How to Prioritize Your Creativity and Still Get Ahead - PHH 156
Release Date: 05/13/2024
Taking a Lesson from Chopin: Legato and Rubato - PHH 184
Practicing Harp Happiness
There are three ways we learn how to play the harp. The first and most obvious one is by doing. Playing and practicing is our “go to” method for learning. You can’t actually learn to play the harp without playing it. When my son was about 12 or 13, he fell madly in love with football. There weren’t any teams he could play on at his school or in our community, so he had to be content with playing football video games. Not the same thing, of course. Even so, when he got to high school and finally had the opportunity to play on a real team, he was actually surprised to find...
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How to Focus on Doing Less to Get More Done - PHH 183
Practicing Harp Happiness
Are you feeling a little bit scattered or unsettled at the moment? It’s no wonder. Chaos is all around us in this crazy world, and there’s precious little we can do to fix it. But the chaos in our own personal harp world is something completely different. If you’re feeling any chaos or overwhelm about your harp playing, I have good news for you; this kind of chaos is something you can fix. Absolutely. Even in a year when we aren’t bombarded on every side by messages of gloom and doom, these last few weeks of the year are hectic. In the midst of the holiday festive preparations and the...
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More Than Dynamics: Uncovering the Real Secret to Musical Expression - PHH 182
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...
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The Fourth Thing You Need to Know About Rolling Chords - PHH 181
Practicing Harp Happiness
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...
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How to be Better than Perfect - PHH 180
Practicing Harp Happiness
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...
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Why Harpist Beginners Need Bach Too - PHH 179
Practicing Harp Happiness
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...
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Gentle Strengthening for a Weak Finger - PHH 178
Practicing Harp Happiness
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...
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No Sense of Rhythm? The 3 Step Cure - PHH 177
Practicing Harp Happiness
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...
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Powerful Practice with the Five Focus Areas - PHH 176
Practicing Harp Happiness
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...
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Make Your Warm-up the Prelude to Your Practice - PHH 175
Practicing Harp Happiness
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...
info_outlineAre 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:
- Come to our Unveiling Party for the new My Harp Mastery website! Join us live in the Harp Mastery® Hub or on YouTube on Friday, May 17, 2024 at 11:00 AM Eastern time.
- Related resource Music Practice for the Free Spirit blog post
- Harpmastery.com
Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-156