing too.

It makes sense when you take a moment to consider. As we become more experienced harpists, we become more skilled too, which means that we are likely playing more music and more complex music too. If our technical proficiency isn’t growing with the rest of our skill set, we will find ourselves blocked by passages or entire pieces that are beyond the limits of our fingers. You’re with me so far, right? Good, because there’s only one conclusion to draw from this, and it’s one you may not be thrilled to hear. We have to keep challenging our technique so that it keeps up with the music we want it to serve. We have to keep looking for the next level of technical improvement in order to feel confident in the next level of music that we want to play. 

Simply put, our technique is our great enabler; it makes playing our music possible. This also means it can be our biggest roadblock, one that will prevent us from playing our music or at least from playing it with the artistry we want. So what do we do? We reach beyond the everyday technique work that doesn’t challenge us and look for some ways to level up our technique to keep pace with our music. So on today’s show, I’ll teach you the three areas to consider leveling up and how to go about it. Just remember, finger freedom is musical freedom!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Register for the Finish It! Live Intensive 

The Magic of 1% Webinar Replay is LIVE on the Harp Mastery® home page. 

Join our February Hub “Express Yourself” Challenge 

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-144

Today I’m going to tell you how to improve anything. I know that sounds like a tall order, but we harpists are all about improvement. Every day in every way we want to get better and better. Many of us like this idea too: slow and steady wins the race. Yes, but remember tortoises live for a very long time. They can afford to take only the slow and steady approach. Some of us have a little shorter time frame in mind.

I’m a fan of the author and productivity guru Brian Tracy. His book “Eat That Frog” is one of my favorites when I need a little kick to conquer my procrastination. There’s a quote from his book that I considered as a starting point for our discussion today: “Practice the philosophy of continuous improvement. Get a little bit better every single day.” 

But something about that left me a little unsatisfied. Yes, certainly the continuity of improvement, like practicing every day rather than once a week, is important for us harpists. However, that same philosophy is what seems to keep a lot of harpists from making bigger progress. When you seek improvement ONLY in small stages, you get only small improvements. And I hear from harpists all the time that they don’t feel like they’re getting anywhere, and asking me to help.  

And so I’m going to try today to shake up that “slow and steady” habit just enough to make the improvement that you’re looking for actually visible, to get where you’re going faster. I’ve broken this down into three easy steps and one hard one. I realize that may not sound like the help you’ve been looking for, but I think it will be more encouraging than you might think.

Extra good news - this is a system you already know and have been using, but perhaps you haven’t thought of applying it to your harp playing. It really will make everything just a little simpler and should help you identify what you need to do so that you can actually experience growth. 

Sometimes that tortoise strategy of “slow and steady wins the race” isn’t what we’re looking for. We secretly know that the hare was onto a good thing by sprinting ahead. He just didn’t have the good sense to actually get to the end before he stopped. You’re smarter than that, I assure you.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Click here to register for the webinar, “The Magic of 1%: Learn the Small Steps That Add Up (Almost Magically!) To Big Progress” 

Join our February Hub Challenge, Express Yourself

Related resource The Fork in the Road blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-143

Every restaurant chain, every chef has their “secret sauce.” It’s that unique ingredient that makes their food taste special every time. It's part of their culinary signature.

There is a secret - or maybe not so secret - sauce in musical expression too. It’s rubato. It’s the element of musical pacing that breathes life into music, that keeps it from sounding dull and robotic, that helps a melody sing and rich harmonies unfold with spaciousness.

Today’s podcast is an exploration of what rubato is and how you can use it to add depth and expression to your playing. I’ll explain how to figure out where and when to use it, and equally important, when not to use it. I’ll play some examples for you too, so you can hear exactly what rubato is. I imagine that you are going to have one of those “aha” moments as you are finally able to put a name to that thing that’s been missing from your playing.

I’m not saying your playing is unmusical. But rubato is something most musicians don’t understand, and it is something that is hard for even experienced teachers to explain. Singers and instrumentalists who play a melody line instrument like the flute or violin know a lot more about rubato than we harpists do. That’s partly due to the fact that, unlike a flutist or a violinist, we can’t control the sound of a note after we have played it; we can’t actively sustain it or crescendo as we hold it. As a result, we tend to focus on the coordination of our two hands, on the chords or the vertical dimension of our playing, rather than on the horizontal melodic line, which is where rubato has the biggest effect. 

But music lives in both those dimensions - horizontal and vertical - as well as the dimension of time. Using rubato is a way to use time to allow us to express the other two dimensions of music, how we create freedom and flow. And it’s so much fun.

I hope I have intrigued you, because I really want you to listen to the information I’m going to share today. It will likely change the way you approach playing a piece. It may possibly change the way you practice a piece or what you consider a hallmark of a good performance. At the very least, I’m pretty sure that you will want to try it out with one of your pieces as soon as this episode is finished.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-142

I might as well get this out of the way. This is going to be one of those podcasts that sounds like it’s telling you you’re doing it all wrong and you’ve been doing it wrong for years. I say it’s going to sound like that, but I want to be clear that’s not the point of our topic today. The real point is finding a path to growth, a path forward, and often finding a path forward means doing something different. So I want you to approach this topic with that progress mindset, because the ideas I’m about to share with you about how I think you could or should approach a new piece might sound a little uncomfortable, and that’s exactly the point.

You may know that the only one-on-one teaching I do is with my Gold Circle students. These students are special, not because of their playing level - they run the gamut there - but because of their commitment to their harp playing. They take their harp playing seriously, and that’s why I feel privileged to be able to work with them and help speed them along their paths. 

I’m mentioning this because one of my Gold Circle students, Beverley, shared with me something her French teacher told her when she was studying French in high school. In essence, it was this: the teacher gave the beginning class a rule that she qualified as only a rule for now. As the students became more experienced, she said she would rescind that rule and give them a better one, but that second rule wasn’t something that would be useful for them at this earlier stage of their learning. 

Thanks to Beverley for that example, because that’s how I want you to understand what I’m going to give you today. It’s not a grammar rule, obviously, but it’s a way - three ways, actually - to start learning a piece. I can almost guarantee that these ways will either sound exciting and inspiring or terrifyingly impossible. But what’s important is that I think you will see that they make sense as a way to leverage the growth you have already made. 

So while you may be comfortable with the system you’ve been using, I’d like you to consider the idea that, although it was a system that worked well at the stage where you were, there might be a better system for the stage where you are now.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

The 2024 Harp Happiness Challenge winner will be announced on Friday! Join me live in the Hub!

Related resource Practicing Differently: 4 Steps to Faster Learning blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-141

If I had to choose one finger pattern that I could count on to almost always show up in a piece, it would be an arpeggio. Arpeggios and the harp go together like peanut butter and jelly. In fact, the Italian word for harp is arpa, which has the same first three letters as arpeggio. That’s because the word arpeggio comes from the Italian word arpeggiare, which means to play on a harp.  See what I mean? Peanut butter and jelly.

Whether the arpeggios show up as full sweeps of sound over the entire range of the harp or simply a left hand accompaniment pattern or anything in between, arpeggios are everywhere in harp music, so it’s essential to learn to play them well.

The first time a student comes across an arpeggio, they are shown how an arpeggio is really a chord in which all the notes are played one after the other instead of simultaneously. They are taught the rules of placing for arpeggios and given exercises to learn to read them quickly and play them fluidly. But often, when the arpeggios get faster or more complex, those basic skills are not enough. 

We don’t simply want to play them cleanly; we want them to sound even and clear.We don’t want to play them only at exercise speed; we need to be able to control the fingers over the full range of tempo possibilities.We don’t want them to sound clunky or plunky; we want them to be beautiful arching gestures.In short, we want them to ripple.

So today, we will talk about the finer points of arpeggios. Naturally we will go over all the basics of placing and playing, but we’ll dive deeper into how to shape your arpeggios, have them sound relaxed and flowing, and yes, to make them ripple.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-140

At its most fundamental, music is sound over time. When you take away the rich harmonies, soaring melodies, complex structures and intricate rhythms, that’s all you have left: sound over time. It doesn’t sound very creative or artistic, but those two elements are the basis of all music. How any single performer combines them is where the artistry lies.

However, that kind of time, the meter and rhythm, isn’t our topic for today. The kind of time management I want to explore with you today is more about the practical side of our harp experience than the artistic side. It’s about your practice time: how you spend it, what you focus on and how you set your intentions for the day or for the week. 

We’re also going to talk about the time it takes you to learn a piece. I am frequently asked how long it should take to learn a piece, and it’s a question without a simple answer. There are numerous factors to consider, including the amount of time you have to practice and your current skill level as compared to the difficulty level of the piece. But perhaps the most important factor is how well you manage your journey through the different learning stages of a piece. 

That journey is a little different for all of us, but I want you to walk away from this episode with a few action steps that you know will make a difference for you. I want you to get to the fun part, playing music, instead of staying stuck in practice mode. So we are going to review seven ways to make better use of your practice time so you can make progress faster, learn music faster. And one of those ways will be adapting the best practice practices to your own particular learning style. We’ll revisit the German Shepherd, Greyhound and Beagle learning styles and give you some specific strategies that will suit your own practice breed.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-139

The Little Engine That Could was just plain lucky. If you remember that children’s book, when the little engine had to take over for the bigger engines to pull the train loaded with toys over the mountain, he kept telling himself, “I think I can,” even though it seemed clear he was much too small to succeed. While the “I think I can” strategy worked for the little engine, in the real world that mindset is responsible for more failure, frustration and disappointment than we are led to believe. Thinking positively is not what is necessary for a positive result. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s not the only thing, and if it’s not grounded in reality it can be damaging.

You don’t achieve confidence by trying to build confidence itself. True confidence is a natural result of properly directed actions along with a positive mindset. Without the actions and the experience that comes with following through on those actions, a confident attitude will let you down nearly every time. You need the proper ingredients to build confidence. Confidence is the cake that comes out of the oven, but it isn’t what goes into the oven. What goes into the oven doesn’t look like cake at all, but if you’ve followed the recipe, the batter miraculously becomes a cake. That’s the kind of confidence you can count on and it’s much more powerful than just a “can do” attitude.

Think back to the last time you started a new piece feeling confident that you could meet the challenges it would present. Of course, you knew there would be difficulties in the piece that you would need to work on and conquer, but you were secure in your belief that you would be able to finish the piece and play it with assurance. That’s the kind of confidence that comes from positive past experiences, the habit of success. A habit of success allows you to meet challenges and obstacles with the inner certainty that you already have the skills and strategies you need in order to overcome them.  Your certainty is built on your track record of growth and achievement; you know you will be able to succeed because you have proof. Obviously the trick is creating those positive experiences that create that inner feeling of confidence. That’s part of what we will talk about today. 

We’ll also talk about what sabotages our confidence and how to break a cycle of disappointment, if you ever find yourself losing your confidence. Plus, I’ll share the most important habits I believe you need to make sure that your confidence is baked into all your playing.

By the way, confidence isn't just for performing. We play with more flow, more musicality, and fewer mistakes when we play with conviction and confidence. So whether you want to perform for others or just enjoy your playing at home - my hope is that you’ll do both! - you’ll find today’s ideas invaluable. Just like the Little Engine That Could, you’ll soon be saying, “I knew I could!”

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-138

Happy New Year! It’s the first morning of a new year and I am feeling, as I do every new year, that sense of excitement and possibility that inhabits those empty calendar pages.  I can hardly wait to see what 2024 will bring. 

Since this podcast is going live on New Year’s Day, I thought it was particularly appropriate to talk today about goals. We talk about harp goals a lot at Harp Mastery® but today I actually want to elevate our viewpoint and look at harp playing goals with a broader perspective.

SMART goals - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based - have been the gold standard of productivity experts for a while. Those five criteria combine in a way that makes success look almost like a mathematical certainty. They feel powerful because they are so concrete.

