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Practicing Harp Happiness

#174: 5 “Good” Habits that Cost You Time

If you’re like me, you probably hate it when people change the rules in the middle of the game. I don’t necessarily mean in an actual game; that’s clearly wrong. But there are always new and better ways of doing things that require us to make a total change in what we do. Brush your teeth up and down, or side to side or in a circular motion. Drink 6 glasses of water a day, or 8 glasses or 4. Eggs are bad for you; eggs are good for you. It’s hard to keep up.

Of course, these aren’t really rules at all. They’re just conventions, best practices which change in order to keep up with advances or new discoveries.

Your practice is the same way. The habits and strategies that worked so well for you at an earlier stage of your harp life may not be as effective for you now that you have more experience. If you cling to those habits, you will likely slow down your learning speed, spending unnecessary time and energy. 

Today I will show you five...

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#173: 10 Ways to Counteract Harp Chaos

Do you remember the story of Chicken Little?

This is a classic children’s story and like a lot of the classic stories there are multiple versions. The basic story goes something like this:

An acorn falls from a tree and hits Chicken Little on the head which leads Chicken Little to conclude, erroneously, that the sky is falling. He decides he has to hurry and let the king know about this calamity. Along the way, he collects some of his bird friends - Henny Penny, Lucky Ducky, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey - who are similarly terrified by the idea of the sky falling and join him on his journey to see the king. 

The classic story then comes to a climax in classic gruesome children’s story fashion. They meet up with Foxy Loxy who pretends to join them but actually lures them to his den and eats them. 

I don’t think any of us are going to be eaten by Foxy Loxy today, but Chicken Little’s flurry of anxiety is not that different from what many harpists...

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#172: Why You Need to Have a Harp Role Model (or Be One)

music and meaning Sep 02, 2024

We are the product of our influencers. The current wisdom says that if you want to know what a person is really like, look at their circle of friends. The thinking goes further to posit that if you want to elevate yourself, whether in your income, your fitness, your intellect or your spirituality, you need to associate with those who have the attributes you would like to develop. It’s not just that you adopt the habits and thoughts of the people you associate with; your brain patterns actually change.

In the 1950’s a Swarthmore College psychologist named Solomon Asch observed an interesting phenomenon. A group of volunteer subjects was asked to estimate the length of a straight black line drawn on a white card. Asch discovered that each person’s estimate was dependent on the estimation of everyone else in the group. People actually saw the line differently based on the opinion of the people with them.

Physiologically, the brain craves reward, which it receives...

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#171: A Recipe for Creativity: How to Arrange Anything

Do you think of yourself as creative?

From time to time, a harpist will tell me that she doesn’t feel she is very creative, at least not in a musical way. I instinctively challenge this, because I believe that anyone who persists in studying the harp for more than a few months is nurturing a gift and a desire that is, at its essence, creative. I also believe, though, that much of our practice and pedagogy shifts us away from the creative spirit. This is unfortunate, to say the least. We risk drowning our enthusiasm for the joy of creating music in the hard work that is part of studying it and learning to do it well.

There are endless ways to add more creativity into your harp playing. Certainly, musical expression is creative, but that’s just scratching the surface. I’ve linked in the show notes to a blog post in the Harp Mastery® archives that outlines just a couple ways to add creativity to your practice. But there are so many ways that the harp can not...

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#170: Performance Nerves: An Impromptu Discussion

I don’t know if you know this, but most Mondays I hold a live video call. I call it our Live Monday Warm-Up, and that’s how it started, as a simple warm-up for anyone who wanted to join me. But like most things, it has morphed over time and now it’s actually a warm-up and a mini-masterclass on harp technique. 

I love these Monday calls and look forward to them each week, not just because I love to teach, but because I love to interact with the harpists that show up and participate with me. They are a pretty loyal group and I will take this opportunity to give them a shout out for showing up every week. You can join us any Monday you like. The calls are free and we stream them through the Harp Mastery® Hub and live on our YouTube channel. 

On a recent Monday, though, the call went a completely different direction from what I had planned. We were going to practice fourth finger slides, but a chance comment in the chat started me off on a 25 minute...

