Why Every Harpist Needs a Method - PHH 227
Practicing Harp Happiness
When I was a beginning harp student, the technical method I was learning - the Salzedo method - was something I took very seriously. From my very first harp lessons, I learned the important points of technique, as Salzedo taught it. I wasn’t studying with Salzedo, of course, but my teacher, Marilyn Costello, was a student of his, and his method was what she taught her students. For a long time, I played the harp in innocent ignorance of the fact that there were other harp methods. In fact, it was a revelation to me in those early years when I discovered that most harpists in the world...
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Perspective Over Perfection: The Secret to Playing with Freedom - PHH 226
Practicing Harp Happiness
I’m sure you’ve seen that famous optical illusion picture that can be perceived either as two faces in profile looking at each other, or as a vase. That image is named the “Rubin Vase,” after Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin, who authored a book in 1915 called “Visual Perception.” This image, and others like it, have stimulated much scientific debate about how our brains understand and process images. What fascinates me is that moment when my understanding of the image shifts, that instant where I can see the second interpretation of the picture. Naturally, there’s a...
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The Surprising Power of Just One More - PHH 225
Practicing Harp Happiness
Imagine you’re looking at a box of chocolates, knowing you’ve already had at least three too many. Your hostess is holding out the box to you, saying, “Have just one more. It couldn’t hurt.” It’s hard to actually know what one more would do. That “one more” candy might be the one that pulls out your filling. That “one more” episode of your favorite Netflix show might turn into an hours-long binge watch. That “one more” task before you leave the house might be the one that makes you miss your train. But there’s the other side of “one more” too. The extra rep in the...
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Teacher to Student: If I Knew Then What I Know Now - PHH 224
Practicing Harp Happiness
How often do we say, “If I only knew then, what I know now”? Sometimes it’s about life experience, like surviving teenage drama. Sometimes it’s about turning down an opportunity, like not buying stock in Facebook before the company went big. Obviously, we aren’t able to go back in time and really have a “do over.” I imagine that if we could, It’s more than possible that the result wouldn’t be what we expect. We can never know how our world would have been altered, if we’d taken the other fork in the road. We can only guess. Here’s my “if I only knew...
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Banish Your Practice Blindspots - PHH 223
Practicing Harp Happiness
Mirror, mirror on the wall. If only my mirror could show me all. We humans love our mirrors. At some deep-rooted level, we love to see ourselves. Maybe you remember the famous scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia when Peter O’Toole playing Lawrence first puts on the white Arab robes and headdress. He is for the moment all by himself in the desert, so there is no dialogue. According to the film’s director, David Lean, the only instruction he gave O’Toole was to improvise what this young man Lawrence might have done in this situation. O’Toole experiments with the sweep of his robes by...
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Susann McDonald: A Legacy of Connection - PHH 222
Practicing Harp Happiness
There’s a moment — sometimes only after someone is gone — when we finally see the full measure of their influence. We may have known they mattered, but loss has a way of sharpening our perspective, of showing us just how much they shaped our world. Some people use the word legendary too easily. For harpist Susann McDonald, it’s no exaggeration. Susann McDonald, who passed away this past May at the age of 90, left an indelible mark on the harp world. She was an acclaimed performer, a respected author, an extraordinary teacher, and a passionate advocate for our instrument. She co-founded...
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Mistakes as Milestones: A New Mindset for Growth - PHH 221
Practicing Harp Happiness
Not all mistakes are created equal. Sure, some need to be addressed and fixed. But others? They’re signs of progress. They tell you that your ears are sharper, your awareness is expanding, and your technique is evolving. Let’s put it in context. We live in a world that’s constantly trying to correct us. Type an email, and autocorrect will instantly jump in. Google will underline a word in red, and we assume it's wrong—just because it looks unfamiliar. But autocorrect doesn’t always get it right. And neither does your inner critic. Just because something feels like a mistake doesn’t...
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5 Things Your Teacher Can’t Do For You - and 5 Things She or He Can - PHH 220
Practicing Harp Happiness
You’ve heard me say this before: I had wonderful teachers throughout my musical life. From my very first piano teacher when I started piano at age four, through my harp studies from age eight and my college years at the Curtis Institute, my teachers were all I could have wanted. They nurtured me, encouraged me, pushed me, and took me to task when that was required, and believe me, it was required from time to time. Most importantly - and this is one of my core teaching principles to this day - they were as invested in my musical journey as I was. They took my learning and my musical growth...
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Back to the Harp—Without Killing the Vacation Vibe - PHH 219
Practicing Harp Happiness
I know I’m dating myself, but here goes… Back in the 1960’s there was a television show called “Sea Hunt.” The show centered around a free-lance scuba diver named Mike Nelson, played by Lloyd Bridges. Mike Nelson was a former Navy diver and a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. As a free-lance diver, he was hired for all kinds of dangerous underwater work, everything from salvaging precious cargo from wrecked ships to rescuing people trapped in caves. Each episode had dangerous situations and villains who were ready to slash the hoses on Mike’s air tanks. In nearly...
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What Makes Any Piece a “Harp Piece”? - PHH 218
Practicing Harp Happiness
Here’s our question for today: what makes a piece of music a “harp piece”? Does it have to have been originally written for harp? Or composed by a harpist? Or could any piece of music, no matter what instrument or instruments it was written for, be a harp piece if you play it on the harp? I happen to think that the third answer is the correct one. Mostly. Let me explain. If you play a piece on the harp, it has absolutely become a harp piece whether it started out that way or not. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it should have become a harp piece. Some pieces just...
info_outlineHow 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 practice thing would be so much easier.
I realize I am guilty of perpetuating this unreality. I often use notional percentages to represent stages of “finish” for a piece. For instance, I’ll call a piece 80% done if I can play most of the notes correctly most of the time at a tempo that’s at least 80% of my goal tempo. It’s hardly scientific, but it gives me and my students a way to judge where we are on our journey with a piece.
So what about you? Do you know where you are with that piece you’re trying to finish? Are you at that 80% mark? If so, that’s great, because you’re almost there. By the way, I don’t believe in 100%; perfection is not a practical goal. Instead, 90-95% is what I would call finished. If you’re playing at Carnegie Hall, that’s not good enough, but it should do for just about everywhere else.
Or maybe this is what you’ve experienced: you get your piece to 80% without much trouble, but then it gets stuck there. It just won’t get over that last hump to the 90% mark. That hump - and how to get over it - is what I’d like to talk about with you today. I want to talk about the factors that contribute to progress and to growth, as well as how to find the way to close that gap between where your piece is now and where you want it to be. We can’t exactly create “progress by the numbers,” but we can find the steps that will pull you out of the place you’re stuck and move you forward.
Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:
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