#113: Three Easy Ways To Get Your Hands Playing Together

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: 

• Join me for the Summer Sizzler Technique Camp 
• Related resource 3 Skills Essential to Sight Reading blog post
• Harpmastery.com

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