But music isn’t like that. Music is about creativity. It’s not about following rules, it’s about choosing which ones you want to follow. It’s not about creating cookie cutter results; it’s about developing the experience and confidence you need to create the same piece of music over and over again with each time feeling new and fresh. So when we try to create SMART goals for our harp playing, it can feel like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Sometimes clear and well-designed goals are helpful. We use them in our coaching programs to help keep the coach and the harpist she’s working with stay on the same page. When the expectations and desired outcomes are clearly stated and referenced regularly, there is more traction and progress comes more quickly. 

However, that kind of system is less helpful for most harpists working on their own. We have a tendency to over-design our goals or resolutions to the point where they are restrictive and create a cycle of failure rather than of success. Just think about a daily habit you’ve tried to instill. Everything goes along well for a while and then there’s one day when you break your streak. That first time you might get back on track quickly, but when that next slip comes you may be off track for a couple of days. That’s when the guilt sets in and pretty soon you’ve all but given up. 

Giving up does not sound like harp happiness to me, which is why we are talking today about un-smart goals, goals that aren’t aimed at making you toe the line but are created to give you freedom to pursue what you love, playing the harp. That sounds like a guaranteed success plan for 2024 to me!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-137 

A special holiday music mix just for podcast listeners!

The program:

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-136

The year-end wrap has become a hot trend. The worthy practice of reflecting on the year that is nearly over and the new one about to start is no longer simply a quiet moment with a cup of tea and a journal. It’s an opportunity for businesses to go public with their successes. We at Harp Mastery® have jumped on the bandwagon, too. It’s fun to look back and see what we’ve accomplished. It’s important, perhaps even more so, to see where we missed the mark. Somehow, though, those aren’t the numbers that show up on social media. We like to count the wins.

But this episode isn’t about what Harp Mastery® has done. After all, this isn’t a business podcast. This podcast is about you, me and our harp playing. And that’s what this episode is about too.

I want to share with you my own system for looking back, for remembering what my year was like. I start in the same way you may, by looking back at my calendar week by week and month by month. But my objective isn’t to see how many goals I have achieved or missed. This isn’t a moment for numbers or statistics for me. This is a moment to acknowledge the changes that happened in the year, both positive and not, the harp happiness I experienced and the people that were part of my year. I want this process to provide me with perspective and clarity, and of course, a place to start from for next year.

I’m sharing this with you today thinking that my ideas may help you find more clarity too. Clarity is where growth starts. It’s what gives direction and purpose to our actions. It’s what gives meaning to our music.  The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma says this, "Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound."

So let’s eliminate the meaningless sound, shut out the noise and get clear on what happened this year. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-135

As I look back over 11 years of blogging and podcasting, there are some trends I notice, topics I talk about with regularity and even predictability according to the seasons. Of course, it’s not a surprise that in December one of the topics that is on my mind - and I’m guessing on yours too - is about keeping your sanity during the holiday rush. Last week’s podcast, The Christmas Snowball, episode 133, dealt with the holiday music onslaught, and a few episodes before that, episode 130, I talked about preventing overwhelm. Timely topics, yes, but today, I’d like to look at this from the other side. I want to talk about stillness.

Here’s an example of the value of stillness. I was in an opera orchestra rehearsal with a conductor who was famous for his temper. There were days when he was complimentary to the players, but on the days when no one could do anything that pleased him, he was not shy about venting his displeasure. Sometimes the entire orchestra fell under his wrath; sometimes it was one particular player. Obviously, this could make rehearsals less than pleasant.

One day as he ranted at the entire orchestra, you could feel the collective blood pressure rise. In that moment, each of us had to decide how we were going to bear up under his words. Would we let it affect our playing or our mood? Or could we let it go and just continue to do our jobs?  That was the day I got one of my favorite compliments. When we finally got to a break in the rehearsal, the double bass player next to me leaned over and told me how glad he was to be next to me because I was like an island of serenity in the middle of the chaos. I don’t think I was ever complimented on my serenity before or since, but his comment showed me the value of creating the calm you want, of not reflecting a negative environment around you, of stillness.

Stillness is something that is in your power to create. You may have tried before without much success, but I think the strategies that we will cover today will give you a new approach. We aren’t going to start with meditation or breathing or giving up caffeine or any of those things. We are going to start from the outside and work our way to the core of the matter. I’m going to show you how to create stillness first in your hands, then in your mind and finally in your heart.  And who doesn’t need that kind of stillness now or at any time of year?

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-134

Be prepared, the famous Boy Scout motto. I’m thinking that Boy Scouts have nothing on harpists when it comes to being prepared. We harpists have preparation down, whether it is preparing our music, or stocking spare strings or packing our harp bag. However, there are times when even the best preparation doesn’t help, and you might be about to experience one of those times. Let’s call it the “Christmas Snowball.”

The Christmas Snowball shows up when the church music director decides that since you are playing the harp for the service and you’re there anyway, it would be a shame not to use the harp for every musical moment possible. So what started as a simple request - would you come and play the harp for one anthem with the choir on Christmas Eve? - snowballs into an additional anthem, various choral responses during the service, three carols with the congregation, a prelude selection or two, and of course, playing Silent Night during the candlelighting. If you’ve played for a Christmas Eve service before, this snowball scenario is causing flashbacks. If this year is your first time playing for a Christmas Eve service, I want you to be prepared. 

The real danger in the snowball is that it’s tempting to roll right along with it, until you realize that you're snowed under. It would be fun to play for the carols and you think the other parts don’t look too hard, so it’s easy to say yes. And you’d feel a little like the grinch if you said no. But once you agree to all the snowball extras, it feels more like an avalanche of music and the panic sets in.

In the words of the season, be not afraid. For behold I bring you pretty good ideas for how to learn this extra music fast, and I mean in a couple of days, not a couple of weeks. I’ll tell you how to make smart decisions about what to play and what not to play and I will demonstrate some of these choices at the harp so you can hear exactly what I mean. One more thing: we’ll talk about the very hardest skill of all, how to just say no. I know it’s hard to tell someone no, but I’ll help you learn to do it so you don’t feel like Scrooge. No “bah, humbugs” here.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-133

Long, long ago in what seems like a galaxy far away, there was no Cyber Monday. There was barely even a Black Friday. We shopped in stores, not on the yet-to-be-imagined internet. 

And for the children who were dreaming of holiday presents, there was the Sears catalog, the “Wish Book” edition. If you are an American of a certain age, you are nodding your head right now, but if you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll explain.

Sears is a department store chain that was founded in 1892. It was in the beginning exclusively a mail order business, and the Sears catalog was an important resource for shoppers all over the country, but particularly in rural areas that had limited access to stores. But, the special “Wish Book” edition, first printed in 1933 and released every year at holiday time, was the ultimate catalog shopping experience. It ceased publication in 1993, but at its peak, the catalog had over 600 pages with more than 100 pages devoted to toys. My brother and I waited for that catalog every year and boy, did we wish our way through the pages!

There’s no more Wish Book, but there also seems no end to our burgeoning consumerism. I have no desire to add to the frenzy but I did want to offer some ideas for harp-related gifts that you may enjoy giving to a harpist friend or putting on your own wish list. The twist to this list is that everything on it I have chosen because it will make a harpist’s life easier. Some of the items are recommendations for things you can purchase, but there are some that aren’t things you could buy for any amount of money. It’s about increasing harp happiness, not decreasing your wallet.

So grab a cup of tea and take a break with me, a rest from the holiday shopping rush. We’ll talk about the little things, a few bigger things and the less tangible things that every harpist could use at the holidays or any time of year.

By the way, I’ve included a link in the show notes to a list of everything I’m mentioning on today’s podcast. This is purely informational; I’m not making a commission or earning any money from any of the things on this list. You don’t even have to enter your email to get the list. All you have to do is click the link.

But if you’d like to show the podcast a little love, I’d be so grateful. Just share this episode or any of the episodes you may have found helpful with a friend. You’ll be sharing valuable information to help your harp friend, and you’ll be helping me to help more harpists. That’s a win for everyone and it doesn’t cost a thing!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Download my “What Every Harpist Needs” list PDF here.

Check out our Harp Mastery® shop! 

Related resource 10 Quick and Easy Stocking Stuffers for the Musician on Your List blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-132

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You suddenly realize that everything is quiet and you have 20 minutes all to yourself. Sure, you could sit down with a book and a cup of tea. Or you could spend that 20 minutes practicing. You decide your harp is calling you, so you sit on the bench and look at the music on your stand. But where do you start? 

You may have had days like that. I know I have. Those 20 minute segments are valuable little chunks of practice time, but obviously that’s not enough time to get everything done. If you’re used to having an hour or more to practice, that 20 minutes is frustratingly short. Of course, I’m just using these time frames as an illustration. Your regular practice time and your available time might be different, but the idea is the same. When you don’t have as much practice time as you are used to, you have to find a way to make do with what you’ve got.

When we start to prioritize what needs to get done, the first thing we often jettison from our practice is our technique work. We eliminate a warm-up and use parts of the pieces we need to learn as a warm-up. That’s a smart idea. But dedicated technique work, the kind that covers all the basics and keeps our fingers nimble and strong, is usually put aside. When you have a lot of music to learn and very little time to learn it, who has time for drills and exercises?

With the holiday season beginning in earnest later this week, practice time will be “catch as catch can” for most of us. But even with this time crunch, I want to urge you not to abandon your technique work. At this time, your technique work is more critical than ever. Why? Because it will help your fingers - and you - relax and re-center. Our technique is our greatest tool. All our playing depends on it, and when our technique is in shape, we can play more confidently, knowing we can trust our fingers.

But wait, I hear you saying. How am I supposed to fit in my technique practice when I have no time? That’s exactly what I will share with you on this episode, 5 of my favorite super-speedy ways to keep my fingers in shape when I’m in the middle of a time crunch. Plus, I’ll help you understand the particular benefits of each routine so you can choose what feels right for you.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-131

As of today, the day this podcast episode goes live, it is exactly six weeks until Christmas. As I said that, a little shiver ran down my spine. What was your reaction? Maybe you are channeling your inner child who can hardly wait for Christmas and you were jumping up and down. 

But I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a little annoyed or even felt a flutter of anxiety at being reminded of how fast the holiday season is approaching. Those Christmas songs that already form the shopping soundtrack in every store are more than a little irritating to me. They seem to bring out my inner Scrooge and it’s mostly because they just remind me of everything I still have to do to get ready. In a word, it feels overwhelming.

Of course, the feeling of overwhelm when it comes to your harp playing isn’t just a holiday phenomenon. Overwhelm poses a challenge for us every day. There is always a spot that needs more work, some technical drill we should be doing, new music we want to learn, old pieces we want to review, and the list goes on. There simply isn’t enough time to do everything, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.

So I thought this would be the perfect time to talk with you about overwhelm. I don’t want to talk just about the holiday pressures and the extra playing we do and how to fit it all in. Especially NOT about how to fit it all in, because I don’t think that’s the healthiest approach. I want to explore with you the two different types of overwhelm: actual overwhelm, which is about the outside forces acting on us, and perceived overwhelm, which is about the pressure we create ourselves. When it comes to actual overwhelm there are fairly simple strategies that we can use to relieve it. But the perceived overwhelm that is our own internal creation is more difficult to recognize and much harder to defeat. Of course it can be defeated and also of course, I have a quick and easy to remember word to help you with that. It’s the word “free,” because that’s how we all want to feel: free to enjoy our harp playing, our music, and our friends and family whether it’s in the holidays or any time of year. 

So if you’re ready to conquer the overwhelm and breathe easy again, stick with me today. You’re going to love this.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Join us in the Hub for “3 (More) Ways to Use Music Theory Every Day” call on Thursday, November 16th. Not in the Hub? Click here to join us - it’s free!  

Related resource Stay Relaxed to Play Your Best blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-130

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? Climbing Mt. Everest? Swimming the English Channel? Raising a teenager? 

Ok. I haven’t done the first two, but I survived raising a teenager and I think it ranks right up there near the top of the list of hardest things. I actually found a website the other day that listed someone else’s ideas of the hardest things to do in life. None of the ones I mentioned were on their list, but there were some that hit home, particularly as I was thinking about this podcast topic. One of them was giving up comfort, getting out of your comfort zone.

