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, and what makes four-note chords even more challenging. And then there are those four-note chords in both hands at the same time! The more fingers you have to put on the strings, the more possibility there is for error, which is why we’re going to take our time today and really explore what you need to know as well as what you need to do to increase your chances for success. Naturally, none of us gets...

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 they learned in their fingers. (By the way, we’ll talk today about what that phrase, “in your fingers,” means. ) 

I last talked about review on this podcast in episode 99. That episode is called “The Shortcut Way To Build And Maintain A Repertoire.” In that episode I outline some step-by-step frameworks to grow your repertoire with simple review tactics. I have linked directly to that episode in the ...

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 understand that slow practice has always been a part of harp studies and for very good reasons, which we will discuss shortly. Salzedo, however, was known for teaching his students to practice slowly and loudly.

I need to quickly add a couple of disclaimers. First, the loud and slow practice attributed to the Salzedo method is a broad statement, and as such, is not completely accurate. Second, and more impo...

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 children with the method developed by Shinichi Suzuki which begins by emphasizing learning by ear rather than by printed music. 

All of these educators believed, as I do, that music is within us and that by learning without the printed page, we can create connections that allow us to develop our natural instinct for how music is organized, in notes and rhythms and chords and more. Our musical notation s...

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 your ambition is to learn a piece or stretch your technique or develop a skill, you are going to need more time. I know it would be helpful to know exactly how much time you’re going to need, but coming up with a number would just be guessing. 

Even so, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some factors that can guide you that will keep you from overworking yourself or underutilizing your time. Simply put, your goal i...

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 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 jo...

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 hasn’t all been about work. We don’t travel as much now for concerts as we used to, but we did a lot of traveling earlier in our career and naturally we are very close friends. In that time, I also learned a lot about the flute. 

One of the biggest revelations I had was listening to Joan practice her long tones. Now this won’t surprise any of you who have played melody line instruments, but as a harpist wit...

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 etudes and I think you will find that what we’re talking about today is not the usual etude practice.

I often talk about etudes as the missing link between the exercise drills that we do and the music we play. They provide a way to use a single technical skill like a specific fingering pattern in a musical context that is not as complicated as a regular repertoire piece. Practicing etudes in this way al...

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 how far you’ve come, confirm your direction and realign your course if necessary. We will focus on the progress you’ve been making and where your next steps may be.

But if you haven’t seen the progress you had hoped for or expected, no worries. Progress is tricky to measure and sometimes hard to spot, even when it’s happening. When you’re walking the path, you can’t always tell how far you’ve come or how ...

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 believe there is no upside to playing or practicing a piece you are bored with. If you’re trying to learn it, your practice won’t be focused; your heart won’t be in it. If you’re performing it, your lack of interest in the piece will communicate itself to the listener. It might be a flawless performance but it won’t have you - your personality, your energy - in it, and those are the things that bring a...