Every restaurant chain, every chef has their “secret sauce.” It’s that unique ingredient that makes their food taste special every time. It's part of their culinary signature.

There is a secret - or maybe not so secret - sauce in musical expression too. It’s rubato. It’s the element of musical p...

If I had to choose one finger pattern that I could count on to almost always show up in a piece, it would be an arpeggio. Arpeggios and the harp go together like peanut butter and jelly. In fact, the Italian word for harp is arpa, which has the same first three letters as arpeggio. That’s because...

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You suddenly realize that everything is quiet and you have 20 minutes all to yourself. Sure, you could sit down with a book and a cup of tea. Or you could spend that 20 minutes practicing. You decide your harp is calling you, so you sit on the bench and look at th...

If you attended my “Cut to the Chase" webinar a couple of weeks ago, you’ll remember that we were talking about some harp hacks, shortcut “outside the box” solutions for common harp problems. We’re going to talk about another one today.

Imagine that you’re learning a piece and it’s going along p...

I’m a pusher, and I hope you are one too, a lever or pedal pusher, that is.

Just imagine a world of harps without levers or pedals. Certainly, there are folk harps that don’t have levers and still play beautiful music. But to me, that’s a little like living in the forest. There is endless beauty...

How can you correct a problem – any problem from a water leak to paper jam in the printer – if you don’t know where the problem really is?

Harp playing is no different. Our practice is supposed to help us fix mistakes and even prevent them from recurring, at least to a degree. But if we don’t kn...

Let’s talk warm-ups.

You likely have a favorite way to warm up at the beginning of a practice session. It might be short and sweet, like an arpeggio and a scale. It might be a fairly thorough routine that allows you to check everything from your posture to your focus. Or possibly it’s just a pas...

Wouldn’t it feel great to relax? 

Of course, since this is the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast, I’m not just talking about a cool drink, a good book and a bubble bath. I’m talking about being relaxed when you play the harp. 

You know why it’s important to be relaxed when you play. When your h...

While there are many notable quotes from Johann Sebastian Bach, one of my favorites is this one: “There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”  Okay, the man was a musical genius, but obviously he also had a remar...

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 po...

Okay, here’s my question for you today. What would be the scariest words you could hear in your lesson? I can think of lots of possibilities but I’m guessing that one of those phrases that comes to your mind might be, “I think we need to get out the metronome.”

If that’s a phrase that makes you ...

Legendary harpist and composer Carlos Salzedo had this to say about buzzing: “It is important that there be no buzzing when replacing. Buzzing comes from lack of precision in replacing, and will be eliminated if the player replaces very accurately.” 

That quote comes from the Method for the Harp...