Sharing your music - playing in front of other people - is out of the comfort zone for most of us. When we play for others we are making ourselves vulnerable. It isn’t just about playing well, although that always helps. It’s also about feeling, however wrongly, that we are being judged, and that we may be found unworthy. It’s about revealing our artistic side, something we often feel is private and personal. No matter how confident we are in other areas of our lives, sharing our music can be extremely hard.

I’ve been playing the harp in public for over 50 years and although I can tell you it gets easier over time, I still face some of the same doubts and fears I had when I started. I’ve had plenty of good performances, but I’ve plenty that were more the crash-and-burn type. 

Today’s episode is devoted to making playing for others easier for you. One of the benefits of my own performing experiences, particularly the crash-and-burn ones, is that I have had to look at the right way to prepare so that I can be reasonably confident that my performance will meet my expectations. And I have discovered that the best preparation has two parts - preparing your music properly (which isn’t the type of practice you’re doing now, I can almost guarantee) and preparing yourself. 

This is a big topic, much bigger than a single podcast episode. But because we are coming into a season with lots of extra musical performances, I thought it was important to share the broad outline with you so that if you decide to share your music this holiday season, you have the information you need to prepare well.

Now a quick note for everyone who is in the My Harp Mastery membership. We will be spending the entire month of November on this topic, and the coaches and I will all be teaching on different aspects of sharing your music. So this is an extra resource for you as you begin this month’s theme, “Prepare to Share.”

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-129

If you attended my “Cut to the Chase" webinar a couple of weeks ago, you’ll remember that we were talking about some harp hacks, shortcut “outside the box” solutions for common harp problems. We’re going to talk about another one today.

Imagine that you’re learning a piece and it’s going along pretty well. In fact, you may even be excited to think how much you have improved because you’re learning so quickly. You may even let your mind wander to the sorts of pieces you can tackle next with your new and improved skills. 

And then it happens. You hit the wall. You’ve found the passage you can’t play. It may be a new technique that you’ve never tried or one that you aren’t very comfortable with. It may just be a combination of two skills that you haven’t combined before. But whatever it is, you can’t do it. Your technique isn’t up to this particular challenge.

So you do what we all have to do; you take out the passage and work it separately. You turn it into an exercise and drill it. You “etudify” it, as we like to say. And you probably wish that you had learned this skill earlier.

Young students are usually taught in a systematic way. The teacher introduces new skills gradually and helps the student work on the skill first. Then they move on to using the skill in the context of an etude. Finally, the student is ready for the piece that requires that skill. It’s a thoughtful, orderly progression.

Adult students often don’t have the same methodical approach. Either they are mostly or partly teaching themselves or their teachers don’t want to slow down their progress. What this means, of course, is that a lot of their technical development happens on a “need to play” basis: I need to play this…now. It’s a kind of emergency response system and although it can be effective, it can also be frustrating. 

On today’s episode we’ll talk about how to make sure you’re developing the techniques you need, practicing the right exercises and etudes, and knowing how to “etudify” a passage effectively. I’ll also show you the “technique stacker”: the combination of exercises and etudes that can help you with the pieces you’re learning now. Wherever you start from - the exercise or the piece - the technique stacker will help your fingers learn what they need for the music you are playing.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-128

Do you feel like you’re failing yourself in your practice?

Maybe you feel your practice isn’t as consistent or as focused as it should be. Perhaps even when you have enough time to practice, you’re finding it difficult to get started. You might find yourself sitting down to practice and using all your time deciding what you should be doing. You end up feeling confused, frustrated and tired instead of energized and excited about playing the harp.

And then you skip a day of practice. Then another day. Then you really mean to get back to it, but something urgent crops up that absolutely requires your attention. Then you start to dread getting back to practice because you know it’s going to sound terrible. Even worse, you feel guilty for having it let slip.

Does this sound like you? Don’t think I have some magical power to get inside your head. I could tell your story so well because it’s been my own experience too. I don’t feel good about my harp playing or about myself when I skip my practice. Those days of missed practice play havoc with my state of mind as well as with my music. 

It’s not that I don’t want to practice; I do. I even like practicing. And at this point, I do practice nearly every day, maybe not as much as I’d like, but enough. But it’s been a struggle to develop the systems and habits that allow me to practice even when my schedule is full to bursting.

You may be one of those people who are good about maintaining the boundaries in their life, and you are in control of your schedule. If that’s you, let me say that I would love to be like you. But I’m not that disciplined. I set my schedule for the day and then I watch it change as the day goes on. 

To be honest, you know that all you have to do is to set a practice schedule and then stick to it, but it just isn’t that easy, at least not for me. But I still manage to practice. And if you’re trying to set a practice schedule that you can stick to, or you’re just looking for some ways to make your practice habit stronger, then I can help.

On today’ episode, we will talk about how to:

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-127

What are the qualities you think you need to be a good harpist? I’ll bet every harpist has a different answer for this.

Understand that I’m not thinking in terms of the skills useful to a harpist, skills like a good ear, the ability to sight read, musicality, flying fingers, and the ability to memorize. I would agree that those are all important to some degree, but I invite you to consider some of the personal traits or day to day habits that would be useful or even essential for a harpist.

This idea conjures up a completely different list. Maybe you’d put character traits like determination, perseverance, self-discipline and courage on that list. Those would indeed be helpful. So would objectivity, the ability to treat yourself with kindness and grace, even when you’re struggling. There are other mindset habits that are important too, like a desire to learn and resilience. 

Today we’re going to explore one of the qualities that I think is crucial to the musical development of any harpist, and it’s not one of the ones I’ve already mentioned. It’s less a quality than it is an attitude and a habit. And it’s one that we very often overlook or discount as something frivolous. If you noticed the title for this episode, you know what I’m talking about; I’m talking about creativity.

I believe that creativity isn’t an add-on. It’s not an extra. It’s at the heart of what we do every day, every minute that we play. Every moment we play we are creating something, not out of nothing, more likely from black dots on a page. Those dots contain the genetic code for the music, if you will. But without our creative spark, those dots would never come to life. The music wouldn’t exist. 

If we reduce our practice to mere repetition, we’ve lost our way. If we aren’t thinking about and listening to the music we are bringing to life, we are missing the best part of the practice process. And if we aren’t taking the extra step to enlist our creative nature in the service of our music, we aren’t serving the music or ourselves very well.

You’re probably having one of two reactions right now. Either you’re thinking, “Yes! Finally you’re speaking my language. Show me how my harp playing can feel more creative,” or you’re thinking, “Great. This sounds like a good idea, but it feels more like something else I have to figure out how to fit into my practice.”

Never fear. Today I will show you a variety of ways to make creativity a natural part of your practice habit. You won’t have to do anything crazy like light candles and meditate before you practice. (Actually, that sounds pretty zen.) We’ll talk about simple ways to engage your creativity in your playing every day. You’ll discover a sense of freedom that will make playing and even practicing more fun, and you’ll love the change you hear in your playing too.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-126

I’m a pusher, and I hope you are one too, a lever or pedal pusher, that is.

Just imagine a world of harps without levers or pedals. Certainly, there are folk harps that don’t have levers and still play beautiful music. But to me, that’s a little like living in the forest. There is endless beauty in the forest, but I like the seashore and the prairies too. The world of music has so much harmonic richness and I really love having my pedal harp to explore it all. 

Of course that harmonic richness isn’t exclusive to harps with pedals. Lever harps can play music every bit as chromatically varied as pedal harps and sometimes even more easily. 

But perhaps you’re new to the world of pushers, of harp music – either lever or pedal – with accidental changes that require pushing a lever or pedal. If so, or if you’re not a newbie to pushing but would like some help with ways to improve your pedal or lever technique, then you’re in luck because that’s what we’re talking about today. 

So often students don’t really learn to push those levers or pedals before they are playing music that calls for them. It’s not just about pushing the right lever or pedal; the art is in knowing when and how to push. You may not have tried any drills to help you learn the right technique, but plenty of these drills exist. Unfortunately, not all of those helpful drills come with an explanation of the important aspects of this technique. Even fewer attempt to unravel the mysterious and very inconsistent ways the changes are marked in music.

Never fear, my friend. By the end of today’s episode, you’ll have all the info you need to become an intrepid pusher. Accidentals, those flats, naturals and sharps that occur in the middle of a piece, don’t have to cause accidents while you play, and I have 8 tips and maybe even an extra one or two, that will help you breeze through those changes with ease. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-125

A long time ago, I attended a concert by a famous pianist, and I overheard two audience members talking about how impressed they were, how the performer’s virtuosity and expressiveness showed true mastery of the instrument. And then I heard the comment that stuck with me: “He could make ‘Hot Cross Buns’ sound like a musical masterpiece.”

If you took piano lessons as a child, chances are that you played the nursery song “Hot Cross Buns” in your first few weeks of study. The melody only has five notes. It couldn’t be more simple.

But this idea made me consider what I believe is a common misconception among harpists who want to develop a repertoire of music. Whether their repertoire would be geared toward concerts or weddings or church music or local senior centers, harpists usually overcomplicate things. Naturally, we want to present music that our audiences will like and we want to play it well, but often we make it much harder for ourselves than we need to. 

Here’s an example. Let’s imagine a harpist whom we will name Zelda. Zelda wants to put together a program of music to play at the nursing home where her mother lives. She’s excited about playing and she knows her mother is proudly spreading the word to all her friends in the home. Zelda is a little anxious, though, because she’s never put together a solo program of music before. So she searches through all her music, assembles her favorite pieces and begins her practice. She is pleased with the music she has chosen, knowing that she’s included a couple of her mother’s favorite pieces and a couple of others that she knows will make the program extra special. So far so good.

However, as the date of the performance gets closer, she becomes a little anxious, thinking that she has been too ambitious. There is a lot of music and some of it is more challenging than she remembered. She’s not sure everything will be ready and polished by the performance. Now, she’s getting nervous. 

This is probably a common trap for us harpists; thinking we need to play our hardest, showiest or most ambitious music on a program. There are some obvious reasons to choose simpler music - we can play it with more confidence, it doesn’t take as much practice - but sometimes we feel like it’s cheating to play the easy stuff. We think that people won’t think we’re really good if we aren’t playing the hard pieces. 

In fact, most audiences, even musically educated ones, don’t know which pieces are difficult and which are easy. What they do know is if we are struggling to get through a piece. 

Our show today is going to be about how you can find the musical value in those easy pieces, how you can play them so they sound polished and expressive, not like a baby piece. We’ll talk about musical considerations, ones you probably haven’t given much thought to, that will change the way you play any piece - not just the easy ones. And you’ll play more confidently too, because you know the technical aspects of the piece are well within your grasp. Who knows? If you’ve been reluctant to get out and share your music in your community, this could even change your mind. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Join me in the Harp Mastery® Hub! Click here to sign up for free.

Related resource Making It Look Easy: Creating Flow blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-124

“If I were starting over, I would…”

That's our topic for today’s show. If I were starting my harp journey over again, from square one, what would I do differently, knowing what I know now? Obviously, I have done decades of practice, taken thousands of lessons, done thousands of performances, and I’ve taught countless students. I’ve watched students thrive and I’ve worked with those who struggle. And both kinds of students have taught me so much. They’ve given me a breadth of experience that goes well beyond my own personal harp journey. 

As I reflect on what my own harp story was like, the remarkable privileges that I had, the circumstances that shaped my harp life gave me only one view of harp study - my own. But over the years of working with so many other harpists, I have come to identify a few factors that can speed up a harpist’s progress, no matter that harpist’s age or skill level.  

I’ve also seen the harp happiness killers, those sneaky saboteurs that steal our enthusiasm for playing the harp. I’ve fallen victim to some of them from time to time and I’ve certainly seen and experienced the damage they can cause.  But I’m not going to talk about those today, at least not directly. No one needs a list of things they shouldn’t do.