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#169: Winning the War of the Rhythms: How to Master 2 Against 3

Juggling. Patting your head and rubbing your tummy. Walking and chewing gum. 

Coordination challenges come in all levels of difficulty. Playing hands together is another one, but it’s one that we harpists eventually get comfortable with. Your right hand does one thing and your left hand does another. For the most part, everything works out, until we encounter polyrhythm, that is.

What’s polyrhythm? The technical definition of polyrhythm is one of those dictionary definitions that cause more confusion than it clears up. According to the New Harvard Dictionary of Music, polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. I warned you.

In terms that are probably more meaningful to you, 2 against 3 is an example of polyrhythm. In a general sense, it is two rhythms that don’t normally go together and that, as a consequence, present a rhythmic...

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#168: Lessons from a Harp Reunion

music and meaning Aug 05, 2024

Today I’m doing something different on the podcast.

I don’t usually talk about what’s happening in my life because this podcast is not all about me; it’s really all about you, me and our harp playing. That means I talk about what I think is important for you to be able to enjoy your harp playing at every step of your harp journey. But a few weeks ago, I participated in an event that reminded me about some essential truths, concepts that have made the difference for me in my journey, and which I think may make a difference in yours as well.

That event was the first, and likely the only, reunion of harpists who attended the Salzedo Summer Harp Colony in Camden, Maine. In terms of numbers, the alumni who attended the event represented a small fraction of the harpists who studied there between its founding in 1931 and the early 2000’s when the program ended. But for those of us who were there, the reunion was an event like no other.

So today, I want to...

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#167: Practicing Contentment: How to Balance Progress and Pleasure

music and meaning Jul 29, 2024

Right now, I’m in a tug-of-war with myself. 

Usually, I’m all about helping my students and pushing myself to set goals, to find the next level, to discover more harp happiness through progress and growth. But it’s summertime, and I’m facing a tough choice between leveling up or lazing in the sun. I will admit that sometimes the sun wins.

This struggle isn’t just a summertime struggle, though. In our harp playing, we are continually caught between two opposing ideas: to achieve and accomplish or to simply enjoy. It’s not just about lazing in the sun. It’s really the conflict between the two ways we approach the harp each day. Do we practice? Or do we play?

Ideally, of course, we do both. Playing the harp means exactly that - playing music. Practicing the harp includes all the woodshedding, the repetition, the struggle to clean up notes and fingers and rhythms and make our playing (note that word again!) the best it can be. In a...

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#166: Music in Motion: The Art of the Graceful Gesture

Many harpists can remember the first time they saw someone play the harp. The harp itself looked magnificent: tall, majestic, maybe gold. The harpist might have looked magnificent too, maybe a lovely lady in a flowing gown. The harp and the harpist together made an impressive picture. No wonder people want to play the harp. More than any other instrument, the harp is decorative. It makes a visual statement just sitting in a corner. And when it speaks, it’s magic.

We can all agree on that much. But there’s more to a harpist’s appearance than just sitting behind the harp in beautiful clothes. There’s a more important visual aspect to  playing the harp, one that draws a lot more debate, and that is what we look like when we play. I’m not talking about any funny faces we might make. I’m talking about how we gesture with our arms.

To an audience, harp gestures look graceful. We harpists know, though, that there is musical purpose behind them....

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#165: 5 Techniques for Your Left Hand

I was googling around the internet the other day when I ran into an article that began with this question: “I have completely different fingerprint patterns on both hands. On my right, each finger has a very distinct and similar loop pattern. But on my left hand each finger has a distinct whorl pattern. Why does this happen?”  According to the article,  there is not a definitive scientific answer for this, but the question still intrigues me, particularly in light of our topic for today. 

In harp playing, our right and left hands have very distinctive roles, at least most of the time. Our right hand usually plays melody while our left hand plays an accompaniment. Most of the time, the melody that our right hand plays is made up of connected notes. Our fingers need to place from one note to the next to make the melody sound singing and smooth.

Our left hand accompaniment, though, is often made up of chords and low notes, so that our hand needs to lift to...

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