Practicing Harp Happiness

Playing music is hard. Trying to evaluate how well you are playing it is even harder, much harder. 

If this were a sport, a game like baseball, our efforts in relation to those of the opposing team would be reflected in the score. In an individual sport like golf, your score is a marker of your performance against the challenge of the course, the weather and any number of other factors. In an artistic endeavor, such as art or music or dance, there isn’t an objective numerical scale to score the outcome. I think that’s why I am always ambivalent about Olympic figure skating judging. I understand that they have tried hard to find objective measurements for all the aspects of a skating performance, but there is still room for debate. There isn’t always a clear right or wrong.

When we practice, we aim for “right;” we want to get the notes right, our technique right, the fingering right, the pedals right, the dynamics right. And as my friend MJ says, we get all wrapped up in right. Whe...

A number of years ago, I wrote a blog post comparing practice styles to two breeds of dogs: a German Shepherd and a Greyhound. This was my metaphor for discussing a topic I found really hard to address with my students, the fact that their natural practice style was a determining factor in the speed of their progress. Let me explain.

I had some students who were committed to doing everything correctly and as a consequence learned carefully and thoroughly, but rather slowly. I had other students who wanted to play the music right away. Their enthusiasm and energy got them to the finish line quickly, but we often had to go back to pick up some important points they had missed along the way. Both learning styles were good, to a certain point. But at that certain point, each style needed to incorporate the strengths of the other one in order to get the music to the finish line.

So to help my students understand this better, I chose two wonderful dog breeds as representations of the tw...

I think one of the biggest challenges in music study is that it is very difficult to really measure our progress. It’s so easy to lose track of what we’ve accomplished when we’re faced with new challenges that often seem to be more of the same ones we’ve been struggling with all along. The notes are still hard. Our fingers still aren’t moving fast enough. We still can’t make our music flow. 

The reality of music study is that we will continue to face the same challenges at every stage of our harp journey. At the same time that we find new levels of facility or expression, we find new levels that we want to attain. It can feel as if we aren’t getting anywhere, even when we truly are making significant progress. I like to think of it as a spiral staircase, where we are dealing with the same skills but at increasingly higher levels.

Naturally, there are ways we can remind ourselves of the strides we have made. Reviewing pieces we played long ago or reading old practice journals can b...

I was recently at the home of a harpist friend, and she showed me her stack of diaries, her appointment books from past years. There were decades of them. She was deciding it was time to get rid of them, but she wasn’t quite ready to do it. I had to admit that I pitched mine long ago, and that occasionally I have wished that I still had them. They would be fun to look through.

Those entries, even the most prosaic ones, recall so many memories. They bring to mind places, people and events that you have nearly forgotten. Suddenly, you are transported to a different time and place, even a different version of you, and this can give you a different perspective on where you are, and even who you are, now.

But we aren’t talking about calendars or diaries today; we’re talking about practice journals, and the variety of ways that you can use them. Right off the bat, I will say that some of those ways are more impactful than others, in terms of promoting your progress and growth. For insta...

Are you ready to talk about page turns? I realize that page turns may not seem like a captivating topic, However, if you’ve ever had a page turn go wrong in a moment when you don’t want to have anything go wrong, you know how important page turns are. Even in the age of bluetooth pedals, poorly prepared page turns can mar an otherwise lovely performance.

I’m warning you right now that page turning is a subject that I am liable to rant about, just ask my students. At our harp camp, Harp Quest Summer Live, the evening before our closing concert is spent making sure that all the students who have forgotten to prepare their pages take care of them. The mantra they hear from me is this: “No loose pages!”  And then I usually tell them this story:

I was fourteen years old and accompanying our high school choir in a performance of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. This is a difficult work for chorus, and we were doing the version that is accompanied only by harp, organ and percussion. In the...

Have you ever started learning a piece that seemed like it should be relatively easy to learn, and then discovered it was actually much harder than you thought? Of course you have; it happens to all of us.

In this situation, we have a choice. We could persist, digging our heels in and fighting our way through the piece anyway. Or we could put the piece aside for the time when we are ready for it. (By the way, that time only comes when we are very focused on leveling up our skills.) 

Neither choice feels good, mainly because we feel like we aren’t growing. We feel like our playing is staying at the same level. In fact, one of the reactions I see from harpists in this situation is that they choose to put aside the challenging piece and play another piece by a composer or arranger whose works they know they can play easily. Unfortunately, this can mean that the music they’re playing and the finger patterns they are learning don’t stretch them at all, but actually keep them stuck in t...

A system is comfort. When we have and follow a system, whether it’s for completing tasks, or crafting, or making a grocery list, our mind can be at ease. Why? Because we know we have the steps to complete our task, and all we have to do is to follow the steps and the task will be done.

When it comes to harp playing, people frequently make one of two mistakes. One is thinking that harp playing is inherently creative, and therefore a system is not only unnecessary, but it will rob your music of its soul. The other is trying to systematize everything about your playing in an attempt to get consistent results or make consistent progress. 

If you heard last week’s podcast, you know that the word “progress” is one of the words I’m trying to steer clear of this year, but it is one I am going to find hard to avoid. What’s interesting, though, is that systematization is one of the “progress” traps. Progress, meaning in this case growth either overall growth or integration of a single piece...

My first ocean cruise was a cruise from New York City to Bermuda. I’d never been on a big ocean liner before. Although I’ve done a couple other ocean cruises since then, I’m not really a fan. I love exploring, and there is only so much exploring you can do on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

But on this first cruise, I did love the feeling of being in the middle of the vastness of the ocean with nothing but water all around. The feeling of not having any landmarks - literally - was a little exhilarating and more than a little awe-inspiring. Naturally, I wasn’t really frightened; I assumed, logically and correctly, that the captain and crew knew where we were heading and how to get there. I myself wouldn’t have had a clue, but I never doubted that I could rely on them to get me safely to Bermuda and back.

Nautical navigation is a mystery to me, and I was impressed by the notion that all the power and energy of the ship would have been useless if the captain hadn’t set a direction...

It’s time for a confidence boost.

You’ve been practicing your holiday music and feeling like you’re making good progress, but it’s not quite there and the performance date is coming up soon. 

Your music is mostly fine. It has up days when everything goes perfectly and down days when it feels like you’ve never played the piece before. Maybe it’s not quite up to tempo. Or maybe there are just a few measures - or maybe more than a few - that are resisting all your attempts to learn them and play them smoothly. Whatever the issue is, it’s starting to be a little concerning because time is getting short.

We never want to feel unprepared or less ready than we would like for a performance, but sometimes it happens, despite all our planning and preparation. Believe me, I am the last person who would try to tell you that you should have started learning the piece sooner, or practiced more. I know all too well from my own experience that sometimes music just takes longer to come together t...

I was moving the harp the other day and once again, it occurred to me just how much stuff we have to carry around with us. Granted, I move my harp all the time for rehearsals and concerts - it’s a big Lyon Healy Salzedo model harp - so you would think I’d be used to it by now.  I guess I am, mostly; I don’t have to think about what goes in the car, and my harp bag is always ready to go. But when I start counting the number of trips I have to make between my car and the concert hall in the pouring rain, I start wishing for a Star Trek transporter. 

But recently, while I was moving the harp, my bench, my stand, and my bag, I had a flash of insight; we harpists carry a lot of baggage with us. Not a revelation, I know, but it led my mind to consider the other kind of baggage we harpists carry, the stress that accumulates in our practice and performance. That’s a kind of baggage that piles up in a sneaky way until one day, we find it has overwhelmed us. The physical stress that is part ...