Instead we’re going to focus on the things you should do, the actions that separate the harpists who keep learning, growing and loving every minute - well, perhaps almost every minute - of their harp journeys, from those who find frustration, disappointment or perhaps end up quitting. I can tell you from where I am right now, harp playing is a marvelous adventure packed with creativity, discovery and personal growth. It’s not for the fainthearted, but if you’ve already started this journey, then you are one of the brave ones, my friend. After all, simply buying a harp takes courage.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Join my next Live Monday Warm-Up in the Hub on October 9th.

Related resource: Are You Living Your Harp Dream or Just Thinking You Are? blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-123

How can you correct a problem – any problem from a water leak to paper jam in the printer – if you don’t know where the problem really is?

Harp playing is no different. Our practice is supposed to help us fix mistakes and even prevent them from recurring, at least to a degree. But if we don’t know where the underlying issue is, it’s nearly impossible to find a fix for it.

The obvious solution to this dilemma is to ask your teacher. Unfortunately, though, even if you have access to a teacher or other harp expert, the things we want to fix usually reveal themselves in a practice session when we are working by ourselves. So we rely on our own experience to find the fix for whatever challenge we are facing, whether or not we have the experience we need to do it.

Of course, teachers don’t always have an instant solution either. Often we arrive at the solution through a process of trial and error: the student tries our suggestion and we discover we were in error. So we go on to Plan B.

In the spirit of trying to help you become a more expert instructor in your own practice, I have chosen a few common scenarios that require a “fix” and the most frequently successful fixes for each. What jumped out at me as I started putting this information together for you, was that the fixes sorted themselves neatly into two categories for each of the problems. The fixes could either be technique related or reading related. In other words, the underlying problem could be with your fingers, your technical skills, or it could be with your music reading skills. The surprise with that second one is that even if you are an experienced and fluent music reader, the issue still could be a reading one. 

What I want you to be able to take away from today’s show is an arsenal of ideas that can help you keep moving forward and making progress on the pieces you are learning. You’ll find, however, that these potential solutions may help you address some challenges that are more broad-based in your playing. Or they might just be things you haven’t even considered before, in which case, you’re in for a big growth spurt. 

So grab the music you’ve been practicing lately, identify some issues you’ve been trying to find a fix for, and see if one of the solutions we discuss today might be exactly what you need.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-122

Benjamin Franklin, who had a note-worthy thought about almost everything, authored this famous truth: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Preparation is everything. We harpists understand that our practice is our preparation. We won’t be able to play well if we don’t practice. We get it.

But if you’ve been playing the harp for a while now, you have probably experienced the painful flip side. I’m talking about the realization that even with all the hours of practice you put into a particular piece, you aren’t guaranteed to be able to play it as well as you expect under pressure. 

After an experience like that, most of us decide to double down on our practice, thinking we weren’t prepared enough. We hope that we have hit on the magic number - of hours or repetitions or practice sessions - that will be the perfect preparation. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. 

So if practice is preparation, why doesn’t practice make us prepared, or even feel prepared? And why does it sometimes seem that our practice lets us down in a performance or a lesson? 

What does it really mean to be prepared as a musician? I believe it can’t be measured in practice time or number of repetitions or test recordings or preview performances or even in years of experience. 

You see, what I have learned is that practice is not the same as preparation. Certainly, it’s the biggest part of it, but without the addition of specific strategies to connect that practice to our playing, practice alone won’t ever let us feel truly prepared.

Being or feeling prepared relies on three key attitudes, ones that many harpists don’t consider and others choose to ignore. However, you can’t feel prepared without having thought about these three ideas and put them into daily action. Each is important. One will help you feel balanced so you can express your music more deeply. One will help you feel confident that you can do your best. And the third will allow you to conquer your fears about playing. Taken singly, they are powerful. Put all three together and you have a game-changer. 

That is what we will talk about in just a moment. I will not only share those three attitudes with you but I want to be sure that you know how to create them, how to turn your thoughts to them, but also how to implement them. What I want for you is to be able to do only as much practice as you need, rather than doing more and more practice in the hopes that more practice alone will fix this problem. Oh yes. Benjamin Franklin had a quote for that too: “Never confuse Motion with Action.” I know you get the point.  

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-121

Let’s talk warm-ups.

You likely have a favorite way to warm up at the beginning of a practice session. It might be short and sweet, like an arpeggio and a scale. It might be a fairly thorough routine that allows you to check everything from your posture to your focus. Or possibly it’s just a passage from a piece that you’re learning.

Whatever you do, however you like to warm up, that’s great. I don’t want to change that today. 

What I want to do is show you three different and important ways your warm-up can help you, that’s the “triple” referred to in this episode’s title. These aren’t earth-shattering or revolutionary new techniques. They are simple, clear approaches to your warm-up that will allow you to develop critical skills beyond what is usual in a warm-up. I have a warm-up that I will use to demonstrate as I teach you these approaches and it’s available for you as a free download. You’ll find the link in the show notes for this episode, which you can find either on your podcast app or by going to Harpmastery.com, clicking on “podcast” in the menu bar and then clicking on today’s episode, which is episode 120. 

But you don’t have to use that warm-up. You can use these approaches with your regular warm-up and derive just as much benefit, in fact, the triple threat benefit, three critical skills you can improve with whatever warm-up you like.

If you’re wondering what the critical skills we will focus on might be, here you go. They are finger dexterity and independence, independence of the hands, and musicianship, specifically dynamic control and rhythmic control. Don’t let the terminology scare you off. This is easy. And it might even be fun.

I’ve also included in the show notes a link to a blog post I wrote a while back called “Break Through: What to Do When Your Technique Is Holding You Back.” In that post I talk about warm-ups, but I also share some other ways to improve your technique and your confidence.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get your free Noodle Doodle warm-up PDF. Click here to download.

Click here to join My Harp Mastery  before Friday, September 8th. 

Related resource Break Through: What to Do When Your Technique Is Holding You Back blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-120

It’s all in your mind. No, I don’t mean you’re going crazy.  I’m sure you’ve come across the well-worn statement that 90% of performance, whether in sports or music or any similar pursuit, is mental. The idea, of course, is that your mental preparation, your mindset and your focus all are major factors in the success of your performance.

Even if the actual percentage may be hard to pin down, the idea is undoubtedly true. Our minds are powerful contributors to our success or our failure. Just look at the number of books and blogs devoted to this concept, from the iconic book The Inner Game of Tennis to Noa Kageyama’s insightful blog The Bulletproof Musician. (By the way, I’ve linked to both of those resources in the show notes for you.)

Today, however, I don’t want to dive into performance psychology. I want to deal with something much more practical, something you probably have heard about and wondered how to implement: mental practice.

What is mental practice? Basically, it’s practice you do away from the harp. It’s very practical if you are on vacation or even just away for a weekend and you don’t want to lose ground while you’re away. It’s terrific for testing your memorization of a piece or for focusing your mind before a performance. It’s also great for helping you learn your music, without the distraction of actually playing.

Maybe that’s a new concept to you, thinking of your playing as a distraction from your music-making, but I invite you to consider it. How much more could you learn about what is on the page, about the meaning of the notes or the expression of a piece, if you didn’t have to worry about which finger goes where? 

Maybe you’ve heard about mental practice but have no idea how to get started. I hope to change that for you today. If you’ve been trying mental practice but you’re not sure you’re doing it right or getting the most from your practice away from the harp, you’re going to discover some very practical ways to do this kind of work. And I can promise you, you’re going to find out just how big an impact mental practice can have on your speed of learning and on your retention. That’s two huge wins right there.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-119

Wouldn’t it feel great to relax? 

Of course, since this is the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast, I’m not just talking about a cool drink, a good book and a bubble bath. I’m talking about being relaxed when you play the harp. 

You know why it’s important to be relaxed when you play. When your hands, arms, shoulders and the rest of your body feel relaxed, you can practice and play without strain and with freedom, flexibility and flow. When your mind is relaxed, you can concentrate and focus without fear or distraction. When your mind and body are relaxed, your music can also relax so that it can communicate its mood or story in a clear, relatable way.

Does that sound too good to be true, like an impossible dream to you? Let me tell you that it isn’t impossible to achieve. More importantly, this kind of relaxation shouldn’t be just a happy accident for you. 

We teachers are experts at telling our students to relax, but not so expert at showing them the tools they need to practice to make relaxation a habit. But I hope to make up for that today.

Together we will explore the five most common tension traps, things we all do every day in our practice that cause our tension to build. And for each one of those I will give you a one step action to help you learn to instantly release that tension. We’ll also talk about when tension is helpful - you already know when it isn’t! - and how to harness its power and then to let it go.  

But if there’s one thing I want you to get from this podcast episode, it’s this: releasing tension is a technique you will need to practice like every other technical skill. The more you practice it, the more easily you will be able to create relaxation when you need it, for instance, coming up to a tricky spot, playing a fast passage, or playing in a lesson or performance. And at the risk of stating the obvious, the one thing that doesn’t work is to just keep telling yourself to relax, relax, RELAX!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-118

While there are many notable quotes from Johann Sebastian Bach, one of my favorites is this one: “There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”  Okay, the man was a musical genius, but obviously he also had a remarkable talent for understatement. 

On the other hand, that really is the major part of learning and playing a piece of music, at least it’s where we start. Certainly the expression of the music is our ultimate aim, but communicating the music starts with the right notes at the right time. That’s the focus of the podcast today: not so much how to find the right notes, but how to play them at the right time. 

We all know it’s not as simple as Bach made it sound. In fact, the difficulties of finding that “right time” are evident everyday in our practice, even if we are expert players. See if any of these common rhythmic challenges sound familiar to you from your personal experience:

I’m guessing you’ve had at least one of those challenges; I know I have. Maybe you know how to fix the problem, but maybe you’re not really sure of the best way to go about it. Maybe you’ve tried fixing it, but you seem to have to fix it again with every new piece you learn. Perhaps rhythm or counting or working with the metronome is a constant frustration for you.

If any of those things sound familiar, you’re in luck, my friend, because I’m going to give you some actual steps to take to become more rhythmically secure, not just fix the problems as they arise, although these strategies will work for that too. I want to show you how to practice your rhythm skills, whether you feel pretty confident already and you just want to get to the next level, or you have trouble with plain old counting or working with the metronome. I taught these methods for nineteen years when I was teaching theory and ear training at the Curtis Institute of Music, and if they are good enough for the world-class students there, they will almost certainly help you too.

And by the way, just to make this ultra-relevant for us harpists, I will be using the Pachelbel Canon as our teaching text. So get out whatever version you have of the Pachelbel - any arrangement will work for this - and follow along as we get rhythmic today.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-117

I once had someone suggest to me that Harp Mastery® was a little ambitious as a name. Was I intending that my blog and my website would only help people at the highest level or help them to become masters of the instrument? Or was I proclaiming myself a “master” of the harp? Eek, definitely not. In response, I told her I believed that mastery didn’t have to be defined as the ultimate level of achievement, although that is how we often think of it. I had a different idea of mastery in mind.

Certainly the term can be applied to the virtuoso whose skill and artistry are, or are destined to become, legendary. 

But I believe that all of us harpists, at whatever level of accomplishment, can attain the feeling of mastery, a feeling that encompasses confidence in our ability at our skill level,  pride in our achievements and pleasure in our playing. Is that true mastery as we would apply the word to harp legends like Renié, Hasselmans or O’Carolan? Possibly not, although I feel certain those harpists would have felt confidence, pride and pleasure in their harp playing. 

I think it’s essential, however, that all harpists, particularly those of us who struggle to feel like we are making progress toward our goals, understand that every level of harp playing is not just a growth stage but an accomplishment in itself. We may not feel like harp masters, and we may be very far from feeling like virtuosi, but we can recognize the results of our hard work and celebrate how far we have come. Every piece we learn, every technical or musical skill we develop is another step on the mastery journey.

So today, I want to talk more about mastery, not the virtuoso kind, but everyday mastery, the kind we can all enjoy. We’ll review the key components of mastery and of course, I won’t leave you just with the big concepts. We’ll get super practical and tactical and I’ll show you what you can do in your everyday practice to bring you closer to that place where competence, confidence and joy converge.

