#049: It’s All in the Wrist: The Crucial Link

Do you suffer from uneven scales, particularly when you cross under or over?
Do your fingers sometimes fumble to find the strings?
Is your tone warm and lovely some of the time and other times thin or weak?
Have the drills you’ve tried made no real difference?

Here’s the miracle solution to all these problems… and more!

If this sounds like a late night infomercial, I apologize, but I want to call your attention to the often overlooked, frequently misunderstood and almost always underappreciated member of your technique team - your wrist.

We harpists consider so many points of our technique - our fingers, arms and shoulders, our fingering, our placing. We worry about whether to raise or connect and in what situations one might be better than the other. Do we hold our elbows up or down? Should we sit on the edge of the bench or more in the middle and how high or low? So many questions and nearly as many different answers to each one.

When was the last time you thought about your wrist, that crucial link between your hand and your arm? Have you ever really stopped to consider the role that your wrist plays in your technique? If you’re like most of us, probably not.

But today, we are going to change that. This show is all about your wrist. We will talk about the correct position (or positions!) of your wrist and how your wrist can help your fingers place more accurately on the strings. We’ll talk about how a supple wrist is the source of graceful, fluid motion and a full, lovely sound  Most importantly, we’ll talk about how to prevent injury to this most delicate connection between our hand and arm, how to protect it and how to practice in a way that ensures it stays healthy.

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

• Etude a Day Course
• Related blog post: Two Essential Wrist Techniques
• Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]