Practicing Harp Happiness

Ten years ago, I wrote a small book. It was my response to the frustration I observed some harpists experiencing. These harpists were diligent in their practice and dedicated to doing everything right. But they still weren’t able to play their music the way they wanted.

Some told me that they just couldn’t get the notes, the fingering and the placing correct. Others said they couldn’t get their music anywhere near an appropriate tempo. Some couldn’t look at their hands and the music at the same time. Others couldn’t make their music flow. And none of them seemed to be able to discover a solution to their problem.

I started asking harpists questions, in order to find out a little more about what the real source of each of the issues might be. What I discovered was that, although the symptoms manifested differently in each individual, there was really only one problem, one that all of them shared. No one had ever told them how to practice.

What I...

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...

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...

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...

I love riddles. Here’s an oldie but goodie for you. What’s the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

So what’s the best way to learn a piece? One bite at a time, obviously. It’s just that what constitutes a bite isn’t very obvious. How big is a bite? Is it a measure, a phrase or a page? Is it hands separately or hands together?  And how come the bites that worked for that piece don’t work for this piece? 

Dividing your pieces into sections is the way you create your “bites,” but there are lots of ways to section a piece, and no two pieces will have exactly the same sections. 

Sometimes finding the sections is easy. We can look at the piece and see an introduction, a first verse, a second verse and an ending. Those are the kind of sections that help us understand the piece.

Then there are the sections that help us practice the piece. These are typically fewer measures and a little more bite-sized, if you...

In my family, my grandmother’s sister was pretty much our favorite aunt. Aunt Dolie was sweet and generous, although she never had very much of her own and worked very hard all her life for what she did have. She was a gentle soul and totally without worldly savvy. She lacked a lot of practical knowledge, what we would call “know-how,” But that didn’t mean she was without courage. Hence, this family legend I am about to relate to you.

When Aunt Dolie was in her fifties, she decided she wanted to learn how to drive. As a city person, she had always used public transportation or relied on my grandparents for rides to the store or to the doctors. My grandfather helped her find a driving instructor. He knew that teaching her himself would likely push his patience past the breaking point. 

The driving instructor showed up for Aunt Dolie’s first driving lesson. They successfully navigated the difficulties of starting the car and pulling away from the...

I rarely have guests on the podcast, but today I’m so happy to be sharing the show with my dear friend and my former student turned colleague, harpist Candace Lark, If you’re a My Harp Mastery member or in our coaching program, you will already know and love Candace, because she is one of our Certified Coaches and helped me to found our Harp Quest program for young student harpists. But if you haven’t had the chance to meet her yet, you are in for a treat.

Candace isn’t only an extremely busy professional harpist, playing with all kinds of ensembles and in all kinds of venues (spoiler alert: she’ll tell us later about playing at Will Smith’s house), but she has another aspect to her musical life as well. Utilizing her years of performing and teaching experience, she created an online business called The Happy Musician Coaching. Her coaching helps musicians, not just harpists, create and meet specific goals while cultivating a mindset for musical...

Are you a free spirit, a rebel? Or maybe you just hate being told what to do?

I have to admit that sometimes one or more of those labels fits me. Most of the time I toe the line but there are moments when I just don’t want to do the thing I know I should do. Now I’m not talking about anything illegal, immoral or dangerous. It’s more like sometimes I just don’t feel like practicing. Or maybe I’d rather play the new piece of music I just bought instead of slogging through those four measures that are giving me so much grief. Going over and over those four measures doesn’t feel like making beautiful music. It doesn’t feel creative, and even though it may make me feel a little virtuous when I’m finished, it doesn’t always bring me joy in the moment.

Because playing the harp is not only as important to me as breathing but it’s my job, I know I need to buckle down and do the important work, and so I do. But that doesn’t...

When I was preparing for this week’s show, I couldn’t help being reminded of a couple of tired old jokes.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this. 
Doctor: Then don’t do that.

And,

Patient: Doctor, it hurts and I don’t know what’s wrong.
Doctor: Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

When we’re thinking about our harp lessons, we may sometimes think of it like a doctor-patient relationship. Something is wrong with our playing and we want to get it fixed. Give me the prescription and let me go home.

Or we may think of our lessons in a less transactional, more relationship based-way. Our teacher isn’t just our expert harp guide but our friend as well. We look forward to our lessons as a time to reconnect with our harp and with our teacher too.

While both of those scenarios may be accurate to some extent, neither one truly describes what a music lesson is or should be. If our lessons are transactional - just give me the scrip, doc -...

We harpists take our finger placement seriously. Getting the right fingers on the right strings at the right time is paramount. One misplaced finger and a whole passage can go wobbly.

One of the quotes of Johann Sebastian Bach that comes to my mind at this moment is this one: “It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”

Bach was known for his sense of humor and so, without knowing the context for the quote,  I like to think that this was not intended to downplay the difficulty of playing an instrument but was more tongue in cheek. But it’s still a little depressing.

Our physical connection to the harp strings is key, not just for playing the right notes, but for our speed, our tone, our range of expression, our relaxation, even our confidence. When our fingers are too loosely placed on the strings, they can slide up or down or even off the string. This makes for...