For those who attended Finish Camp, this will amplify what we spoke about there. But this is about much more than just finishing a piece. This is about starting your mastery journey from wherever you are and creating your mastery path to suit you and your own personal harp goals or dreams. I am sure you will find some mindset gold in this episode and you are going to want to bookmark it to return to it again when you need a pep talk.

Also, if this episode resonates with you, please share this with a couple of harp friends. Sometimes we can feel discouraged by our inability to make a positive impact on the world around us, let alone feel like we are making progress in our harp playing. So you can do your friends - and me too - a big favor by spreading a little podcast sunshine their way. 

 Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-116 

Today’s show is a special one. It’s a peek inside our My Harp Mastery membership. You’ll be hearing part of a recording of one of our Monday calls. On this call, our topic was three skills that are vital for your harp playing success, in particular memorizing, practicing for flow and continuity, and sharing music with friends. These skills may not sound very exciting, but I really want to share this call with you because I talk about ways to look at your harp playing that may be very different from the way you usually think about your practice and playing. It was an eyeopener for some of our My Harp Mastery members, and I hope it will inspire you as well.

Because this is a recording of a call, you’ll hear me reference some materials that our members have access to but which I can’t share with you here on the podcast. Also, I am talking about these three skills in relation to one of our My Harp Mastery resources, the Scale of Success. This is a curriculum that we offer inside the My Harp Mastery membership to help harpists of all kinds of levels round out their skill set so they can be more confident harpists. 

I hope you enjoy the call!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-115 

Christmas in July has become “a thing.”

The official story is that Christmas in July was first celebrated at a summer camp in Brevard, North Carolina in 1933. Being a classic film fan, I knew that Christmas in July was already popular by 1940, due to the film with that title. But now July is nearly as popular for Christmas as December and I’m beginning to think that we will soon see stores moving their Christmas sales from August into July. 

Of course, for us harpists, summer is a great time to pull out that Christmas repertoire. In the slower days of summer, we can dedicate some practice time to refreshing and renewing our holiday hits list.

But you don’t have to immerse yourself in “Winter Wonderland” and “Jingle Bells" or even “Silent Night” to put a little Christmas into your summer. If you’re the type who loves holiday music, then by all means dive in with extra mistletoe and holly. But if you’re not ready to surrender your summer harp playing to ”Away in a Manger” for even a week or two, there are still some things you can do now to ease your holiday workload when Christmas in December rolls around. Depending on your personal preference, you can geek out on the musical gingerbread or play the Christmas in July grinch in style.

So get ready to discover some fun ways to put some holiday sparkle in your summer without having to only practice all your holiday music. After all, “Summertime” is a nice piece to play too!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Don’t miss Finish Camp on August 2nd. Register now!

Related resource How Holiday Music Can Make You a Better Harpist blog post

Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-114

There are markers along the road in every harpist’s development, signposts that indicate you’re making progress. These are like those highway signs that tell you how many miles you are from the next town or city, like “New York City - 90 miles.” No matter how long it’s taken you to get to that point and regardless of the traffic jam ahead of you on the New Jersey Turnpike, New York City is now only 90 miles away. 

Graduating from three-note chords to four-note chords is one of those markers I talk about often. Another one is fluent hands together playing.

Fluent may not be the best word to describe my meaning. It’s more a comfort level, the point at which hands together playing is not any more difficult for you than playing hands separately. Many harpists develop fluency playing hands separately and then are frustrated when that fluency doesn’t translate to their hands together playing. What they don’t realize is that the processing of information that is required for hands separately playing is very different from what is required for hands together playing. It’s a harp version of the saying “What got you here won’t get you there.”

My students have all heard me talk about this before - and often. It’s painful to me to see harpists struggle with music learning and slow progress simply because they never were shown a better way. In this episode I will detail how to put hands together in a way which is faster, easier and will yield massive results, not just in the long-term but almost immediately. And while there are a lot of angles we could touch on today, I want to focus on three things you could do today to improve - or develop, if you feel like you’re starting from scratch - your hands together skills. I also will tell you about two things you are likely doing now which you must stop immediately, today.

So get out your notebook or your practice journal and your favorite pen and be ready to take notes. Or just listen now and come back to this episode later to be sure you capture all the info you need. You’re going to want it all, trust me.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-113

If you’re finally ready to think about making videos of yourself playing the harp, all I can say is, “Welcome to the party!”

You may have been one of the reluctant ones, thinking the technology was going to be too daunting. Or maybe your barrier to entry has been the fact that you just weren’t ready - until now, that is - to share your music on the wild wide-open worldwide web. 

Possibly you were one of those who found the idea of making videos intriguing, but when it came down to actually doing it, you found the process surprisingly difficult. 

What I”d like to do in this podcast episode is to help you through the challenges of making videos of yourself. While I’ll touch on a couple of tech-related topics, our focus today is really going to be you, what you need to do to prepare you and your music for making a video or even just an audio recording.

I’ve made numerous CDs and obviously I do a lot of video too, and I learned mostly the hard way what works: how prepared you need to be, how to keep your expectations reasonable, and how to ensure you finish the process with a video that you actually feel proud of. If you haven’t made videos yet but would like to, or you’ve tried and thought it was too hard for you, this information will change the game for you. Trust me; you can do this.

On the other hand, if you’re already an old hand at video, I have some tips that may make your process simpler or less time-consuming. 

Plus, I will point you to some excellent examples of everyday harpists - not the superstars you may be thinking of - who are doing great things with video. I want you to leave today’s episode feeling inspired and excited about making videos. Why? Because it really can be fun. Really.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-112

Okay, here’s my question for you today. What would be the scariest words you could hear in your lesson? I can think of lots of possibilities but I’m guessing that one of those phrases that comes to your mind might be, “I think we need to get out the metronome.”

If that’s a phrase that makes you start to squirm on your harp bench, you’re not alone. Learning to use the metronome is one of those things that we teachers often fail to teach our students. Sure, we pull out the metronome in lessons and tell our students to practice with it at home, but we don’t often really show them how to work with it or when to use it and why. We almost turn it into a punishment. I sometimes worry I sound like the Wicked Witch of the West; “Well, my pretty, you counted that badly. It’s time for the metronome for you and the little dog too!”

But the metronome is for more than just identifying and solving counting errors or uneven beats. And it’s not just for pushing the tempo faster and faster. Used creatively, the metronome can actually slow time for you, helping to create enough time for you to do what you need to do. It’s not just about practicing slowly so you can play fast. It’s about smoothing out the bumps and coordinating the many processes that go into playing a piece of music. It can help you be more expressive and yes, you can even use the metronome to calm frantic fingers or frazzled nerves and to help you focus. 

Now if you’re one of those harpists like me who absolutely loves working with the metronome, then congratulations. You’ve learned to harness one of the most powerful tools in any musician’s bag of tricks. But don’t leave me yet - I have some cool metronome tricks you may not know to share with you today.

But if you’re like the majority of harpists out there, you’re not quite comfortable using the metronome. In fact, you may not be quite convinced of its value as a practice tool. My hope is that the ideas I’m going to share with you today will spark your interest and encourage you to make the metronome your best practice buddy.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-111

What are your plans for your harp playing this summer?

Do you have pieces you want to learn, maybe Christmas music you want to get a head start on? Do you have a few exercise or etude books that you plan to get through so your fingers will finally do what you want? Are you thinking summer is a great time to learn your key signatures or chords or improve your note reading or learn to improvise? Or maybe all of the above?

If your summer harp list looks anything like this, let me hear you say, “Amen.” 

Most of us start out the summer with big plans, and not just for our harp playing. We have this imaginary idea that summer is endless and less busy and we’ll have time to get to all those things we can’t manage in the other three seasons. That’s a classic example of wishful thinking. Life doesn’t really slow down just because the days are longer and warmer. What usually does slow down is our drive to achieve, and that’s actually a healthy thing.

Continually pushing ourselves to achieve and accomplish drains our emotional gas tank. If we don’t take the time we need to refuel we will eventually be running on fumes. Balancing this with our desire to keep making progress and our fear that if we don’t keep practicing we will lose everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve is the real crux of the problem and what we will be talking about today. I don’t want you to lose the ground you’ve gained this year by taking time off. But I absolutely believe that switching up the way you practice - or maybe not even actually practicing at all - is essential to keeping your connection to your harp healthy and vibrant. 

You know me; I love setting goals and working toward them. You can achieve great things with dedication and passion. However, it's important to be aware of the hidden traps that might sabotage your efforts, the very real costs of staying focused all the time. I also want to share with you what you can do instead. We are not going to give up on progress, just because we’re not goal-focused. Instead, I’ll show you how you can actually move your playing ahead without really practicing. I promise, it’s not a trick. It’s real progress and it’s almost laughably easy.

My apologies to those of my listeners in the southern hemisphere, where it isn’t summer right now, but by listening to this podcast now, you’re going to be able to plan your next summer the right way ahead of time. Not a bad idea, right?

So let’s get on with our discussion about how you can indulge your desire to slow the pace this summer and still feel like you’re moving the needle with your harp playing.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-110

Yes, this episode is about Bach, the Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach. I know some of you are thinking this is a waste of a podcast episode, that you are never going to play any music by Bach and since he didn’t write any music for harp anyway, this couldn’t possibly be relevant to your harp playing.

Let me tell you, you couldn’t be more wrong.

Bach may not have written anything for harp, but his influence is felt by every composer and musician since his time. You probably know that French composer Charles Gounod wrote his beautiful Ave Maria melody as a vocal addition to Bach’s Prelude in C. But perhaps you didn’t know that the trumpet solo on the Beatles song “Penny Lane” came about after Paul McCartney heard trumpeter Dave Mason performing the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, the same concerto which is featured in the movie The Island of Doctor Moreau. Other movies featuring the music of Bach range from Disney’s Fantasia to the Godfather to Master and Commander and Boogie Nights.

But Bach’s music is more than just amazing music. It is also a music theory education, a technical proving ground and a time-honored model for crafting a melody. You may associate Bach’s music more with vast quantities of notes rather than melody, but discovering the basic yet profound musical principles embodied in Bach’s compositions can change the way you understand all of the music you play. I know it did for me.

Obviously, I won’t be able to uncover all the layers in Bach’s music on this podcast. What I want to do is to talk about what is meaningful to us as harpists and musicians. We’ll clarify some of the musical terms that are associated with Bach and I’ll show you how you can use his music to better understand chords, phrasing, flow, to develop your fingering technique, and to grow as a musician. Plus, we’ll talk about which Bach pieces might be ideal for you to add to your repertoire or at least your practice list.

I also have some facts and stories about Bach that you can include in program notes or repeat to impress your friends with your amazing musical knowledge. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-109

Legendary harpist and composer Carlos Salzedo had this to say about buzzing: “It is important that there be no buzzing when replacing. Buzzing comes from lack of precision in replacing, and will be eliminated if the player replaces very accurately.” 

That quote comes from the Method for the Harp book that he wrote with Lucile Lawrence, his former student and at the time that method book was written, his wife.

What is interesting about that quote is that even though Salzedo had so much to say about so many aspects of harp playing, that is all he says about buzzing, nothing more.

On the one hand, it’s enough. Every harpist should be replacing accurately in order to avoid buzzing. But we knew that much. What Salzedo leaves us wondering is exactly how we should practice accurate replacing so we don’t buzz. Unfortunately, Salzedo either thought it was too obvious to elaborate on or he wanted to keep his secrets for his students.

I imagine he thought it was obvious, but since it isn’t obvious to most of us lesser harpists, we need a little more instruction. Hence, today’s podcast episode. This is a “Quick Fix” episode, meaning we are going to get super-practical and talk about the practice techniques to use to help you be more aware of your buzzing as well as learn to prevent it.  You’re going to want to take notes, so if you’re driving or on the exercise bike, go ahead and listen now, but be sure to come back to this episode later when you can write down some of the key strategies.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-108

If there’s one thing you could say with certainty that all we harpists want, it’s being able to play the piece we’re working on. That’s why we started the harp, so we could play beautiful music on a beautiful instrument beautifully. But we all know the struggle it takes to make that happen. And we all know the frustration of persisting through the struggle and feeling defeated because there are two measures smack in the middle of the piece that just won’t work.

