Today’s episode focuses on the music of harpist, singer and composer Sophia Dussek. It is partly music history, partly harp history and partly harp technique. But it’s really about connection. I want to help you feel a connection to our roots, to some of the musical and harp traditions that aren’t merely history, but are part of the fabric of our daily harp playing.
There’s an African proverb that says,”Walk like you have 3000 ancestors walking behind you.” We harpists so often feel that we’re all alone on our journey. The truth is that we are only the newest leaves on a tree with many other branches full of other leaves, a tree whose roots were formed long ago. Every time we play, we are continuing the traditions of those harpists, so it makes sense to learn a little bit about them. The things we learn about our roots can help us connect to the music we are learning today in a deeper way.
That’s why I chose...
A special holiday music mix just for podcast listeners!
All harp solo selections are from my Break Forth CD.
Flute and harp selections are from the SPARX Christmas Echoes CD.
All CDs are available for digital download in our online shop.
Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:
Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at...
As you probably know, one of the reasons I started Harp Mastery® back in 2012 was because of the number of adult harp students I was meeting who were frustrated by their lack of progress. Although these harpists were at different stages and interested in varying kinds of music, what they had in common was an incredibly strong desire to play the harp, a desire that kept them practicing despite the challenges they were encountering. Although I hadn’t come up with the term “harp happiness” yet, I knew that I had to help these harpists find a path that would give them the joy and satisfaction they were looking for in their harp playing.
But years before that, I had already discovered something that shocked me about adult harp students. I had started a class for beginning harpists of any age - the classes usually had teenagers and adults - and I became intrigued by the reasons these students wanted to play the harp. Many of the adults had wanted to play the harp...
There are three ways we learn how to play the harp. The first and most obvious one is by doing. Playing and practicing is our “go to” method for learning. You can’t actually learn to play the harp without playing it.
When my son was about 12 or 13, he fell madly in love with football. There weren’t any teams he could play on at his school or in our community, so he had to be content with playing football video games. Not the same thing, of course. Even so, when he got to high school and finally had the opportunity to play on a real team, he was actually surprised to find out how different the game was when he was on a real field instead of a virtual one.
The second way we learn is by instruction, by having someone show us how to advance our skills or teach us new ones. In today’s world there are countless ways to get instruction: lessons, coachings, videos, online courses. But instruction can teach us more than how to get our fingers to...
“What can I do to make my music more expressive?”
If I’ve been asked that question once, I’ve been asked it a thousand times. This isn’t a beginner question, either. It usually is a question of an intermediate level player. Once harpists achieve a fair level of technical competency, they have enough bandwidth to consider how to make their playing more musical. Until that point, it’s all about getting the right fingers on the right strings.
Naturally enough, most of us look to the dynamics to make our music more expressive. It’s a good plan. Following the dynamic markings that the composer has included allows us a glimpse of what the composer intended the music to be. Dynamics create differentiation in the music that helps a listener hear the intent of the music as well. And dynamics add variety so our music is more interesting. Dynamics are a great place to start if you’re ready to make your playing more expressive.
Usually,...
The sinking of the unsinkable Titanic still fascinates us all over a hundred years after the disaster. It’s the subject of all sorts of speculation and theories, and there’s one of those that is actually relevant to our topic today. The question is this: if the Titanic crew had performed all the safety drills they were supposed to, if there had been enough lifeboats and if the passengers had been drilled in lifeboat procedures, would so many have perished when the ship went down?
Some people have noted that a routine safety drill on the fateful Sunday morning was not held. This has been attributed to several factors including high winds and the morning church service on the ship. Even with that, however, there was only lifeboat accommodation for about half of the passengers and crew onboard. Was the ship thought to be so well-designed that safety preparedness could be relaxed?
Probably not. But the safety regulations for passenger ships that we have today came in part...
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...
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...
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...
They say that only two things in life are certain, death and taxes. But if you’re a harpist you know there is a third certainty; at some point, often at the wrong point, you’re going to break a string.
I remember one performance with my flutist friend Joan when one of my high strings broke as I played it at the end of a glissando near the end of the piece we were playing. When we had finished the piece, I began to change the string while she joked with the audience that the string had broken on time and in tune. We had been playing concerts together for years at that point so she also gave the harp talk to the audience while I finished changing and tuning the string.
Not all string breakage is so convenient, of course. A few years ago, I was playing a big flashy solo piece as part of a program with various performers. The piece was Salzedo’s “Variations on a Theme in the Old Style,” The piece is in G Major and it’s about 12 minutes...
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