Practicing Harp Happiness

Happy New Year! I’m excited about 2025. I’m excited about all the harp happiness that you and I can add to the world together. I’m excited about the harp goals that I am putting in place for myself this year. And I’m extra excited about the opportunity to talk with you about your goals today.

We aren’t actually going to be talking about goals as much as we will be talking about the most important step you will take toward achieving them. Of course, there are a lot of things that are important to the success of your harp goals: your motivation, your time, your choice of goals, whether or not you are working on your goals alone or with the support of a teacher or coach. But perhaps the single factor that is most important to accomplishing any type of harp goal is this: your practice. 

Without practice, your harp goal is just an idea. Practice is the engine that drives your goal. Whether you want to improve your technique, develop a repertoire, play...

We are in the final days of 2024, and I, for one, am looking forward to the new year. Every year, as December draws to a close, I am intrigued by the mysterious possibilities that may lie ahead. What opportunities will I discover? What challenges will I need to overcome? Who will I get to meet or know better this year? I am always excited to start the new year, and I hope you are too.

I’m also setting goals for the new year, planning new projects and creating new ways to grow, not just for the harpists in our various Harp Mastery® programs but for myself as well. I have so many ideas that it’s hard to choose which are the key ones to focus on, but over the years I have found that limiting myself to a few goals is critical. If I have too many goals or plans, none of them get the focus they need. On the other hand, if I don’t plan at all, things tend to drift, and I don’t make any real progress. But once I choose my goals, I need to figure out how to...

This is the time of year when, more than any other time, it pays to be an efficient harpist. Just what do I mean by efficient? There are lots of ways we can add more efficiency to our harping, for example, practicing more efficiently. But at the holiday time, efficiency takes on a different look. 

At the holidays, we have more music we want to play, more places we want to play it, and less time to practice, let alone learn anything new. This is where a little creativity and some experimentation can help ease the crush and the rush. Specifically, I want to show you how creating variations from one piece of music can stretch your music without stretching your practice time.

Here’s a scenario that might sound familiar to you. You’ve been asked to play background music for a holiday luncheon. They want an hour of holiday music but you only have 30 minutes that you feel prepared to play. What do you do?

Well, you have several choices. You could learn new music, but you...

Are you feeling a little bit scattered or unsettled at the moment? It’s no wonder. Chaos is all around us in this crazy world, and there’s precious little we can do to fix it. But the chaos in our own personal harp world is something completely different. If you’re feeling any chaos or overwhelm about your harp playing, I have good news for you; this kind of chaos is something you can fix. Absolutely.

Even in a year when we aren’t bombarded on every side by messages of gloom and doom, these last few weeks of the year are hectic. In the midst of the holiday festive preparations and the holiday music preparation, we struggle to find focus. There have been times in the past when I have alternated between frantic practice sessions and times when I’ve tried to practice but ended up just sitting at the harp, unable to figure out what I should be practicing. There was so much I felt I should be doing, that finding the focus to actually do any of it was...

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...