Call them what you will: problem spots, tricky spots, twisty measures, awkward passages, or maybe names that involve four-letter words. These spots are like a teenager’s pimples. They appear at the worst times and no matter what you do, you can’t really cover them up. They seem to last forever. And the more you mess with them the worse, the worse they get.

Fortunately, pimples do eventually go away. But problem measures won’t necessarily. I know that doesn’t seem like the positive kind of outlook you’re used to hearing from me, but the plain truth is that if the practice you’re doing now isn’t fixing the problem, doing more of it won’t either, no matter how much of it you do. You need to do something different.

Today’s show is all about those pesky problem spots - not pimples, the musical kind - and how to actually fix them. We’ll look at the hidden cost of continuing to hammer away at those tricky measures and the surprising ways you can shift your focus and solve the problem. 

This is an issue we all face every single day. Every piece we learn has something just a little different from anything we’ve had to do before. So we are going to learn some tricks that are just a little different themselves so we can put those measures behind us and get on with the music.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-107

It’s Memorial Day today here in the U.S. and that marks the unofficial beginning of summer for us. The pace of life slows down a little, especially the pace of harp playing. The concert season is over, and although the wedding season has begun, you  may be feeling a little at loose ends where your harp playing is concerned. 

I realize it might not be summer where you are, but our topic today will be relevant for you too. I want to talk about what to practice when you don’t have anything to practice for. 

When we have playing engagements on the calendar, it’s easy to know what to practice. While we’re busily learning all the music we need for that playing date, our practice time never seems long enough. We promise ourselves that as soon as things slow down, we’re going to really spend focused time working on our technique or our sight reading or improvisation or…

Those good intentions are a lot harder to act on when things really do slow down. We discover that our momentum slows down too. We don’t have as much ambition. Our drive to achieve seems to have driven off without us.

The fact is we need some down time. We need to ease up on the gas pedal and let the slower season refresh us. It’s a necessary break. But you and I both know that a long break away from the harp can mean a lot of rehab work when you start practicing again. Whether you’re on vacation or taking a staycation or just have a blank concert calendar, too much time away from the harp makes returning to the harp more than a little discouraging. And let’s not even mention the broken strings.

So what can you do if you have nothing to practice for? How do you prepare before you go on vacation so you can come back to the harp without feeling frustrated? If your harp plate or your music stand is feeling a little empty right now, I have some great ideas to help you switch up your focus and enjoy some relaxing time with your harp.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-106

I’ve been thinking about harp stories lately, not the fiction type of stories. I mean the kind of harp story we each have, the one about the moment we discovered the harp. Maybe it was the first time we saw it or heard it or heard about it. Maybe it was a long time ago or fairly recent. Maybe it was a dramatic moment or more of a gradual awakening.

I love hearing how harpists discovered their passion for the harp. Every harpist’s story is unique and yet each shares the common thread of the magnetic pull of the harp. 

Many of you have heard my harp story. I myself didn’t learn the beginning of it until I was in my first year of college, studying at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I had come to a crisis point, one where I was in a “do-or-die” kind of situation. In brief, my teacher had told me that either I fixed what was wrong with my playing or I was going to have to leave Curtis, since I clearly wouldn’t succeed there. The trouble was I didn’t know how to fix what was wrong and neither did she, but I was determined to do it. 

Fast forward through that summer and when I came back to school in the fall, not only had I fixed the problem, but my teacher declared me ready for international competition. It was a huge change. On a side note, everything that I have done since in my teaching came directly from my work that summer.

But the point I want to make today is what enabled me to find the motivation and the right direction to turn things around. That was discovering my harp story beginning. In my frustration I remember saying to my mother, maybe ranting would be a more accurate word, that I didn’t even know why I was playing the harp in the first place. She told me what I had never known before: when I was two years old, I heard the harp on the radio, asked what it was and said that was what I wanted to do. 

Here’s the part that interests me now. Simply knowing that story, and learning that it was the sound of the harp that I responded to made all the difference in that moment. I knew that I had heard the voice of the harp and recognized it as my own voice. Knowing that story changed everything for me, turning what was a crisis into an inflection point that propelled me forward in a way nothing else would have done.

Today I want to show you how to use your own harp story to keep you motivated, and even more important, grounded and connected. With so many demands on our time and focus, it’s frighteningly easy to let your harp playing sit on the back burner waiting for that mythical “someday” when you’ll have more time. But your harp time can provide the peace and renewal you need, provided you can release yourself from the need to achieve and let yourself be nourished by your music instead.

I’ll share with you my thoughts on the power of inflection points and how we can see them as opportunities instead of obstacles and we’ll talk about three ways your harp story can help you refuel and enjoy your harp journey, even when the going gets tough. It’s all about you and making your music on your terms on the show today.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-105

What always happens is…

That statement is one that I ask each harpist who enrolls in our Certified Coaching program to complete. Some harpists have no idea how to complete the statement, and I tell them that if they needed to answer it, they would know how. The harpists who need to complete that sentence, know it when they read it. These are the harpists who know that they have an issue with distraction.

It’s not a black mark against them, of course; distraction is an issue for all of us. But sometimes distraction becomes a roadblock instead of just a minor speed bump. It’s one thing to be distracted by a phone call from a friend when you were about to start practicing. It’s very different if you miss several days of practice each week because of phone calls. If those phone calls always happen, you have a distraction problem.

Naturally, phone calls aren’t the only kind of distraction problem. Today I want to get crystal clear about several common and sneaky forms of distraction. Why are they sneaky? Because they masquerade as important and valid requests for our time and focus, and occasionally, they are valid and important, possibly even urgent. But your harp playing is important too and you need to have tools to help you stay on track when you need to.

We’ll talk about the symptoms and alternative solutions for the three forms of distraction I encounter most frequently: the Shiny Object Syndrome, the Friend and Family Fixer and the Perfect Procrastinator. 

The solutions will give you the freedom and the power to choose your response to a potential distraction. When you have a way to easily weigh your options in any given moment - do I go out for ice cream or practice the Conditioning Exercises? - you give yourself permission to choose what is right for you at that moment. By the way, I’m voting for the ice cream, almost every time.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-104

It used to be somewhat fashionable to be a control freak, or at least to declare that you were. 

It didn’t start out that way. According to Merriam-Webster, the term was first used in the 1970’s. It was the epithet of choice used to label those who belonged to the “Establishment” rather than to the free love “do your own thing” hippie generation. Then in the 1980’s, trends like power dressing and the rise of conservatism made controlling behavior look like something desirable, something to aspire to. 

Today we understand the danger of controlling behaviors. So why do we still work so hard to control ourselves and the music we make?

I didn’t recognize some of my own control issues with regard to my music for a long time. Maybe you don’t see yours either, so let’s start with a few possibly revealing questions. See if you identify with any of these.

If any of those sound even slightly familiar to you, you will want to learn the things I have discovered in my harp journey about what you can control and what you can’t. Learning to let go of the impossible and work only on the possible is a big step on the path to harp happiness. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-103

If you’re like me, and I’ll bet you are, you have a lot of music you want to play…someday. My music used to be in piles next to my music stand, until the piles got so untidy that I filed everything in boxes. And every time I dive into one of those boxes to retrieve a piece I need to work on, I find a hidden treasure, a piece I bought long ago that I forgot about. It’s like getting an early Christmas present - a new piece all ready for me to start. It takes all my willpower to also take out the piece I was looking for in the first place.

If you love investigating new music too, then today’s podcast episode is the one you’ve been waiting for. I have some pieces to share that might fill a gap in your gig repertoire or intrigue you or maybe even inspire you to try music you might not have thought was exactly your style. 

There is something here for everyone, whether you’re a lever or pedal harpist. The pieces are mostly at an intermediate level, but that’s a pretty wide-ranging level, and you will notice that some are definitely more challenging than others. That’s why I titled this show “Music to Grow By,” because a little bit of a stretch, either technically or musically or maybe both, is good for us.

Some of the pieces are long-time favorites of mine. A few are relatively new discoveries. I love all of them, and my hope is that one of these may become a favorite of yours too. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-102

What would you do if you were playing the harp in a concert and the lights went out?

I’m sure many of you have stories about playing the harp when there was a sudden power outage, and I have several myself. I remember one wedding when a neighborhood-wide blackout occurred just as the newly married couple kissed. The priest didn’t miss a beat, directing the acolytes to lead the bride and groom in a candlelight recessional to the back of the church. My fellow musicians and I were missing lots of beats however, as we struggled to keep playing the recessional music in the dark. 

Fortunately it was a familiar tune, but even so, the other musicians finally gave up, leaving me to carry on by myself. Because I knew the piece, the notes weren’t the problem; obviously the real difficulty was not being able to see the strings.

Today’s Quick Fix podcast episode isn’t about memorizing your music or carrying a spare music stand light with you. It’s about something more important, a skill you should use even when the lights are on. It’s about trusting your fingers to know where the strings are. 

In case you are thinking this doesn’t apply to you, here are some questions for you to ask yourself. Do you sometimes lose your place on the page when you look away from the music to see the strings? Do you have to memorize parts of your pieces so you can make sure your fingers get to the right strings? Do you find music learning slow because you have to look back and forth between your hands and the music? Are you a poor sight reader? 

All of these things might be the telltale signs that you haven’t taught your fingers to play without you looking at them. And that’s exactly what I will show you how to fix on today’s show.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-101

Music learning isn’t a race, we all know that. That doesn’t stop us from wanting to get to the finish line, to that magical moment when our piece is “done.” 

Ironically, if you ask a group of harpists exactly what “done” means or how to tell when you get there, you’ll get a few very indeterminate answers and more than a few hems and haws. Is the finish line the point when you can play the piece with no - or with very few - mistakes? Is it when you have it memorized or when you’ve played it for an audience? Is it whenever you want it to be? Is it when you’re so sick and tired of practicing it that you just want to put it away? 

When I started blogging in 2012, I had a mission to spread harp happiness, to help harpists enjoy their playing and their practice, to enable them to find and keep the joy in their harp playing. In my teaching in the years just prior to that, I had begun to notice an increasing number of frustrated harpists, particularly adult students. And the biggest frustration, one that was common to nearly all of them, was that they had no pieces they felt they could actually play. The finish point, that sense of musical accomplishment, was continually and distressingly elusive. And what seemed like a reasonable solution - more practice - actually seemed to make the problem worse. The finish line receded into the dim distance.

In order to help harpists find a system that would end this demoralizing cycle, I created a course called “30 Days to Done.” In that course, I systematized the steps that experienced harpists use to learn and finish music faster. I wanted to make the system clear and repeatable for any type of piece at any level. And the system works.

But there is a big question that the course doesn't answer fully and that’s the topic of our discussion today. The question is the one I alluded to a moment ago: what does “done” mean and how do you know when you’ve gotten there? And this 100th episode milestone for the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast seemed the perfect moment to talk about it.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-100

Building a repertoire sounds like something only a master harpist would need to do. Yet all of us need to have music that we can play anytime and anywhere we want. But building a repertoire sounds like a huge project. I’m going to show you today that all you need to do to build - and more importantly, to maintain a repertoire - is one pen, 3 sticky notes and 5 minutes. 

Impossible? Not impossible. In fact, we’re going to take the seemingly impossible task of building a repertoire and make it simple. It’s a little like turning a black diamond ski run into the bunny slope, or turning Mt. Everest into a molehill. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but if you’ve ever struggled with having pieces ready to play at a moment’s notice or keeping those pieces you’ve finished in your fingers, you’re going to find today’s episode is a game changer.  

One of the first coaching students I worked with online, and this was years ago, came to me with the goal of developing a repertoire. She was relatively new to the harp and that actually made my job easier. She had very few preconceived ideas about what a repertoire should be like: what kind of pieces she should play, how long they should be, how much music she needed and whether or not she had to have it memorized. In just twelve weeks she had forty-five minutes of music that she could play confidently; she had her repertoire.

