Simplicity and Stillness: How to Create Calm in Your Harp Playing - PHH 186
Release Date: 12/09/2024
Placing Chords: How to Find the Right Strings the First Time - PHH 205
Practicing Harp Happiness
The great Zig Ziglar, much-beloved author and motivational speaker, never played the harp as far as I know, but one of his most often quoted remarks is perfect for today’s topic. Zig said, “You hit what you aim at, and if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.” If you have ever had difficulty placing the notes in your chords, today I am going to teach you how to fix your aim. Of course there is more to placing and playing chords than just aiming at the strings, but you do have to get to the right ones. This is what makes three-note chords more difficult than two-note intervals,...
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Review Done Right: It’s More Than Repertoire - PHH 204
Practicing Harp Happiness
Do you review your pieces? If you don’t review your pieces regularly, then keep listening because today we are going to explore the different reasons you might want to start and a few different methods for review you might want to try. But here’s the thing; if I asked a dozen harpists who say they review their pieces how they do their review, I will get a dozen different answers. Some people schedule it; others set a rotation. Some people do both. Some harpists are trying to develop a repertoire list of music they can play at a moment’s notice. Others are trying to keep the last piece...
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Why Slow Practice Works - and When It Doesn't - PHH 203
Practicing Harp Happiness
My harp background is in the Salzedo method. This is the technique method devised and taught by legendary harpist Carlos Salzedo. It was at the time, the early part of the twentieth century, a startlingly different concept of harp playing and harp technique and the aim was to bring the harp into the modern world. The aesthetic of the method varied in almost every way possible from the French tradition in which Salzedo was trained. But we aren’t discussing physical technique today. We are discussing practice technique, one practice technique in particular: slow practice. Please...
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Rhythmic Confidence: It’s Not About the Math - PHH 202
Practicing Harp Happiness
If I had the opportunity to teach music to an absolute music newbie, someone without any previous musical instruction or experience, I know exactly how I would begin. I would start without printed music. That’s hardly revolutionary. The German composer Carl Orff is known today not only for his most famous work, Carmina Burana, but for the innovative methods he brought to musical education. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze created Eurhythmics, not the 1980’s pop band with Annie Lennox, but a system for teaching music through movement. Music schools throughout the world have been teaching young...
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Are You Practicing Enough? - PHH 201
Practicing Harp Happiness
Here’s a question we’ve probably all wondered about at some point: am I practicing enough? As a teacher, I can tell you that my experience has demonstrated that if a harpist - and this includes me - has to ask the question, the answer is probably no, you’re not practicing enough. But of course, the real answer is likely a little more complicated. It depends on what you’re trying to do. On the light end of the practice spectrum, if you’re just trying to keep the rust off either your fingers or your pieces, you probably only need a few minutes each day. On the other end, if...
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Small Steps to Break Through and Grow - PHH 200
Practicing Harp Happiness
How do you measure something that is unmeasurable? How do you quantify something that can’t be contained or counted? How do you assess something that is completely subjective? You might think you can’t, but yet, that’s what we attempt to do every day in our practice. We try to gauge our progress. We try to determine exactly when a piece is “finished.” Exact measurements aren’t possible in music. We can’t time our progress. “This piece will take exactly 37 days to learn to the degree of polish that I personally want.” If only we could have that degree of certainty, the whole...
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Making Music Sing: A Phrasing Primer for Harpists - PHH 199
Practicing Harp Happiness
I’ve been playing concerts with my flutist friend Joan Sparks for more decades than I care to admit. Our work together has included concerts, being Artists in Residence at schools and retirement communities, producing our own concert series, recording multiple CDs (actually even a couple of cassette tape recordings back in the day) and commissioning some significant works for the flute and harp concert repertoire. In fact, one of those works turned into an actual question on the TV show ”Jeopardy.” I’ll tell you that story at the end of the podcast. Of course, our collaboration...
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Etudes: What You Never Knew They Could Do For You - PHH 198
Practicing Harp Happiness
Fact number one: harp technique is hard. That’s a given. Making our fingers steady, stable and strong enough to play in mid-air, defying gravity with every pluck, is very challenging. That’s a fact. Fact number two: our technique is a major factor in our playing. It enables us to play the music we want to play. Or it limits us. If our fingers can’t play it, we can’t play it. It’s that simple. Fact number three: If you feel like your technique is holding you back, there are ways to fix that. And today I want to suggest two ways you might not have explored. These are two ways to use...
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Here’s Your Sign: How to Tell if You’re Making Progress - PHH 197
Practicing Harp Happiness
The day this podcast episode is released, we will be living Day 55 of this year 2025. According to the calendar, we’ve already had 55 days this year to get things done, to grow, to accomplish. We’ve had 55 days to play the harp. If you set goals at the beginning of the year, this is a good time to check in on them. Are you where you thought you’d be? Are you ahead of the game, checking things off your list and moving on to your next steps? If you are, here’s a huge high five from me. That’s the way to create harp happiness. Today we are going to revisit your goals. We’ll look at...
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What to Do When Your Music is Boring You - PHH 196
Practicing Harp Happiness
They say that familiarity breeds contempt. Unfortunately, familiarity also breeds secure and confident music. We want to play our music well, and so we need to know it inside and out. That takes time. Learning music also takes time. And the longer we take to learn our music, the harder it can be to stay interested in it. No matter how much we love a piece of music, it is possible to get bored with it. Also, there are times when we are required to learn a piece that we don’t really like, perhaps for a performance or an exam. Practicing a piece we don’t like can feel like torture. I...
info_outlineOne of the things I love about watching virtuoso artists perform is how easy they make it look. For instance, just this past summer I attended a reunion of many of us who attended the Salzedo Summer Harp Colony in Camden, Maine. One of the highlights of that weekend was a concert of music written by Carlos Salzedo, and the star performer on that concert was Judy Loman. She is in her eighties, and she walked onto the stage with as much comfort and ease as if she were in her own harp studio at home.
One of the pieces she played was Salzedo’s Variations on a Theme in the Old Style. This is a monster piece, very long and very difficult. She told the audience how she first heard and fell in love with the piece when she was taking lessons with Salzedo in Maine in the summer as a young child - I think she was ten. As she was walking to her lessons, she heard this piece wafting from the windows of houses where other older harpists were practicing it. She asked Mr. Salzedo if she could learn it, and he told her she could learn it when she was fourteen years old. I believe he actually let her learn it when she was twelve. She said she still loves it and has been playing it ever since.
So here she was on stage, over seventy years later, playing the Variations for us. This wasn’t just brilliant playing for an eighty-something year old. Hers was just incredible playing. And here’s my point - she made it look so easy. Most of us harpists break a sweat when we play this piece. When we finish, we are mopping our brows and feel like we’ve run a marathon. But not Judy. It looked - and sounded- as easy for her as playing a simple little ditty. Every motion was just what it needed to be and nothing more. I’m not talking just about arm motions or raising. Her arms and hands were calm when she played. Hers is an efficient technique, one that allows her to play with security and strength and without extra energy. That kind of efficiency, that kind of stillness, is what we should all strive for in our technique, and it’s never more important to think about than now when the holiday frenzy is in full swing.
Today, we’ll talk about how you can add stillness to your harp playing right now in your technique, in your playing and in yourself. I have some simple tips that will help you feel more relaxed not just in the holidays but after the holidays too.
Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:
- Last chance to join our 12 Days of Harp Happiness
- Plan ahead for 2025 and register for our 2025 Getaway Retreat.
- 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-186