Twelve weeks to go from zero pieces to forty-five minutes was a really good time frame. There were two things that made that possible. First was her lack of “should’s.” Because she hadn’t put limitations or restrictions on what her repertoire should be like, she was open to possibilities that more seasoned harpists might have discarded. I’ll talk about that more in a minute.

Second, I introduced her to some shortcuts that made it easier to keep up with her pieces, to keep them in her fingers and relatively fresh in her mind too. Those are the shortcuts I’m going to be sharing with you today.

So if your repertoire needs a refresh, a restart or just a boost to get off the ground, this is the information you need. We will take the shortcuts, whizz past the places where you may be stuck and clear up some of the thinking that may be keeping your repertoire in the “someday” pile. And all you will need to get started is a pen, three sticky notes and 5 minutes. And to listen to this episode first, of course.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-099

Do you have a daily warmup that you use to start your practice? If you do, I’m sure you rely on it to help you get your fingers and your focus ready for your practice session. That’s exactly what a good warmup should do, or at least that’s one of the primary functions of a warmup.

If you’ve worked with me as a student or in my online community or even if you’ve listened to this podcast for awhile, it will come as no surprise that I have fairly specific ideas about warmups: what they should and shouldn’t do, how long they should be, what their purpose is in relation to the rest of your practice. And naturally, I want to share those ideas with you today.

Today’s episode is a masterclass episode, meaning that it’s a “play along” episode. So you will not only learn my best warmup strategies, but you will get to try them out by playing along with me as you listen. If you’re not at your harp now, that’s ok; listen now to learn my guiding principles for warming up as well as how to do the playing drills and then you can come back and play with me when it’s more convenient for you.

I’ll also answer some of the questions I am asked most frequently about warmups, plus one or two questions that nobody has asked but someone should have. Maybe there’s a question you’ve thought about asking but haven’t yet; if so, I hope I answer it for you today. If I don’t, be sure to email me at podcast@harpmastery.com, and I’ll try to answer it on a future episode.

A clarification before we get started: certain types of warmups have special physical uses for warming up muscles and tendons to prevent injury. Today we aren’t dealing with those types of physical warmups. We are talking purely about playing warmups that ease your fingers and focus into your practice. If you like to do more thorough stretching, that would happen before the warmups we are talking about today. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-098

Music is not a numbers game. You can’t quantify a moving performance or a composition with statistics like a batting average. You can’t predict how many minutes, hours, weeks or months it will take to be able to play a certain piece fluently. A player's skill isn’t solely a result of how old they are or how many years they’ve been playing. Those kinds of numbers aren’t relevant in the music world.

There are numbers that have great significance to us as musicians and harpists. Some are meaningful dates in music history, like the birth and death dates of important composers. Some numbers are important for what they represent. I’m thinking of the Roman numerals we use to describe chords and chord progressions, like a I-IV-V-I progression. Other numbers are even more practical, such as numbers for fingering. And then there are those numbers that are at the heart of our discussion today, the numbers in the time signature.

You know the numbers I mean; the numbers that look like fractions (but aren’t) at the beginning of nearly every piece, and sometimes in the middle. We call them the time signature or more technically, the meter signature, and although they are vitally important to our understanding of a piece, they are frequently overlooked. It’s not exactly that we don’t notice them or understand them. It’s simply that we discount their significance. That’s a hazardous habit.

The meter signature is our key to the organization and underlying rhythmic structure of the piece. It allows us as we learn a piece to put meaning into the notes, and our understanding of the meter allows a listener to make sense of the piece as they hear it. It’s the single most important factor in creating musical flow.

There’s a simple way to develop mastery of the meter signature. It’s likely that you do this already, but perhaps without the level of intention that I want to share with you today. Or perhaps you avoid this completely, either because it seems too difficult or you don’t see the point. If that’s the case for you, I’m hoping to change your mind today. And I’m bringing out my most persuasive ideas because I think I may have an uphill battle ahead of me. Why? Because I want you to count aloud.

Yep. I heard you groan from here. Yes, those groans travel through the air waves, my friend. I understand. As a young student, I hated counting aloud and thought it was a special form of torture my teacher had devised specially for me. But my attitude changed completely as I became a more mature musician, and I’d love to help change your attitude about counting aloud too. 

If you’re already convinced, that’s great. Stick with me, though, because I have some why’s, how’s and wherefore’s that will take your counting to the next level. If you’re a counting skeptic, stick with me too, because I want to try to change your mind and your music.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-097

Playing hands together is a topic of constant concern and endless discussion for harpists. When should you start playing hands together? Should you learn a piece hands separately first? How do you begin putting the hands together? And the most frequently asked question: why isn’t hands together working for me? As much as we debate the other questions, this last one is the hardest of all to answer.

One of the more common problems in playing hands together is one I call the “left hand lag.” The left hand lag happens when your hands are playing together sort of, but your left hand seems to be taking too much time to find the strings it needs to play. It’s not a left hand issue; your left hand plays perfectly when it plays by itself. But when you play the hands together, your left hand seems to be behind the beat. It causes hesitations that interrupt the flow of the rhythm and slow everything down. 

Your teacher’s first response is likely that you need to read ahead for your left hand. Certainly most of my students have heard that from me, and probably more than once. But is it really a reading ahead issue? Or should we be looking elsewhere for a solution? At the very least, we need some more practical strategies to offer, ones that provide a way to actually practice gathering the information we need quickly so we can play the right notes at the right time.

Fortunately, we know the place to look for the answer. At the root of the problem, there is a coordination issue. Our hands aren’t working in sync, or our reading isn’t coordinated with the hands, or possibly both. So on this podcast episode, I’m going to share a checklist-type approach to finding where the specific issue may lie for you in any particular passage, whether it’s in the physical coordination or the reading coordination, or maybe both. 

Here’s a quote which I chose to inspire us as we work through this challenging topic today:

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. - Edward Everett Hale, American clergyman (1822-1909)

Today we can make at least a beginning with the idea that progress and success, and fluent hands together playing are not far off.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-096

We all know that making music is more than playing the right notes at the right time. It’s about the heart and soul of the music, the feeling we put into it and the feeling that we communicate through it. Unfortunately, no matter how much feeling we put into the music, the actual communication of that feeling relies on our technique. It’s one of those apparent paradoxes in music study. The beauty of your music depends on the fluency of your technical performance, but a technically perfect performance may or may not be a beautiful one.

So we spend, or should be spending, a significant proportion of our practice time strengthening and securing our technical skills. We practice the notes of our pieces slowly and correctly. But often we still miss the connection between slow, technically careful playing and the facility we need to let our music flow. That connection, the missing link between slow and correct and fluid and musical, is what we will be talking about today.

Here’s the thing: basic technique patterns are exactly that…basic. Don’t get me wrong; they’re important, even vital, for your harp playing. Those fundamental skills like scales, intervals, chords and arpeggios are the bedrock for every harpist’s technique. Practicing these patterns is not optional. The great harpists of every generation have advocated them. I myself practice them every day. 

But by themselves, those patterns aren’t enough to make your technique everything you want it to be, particularly if what you want your technique to be is fluid, flashy and…dare I say it…fast.

There are four important ingredients in the recipe for creating flexible, facile fingers, ones that do your bidding instead of slowing your music down. It’s likely that these aren’t things you consider in your technique practice; in fact, you may never even have thought of them as skills you could or should practice. But I promise you, they will help you focus less on your fingers and more on the music each time you play. And if you want to pick up the tempo for a piece, these strategies will help your fingers play faster too. 

Just to pique your interest a little, I will tell you that our discussion will begin with my three-word phrase that is the guiding principle for finger facility. That’s right - just three words that may totally change your thinking about what your technique work needs to do for you and your fingers.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-095

If you’re into computer games, you know it’s all about getting to the next level.

Even if you’re not into computer games, you probably know what I mean. Many computer games are built in levels and moving to the next higher level requires the player to complete certain tasks or amass a specific number of treasures or experience points. Until you can complete all the tasks, find all the treasure and do it in the time allotted without using up all your game “lives” in the process, you can’t move on. You’re stuck at that level.

Lots of gamers, I might even venture to say most gamers, get a little obsessed in the attempt to move up. They play the game over and over again, looking for the secret sequence or hidden treasure that will give them access to the next level. What I find interesting about this phenomenon is that it is so similar to getting to the next level in harp playing.

I know you didn’t think you had much in common with gamers, but you might want to think again. Both are solitary pursuits which require determination and focus. Success is exhilarating; a lack of progress is frustrating. And there’s always that next level.

One advantage I see for gamers is that eventually you can win the game. There is a final level that when you conquer it, makes you indisputably a master of the game. Music doesn’t have an end point built into it. There is always a next level.

On today’s show I’m going to share with you my ideas on the skills you need to “level up” in your harp playing. Similar to a computer game, each major advancement in your harp study will involve conquering key skills and just like in a game, until you master those skills, you can’t move on successfully. Unlike a computer game, though, you can try to move on, but you will find that progress is discouragingly slow. 

But if you know what key skills you need for that next level, you can forget the frustration and move up more quickly. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-094

To paraphrase the 17h century English poet Andrew Marvell,“Had we but world enough and time,This scattered practice were no crime.”

Andrew Marvell was referring to “His Coy Mistress,” but we might well apply these lines to the kind of practice we so often find ourselves engaged in. It’s not that we don’t have goals or that we lack the ambition to improve and grow. It’s just that there is so much wonderful music in the world and we want to play it all. It’s a big feasting table and our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, or in this case, our collection of music we want to learn far exceeds our available time to learn it.

It wasn’t quite so difficult when we had no YouTube, no Instagram and no TikTok to bombard us with videos that make us musically hungry. Instant sheet music downloads are a threat to our practice capacity as well. When we had to leaf through a paper catalog of music and order an expensive book that may take days to arrive, we gave the purchase a little more consideration. Now everything is just a click away. We watch our pile of music we want to play burgeon at the same time that our available practice shrinks. Quite the dilemma for those of us who don’t have “world enough and time.”

If you are one of those harpists - and who isn’t? - who finds it challenging to finish pieces and make the progress you want because there are so many pieces you want to play and not enough time to play them all, then today’s podcast is one you need to hear.

I promise you this won’t be a lecture on delayed gratification. It’s not a diet plan for us music gluttons. It’s a little more like an “eat your cake and have it too” strategy.

There are three keys to practice success and I’m sure you know what they are: consistency, time and focus. The most important of the three is consistency, of course. Simply playing something every day is where harp happiness starts. If you put more time into it, naturally, you will be able to make more progress. And if you focus your work during that time, that’s where you start actually seeing results. But when your time is limited and your focus is using the panoramic lens rather than the super close up focus, your progress will slow considerably. Unless you learn some strategies for prioritizing your practice. And that’s our laser focus today.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-093

Welcome to a “quick fix” episode of the podcast. I love these episodes because I get to teach at the harp, which is just about my favorite thing. Actually, playing music on the harp would be my favorite, but this runs a pretty close second. 

Today’s quick fix is for rolled chords. Rolled chords are one of the most distinctive sounds of the harp, and they are one of our most versatile expressive tools. They can be rolled crisply with lots of energy, or they can be lush and luxurious, almost like musical dark chocolate. But they can be tricky to play well.

We’re going to cover the three most critical factors of rolling chords on this episode: the actual technique of rolling chords, how to get them to fit into your piece and not slow down the tempo, and how to practice the rolls so your fingers sound even and smooth. That’s a lot to do in one podcast show so we had better get started. If you are by your harp you might find it helpful to try these techniques as I talk about them. If you’re at work or in the car, you can get the concepts now and listen again later when you can play with me.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-092

As this podcast is released, it is the day before Valentine’s Day, and whether you celebrate the day in a special way or not, it’s hard to escape the advertisements urging us to buy and send cards, candy and flowers. I think, though, that we harpists have a special role to play, not just on Valentine’s Day, but every day. 

Music, love and romance are inseparable for most of us. We have our special songs that bind us to those we love. There are certain pieces of music that tug at our hearts and move us to barely expressible joy or tears. In the words of virtuoso cellist Pablo Casals,  “Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.”

And what instrument is more appropriate than the harp to be the voice of those beautiful, poetic things? In the Bible, we read how David soothed Saul with his harp music. Folk traditions the world over associate the harp with love. In early  Norse and various Celtic traditions, the harp was a symbol of love, and its strings represented a mystic bridge between heaven and earth by which one could ascend to higher levels of love. The men and women who play the harps in legends from every corner of the world are brave and courageous heroes whose music wins the freedom and the hearts of those they love. 

History aside, I imagine you feel as I do, that the harp is the quintessential instrument of romance. Harp music encompasses a wide variety of styles, certainly, but the beauty of its rippling arpeggios, lush chords and warm, liquid tone are undeniably magical.

Today our conversation is about romantic music. I’ll give you some insights about what music historians mean by the term “Romantic music,” which may not be what you think of as romantic music. We’ll also talk about romantic harp music, the composers who wrote it historically and the romantic-feeling music we love to play, no matter when it was written. I’ll even play a little for you. Plus I’ll share some of the techniques you’ll want to use to make your music more flowing, magical and, well, romantic.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-091

By the beginning of February, I’m done with winter. The holiday playing is long over; spring is still weeks away, no matter what the groundhog said. I’m feeling the winter blahs, and not just in the day-to-day things. This is the time of year when my practice can suffer from the blahs too.

Have you ever noticed how when you have important things to practice for, you enjoy your practice more? You have more energy for it, because there’s a good reason to practice. It’s never a struggle to practice when you have a lesson or a performance coming up. But it can be hard to drag yourself to the harp bench if there’s nothing on the calendar. If you have nothing to practice for, it’s quite possible you have no energy for practice.

Practice is certainly easier to do when you know you simply have to practice. But what if you don’t have to practice? How do you stay motivated and energized?

The simple answer is that you might not be able to stay motivated. Motivation requires us to expend energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere. 

I’m going to say something that may shock you, or at least surprise you a little. I’m actually going to give you permission to NOT practice. That sounds like a radical idea, I know, but it’s a valid technique. When you’re not feeling it, maybe you shouldn’t do it. However, let me quickly add that there is a right way and about a million wrong ways to skip your practice, and the wrong ways won’t help you. You’ll end up out of shape, feeling guilty and miserable, kind of like when you binge on chocolate fudge and potato chips and have to wear your stretchy pants.

No, what we’re going to discuss today is motivation and where it comes from, plus what to do when you don’t feel motivated. I have five easy ways to pump up your practice energy and at least four of them are fun. The fourth one might be fun too; you ‘ll have to decide that for yourself.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-090

Today’s episode is another in our series of masterclasses, our podcast at-the-harp workshops where you can follow along with me as we do a deep dive into a vital aspect of technique or musicianship.

In this masterclass, we’ll be working on my tempo pyramid. Over the years, I have had lots of requests for reviewing my system for working a piece or a passage so that it actually gets up to tempo. This system is what I call the tempo pyramid and although the concept is fairly simple, it will definitely help you to try it out step by step with me. I won’t just walk you through the pyramid, but I’ll give you some of my bonus tips that will make it even simpler and faster. And faster is our whole focus today: getting the whole piece faster and closer to tempo, making that one difficult passage as fast as the rest of the piece, letting your fingers move faster and with more agility and security.

It’s a lot to do in one podcast episode so we need to get started. By the way, in our show notes, there is a link to a PDF of the tempo pyramid that is free for you to download. If you don’t see the show notes in your podcast app, you can find it on the podcast page at harpmastery.com. Just look for Episode 89, scroll down the page and you’ll see the show notes.

One more thing: If you’re listening to this while you’re running or driving in the car, keep listening. You’ll be able to follow along and get a good understanding of the concepts. You can come back to this episode later when you’re at your harp and play along with me.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-089

We call them lightbulb moments, those unpredictable flashes of brilliance that spark our creativity. Or perhaps our inspiration comes from others we admire. Common thought says inspiration is necessary for anyone in an artistic endeavor, yet we believe it is elusive and selective, showing up randomly and bestowing its gifts unequally.

What does inspiration mean to you? Is it outside you, meaning that something or someone inspires you in a certain way? Or is it inside you, meaning that our inner lightbulb has a secret switch that suddenly flips and makes that lightbulb moment? Both? Neither?

Music history is filled with stories of inspiration, particularly stories about musical mentors who have helped shape the careers of some of the most famous classical musicians. From the greats like Mozart and Beethoven to modern composers like John Williams and Leonard Bernstein, these mentors have passed down their knowledge and expertise to generations of aspiring musicians.

If you look at harp history in particular, you can find countless instances of composers who wrote for harp because their wife, mother or other loved one played the harp. One of my favorite composer-performer pairs is the French harpist Micheline Kahn and her son composer Jean-Michel Damase. Damase told of his early musical education coming from sitting outside his mother’s teaching studio. He learned the language of music through the repertoire of the harp. He clearly learned it well, as evidenced in the numerous and mostly very difficult pieces he wrote for the harp.

Of course, Micheline Kahn inspired other composers too, and she premiered many of the works that we now consider pillars of the concert harp repertoire, pieces like the Impromptu by Gabriel Fauré as well as his Une châtelaine en sa tour,  Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, and Caplet’s Deux Divertissements and Conte Fantastique.

In today's episode, I’m going to share my ideas and my musings about inspiration. (Oh yes, we’ll talk a little about those fickle Greek Muses, too.) I will discuss some powerful sources of inspiration that you have available to you and how you can harness that creative energy to add growth, interest and fun to your harp journey.

Why should we care about inspiration? Does inspiration really matter if we’re just normal everyday kind of people and not aspiring to be musical geniuses? Yes, it matters a great deal. Inspiration is what fires our imagination, propels us to achieve and accomplish. Inspiration is what keeps us going when the work is hard. Without inspiration, music would be dull and meaningless, and who wants that? So let’s be sure we know where to find it and how to use it.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-088

As you probably know, one of my words for 2023 is freedom. It’s a motivational word, meaning the idea of freedom energizes me. It’s an aspirational word, meaning I want to experience the feeling of freedom every day. Most importantly, it’s an action word. I want to actively bring more freedom into all areas of my life and into the lives of those around me. That includes you, my friend. And that’s where freedom in our harp playing comes in.

I’m on a mission to set harpists free from the tyranny of some of the things that keep them from achieving what they want in their harp playing. That’s the main focus for the webinar I’ll be presenting soon on Creating Harp Freedom. I’ll be talking about some of the hidden enemies of progress and what you can actually do to defeat them. 

But in assembling the materials for that webinar, I realized that there is one enemy that many harpists face, one that is too big to be covered thoroughly in the webinar. It’s big enough that I decided to dedicate an entire podcast episode to it. It’s perfectionism.

An overwhelming majority of the harpists I speak with describe themselves as “perfectionists” or “Type A personalities” or “over-achievers.” I’m probably more than a little of all of those things myself, so I’m in the middle of this struggle with you all. In fact, there are a lot of us in this boat. A study done in 2020 by the Hardin Group reported that of the more than 1200 participants in their national survey, more than 92% self-identified as perfectionists and 86% of the respondents believed that their perfectionist expectations impacted their work. Based on my own experience, this is not news; this is confirmation. Perfectionism, at least in harp playing which is all I claim to know about, is a trap for a lot of us.

This is not an episode about the psychology of perfectionism. The Practicing Harp Happiness podcast is about harp playing and so is this episode. I’m going to share some of the ways I have seen perfectionism prevent harpists from making progress, from enjoying their practice, from sharing their music with others. And I will give you some very simple - but not necessarily easy - ways to create your own harp freedom.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-087

Fundamentals, exercises and etudes are the three pillars of harp technique, or any instrumental technique for that matter. I’m sure this is not news to you, but the reminder never hurts.

Fundamentals like scales, arpeggios and chords form the basis of our technique because they are the patterns most prevalent in the music we play. Exercises help our fingers become familiar with the characteristic patterns that aren’t as straightforward as the fundamentals. Etudes help us put the technical skills from our exercises and fundamentals into a more musical context, a sort of test drive for our technique. Together, they help us develop facility, agility and musical understanding. Pretty powerful stuff.

I know - you knew that already. But like me and most of the harpists I know, you may have trouble fitting all three of those into your practice time. Most of us have limited practice time anyway, and it would be easy to let our technical work crowd out everything else. This is why I want to talk with you today about the right way to practice an etude.

Actually there are a number of right ways to practice an etude, but there is definitely a wrong way to practice an etude too. None of us has time or effort to spare; we need to use every practice minute wisely. When you practice an etude properly, you will increase your technical accuracy, which can make you more confident about your playing as a whole. You will also increase your finger agility and flexibility as you develop more comfort playing over a wide range of tempos. And you will have the focus to work on the more musical aspects of your playing like dynamics, tone, articulation and flow. Without setting the right intention for your etude practice, or without knowing the steps to achieve that intention, your etude practice, however, your efforts might not bring you the results you want. 

We are going to start our discussion today with a quick quiz to see how effective your etude practice is right now, and then we can talk about the strategies you need to power it up. It’s a fun little quiz but don’t let that fool you. This is an important topic. Why? Because the more confident you are in your technique, the more freedom you will have: freedom to learn the music you want to play, to learn more music, maybe even to play more for others. A secure technique equals harp freedom, and etudes can be a shortcut path to get there.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-086

I attended one professional boxing match in my life. The reason I went was that a former harp student of mine was making her professional boxing debut. As you might imagine, I felt a little out of my element in the boxing club, which was actually one of the legendary boxing clubs in Philadelphia, but I had never been there before. And I’ve never been there since. What surprised me most was that I could actually relate to the experience a little, not because of my martial arts training, but because of my music training.

There was a nervous tension in the air that was not unlike the anticipation before a performance. I felt the same sense of the importance of the moment, the fact that each competitor needed to bring his or her best effort right at that moment; there was no second chance. Of course, we musicians are fighting a less visible opponent. And we aren’t likely to walk away with a bloody lip or a broken nose.

I also found the strategy of the boxers interesting to watch. You could see one boxer sense an opening and take advantage of it, or another one elude a poorly thrown punch. And it's the strategy that I want to talk about today, specifically the strategy of the one-two punch.

Full disclosure - I’ve never delivered an actual one-two punch. I did learn similar combinations when I was studying karate years ago, but even then I was not very good at fighting. But I understand the concept and if you don’t already, you will too in just a moment.

I’ll explain this more thoroughly in our discussion today, but the success of the one-two punch is because the first punch opens the door, and the second punch packs the power. There is a lesson for us here. The first action we take, the habit we develop or the skill we practice is only the first punch. The power - our progress and growth as harpists - is in the second step. So thinking about and planning for our growth two steps at a time, and being very strategic with each step - can create those knockout wins for us.

Stick with me here. I have a list of 5 combinations - one-two punches - that will inspire you to try this system right now. It’s a different way to create progress in your playing and it’s easy to do. I will also tell you what one-two punches I’m putting into place for myself here at the start of the new year.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com 

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-085

It’s a wonderful life.

I love watching that movie at the holidays or really at any time of year. But the movie is not what I’m talking about. 

I mean simply that this is the time I like to pause and be grateful for this wonderful life and all the amazing people I am privileged to share it with. And that includes you, my friend.

So on this very brief podcast, the last one of 2022, I would like to share my reflections with you, my thoughts on what made 2022 special for me, professionally and personally. Perhaps this will inspire you to do some similar reflecting. Perhaps this was a banner year for you, or maybe it was a challenging one. Either way I would encourage you to find at least one thing to celebrate. 

Before I start, though, I want to thank you for the great gift you have given me this year. I know how many demands there are for your time and attention and I am very grateful and very honored that you share some of your time with me. I love hearing that this podcast has accompanied you in the car or at the gym or as you take a walk. I don’t take your listening for granted and I thank you most sincerely for your time and attention. It means more to me than you know. 

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-084