Practicing Harp Happiness

Is studying music theory really useful? Yep. You heard right. I really said that, and I’m a total theory nerd. 

I’m not going to leave you in suspense. Of course, knowing music theory is useful and helpful and part of being a good musician. But only - and this is a big “only” - if you know how it’s useful.

Did you ever take a class in school and the whole time you were sitting in class you were thinking, “I’m never going to use this stuff”? Of course, you did. I remember sitting in my calculus class in high school - which, incidentally, I really enjoyed - knowing that I was going to music school and very unlikely to ever use any of this kind of higher mathematics again. Maybe your useless class was a math course, or it could have been just about any other subject. Sometimes we discovered later that we were wrong; for instance, a little understanding of chemistry is helpful if you’re trying to work out ingredient substitutions in a recipe. At the time, though, the information falls...

The great Zig Ziglar, much-beloved author and motivational speaker, never played the harp as far as I know, but one of his most often quoted remarks is perfect for today’s topic. Zig said, “You hit what you aim at, and if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.” If you have ever had difficulty placing the notes in your chords, today I am going to teach you how to fix your aim.

Of course there is more to placing and playing chords than just aiming at the strings, but you do have to get to the right ones. This is what makes three-note chords more difficult than two-note intervals, and what makes four-note chords even more challenging. And then there are those four-note chords in both hands at the same time! The more fingers you have to put on the strings, the more possibility there is for error, which is why we’re going to take our time today and really explore what you need to know as well as what you need to do to increase your chances for success. Naturally, none of us gets...

If I had the opportunity to teach music to an absolute music newbie, someone without any previous musical instruction or experience, I know exactly how I would begin. I would start without printed music.

That’s hardly revolutionary. The German composer Carl Orff is known today not only for his most famous work, Carmina Burana, but for the innovative methods he brought to musical education. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze created Eurhythmics, not the 1980’s pop band with Annie Lennox, but a system for teaching music through movement. Music schools throughout the world have been teaching young children with the method developed by Shinichi Suzuki which begins by emphasizing learning by ear rather than by printed music. 

All of these educators believed, as I do, that music is within us and that by learning without the printed page, we can create connections that allow us to develop our natural instinct for how music is organized, in notes and rhythms and chords and more. Our musical notation s...

I’ve been playing concerts with my flutist friend Joan Sparks for more decades than I care to admit. Our work together has included concerts, being Artists in Residence at schools and retirement communities, producing our own concert series, recording multiple CDs (actually even a couple of cassette tape recordings back in the day) and commissioning some significant works for the flute and harp concert repertoire. In fact, one of those works turned into an actual question on the TV show ”Jeopardy.” I’ll tell you that story at the end of the podcast.

Of course, our collaboration hasn’t all been about work. We don’t travel as much now for concerts as we used to, but we did a lot of traveling earlier in our career and naturally we are very close friends. In that time, I also learned a lot about the flute. 

One of the biggest revelations I had was listening to Joan practice her long tones. Now this won’t surprise any of you who have played melody line instruments, but as a harpist wit...

Fact number one: harp technique is hard. That’s a given. Making our fingers steady, stable and strong enough to play in mid-air, defying gravity with every pluck, is very challenging. That’s a fact.

Fact number two: our technique is a major factor in our playing. It enables us to play the music we want to play. Or it limits us. If our fingers can’t play it, we can’t play it. It’s that simple.

Fact number three: If you feel like your technique is holding you back, there are ways to fix that. And today I want to suggest two ways you might not have explored. These are two ways to use etudes and I think you will find that what we’re talking about today is not the usual etude practice.

I often talk about etudes as the missing link between the exercise drills that we do and the music we play. They provide a way to use a single technical skill like a specific fingering pattern in a musical context that is not as complicated as a regular repertoire piece. Practicing etudes in this way al...

When I was a kid, even before I had started harp lessons, I used to go to summer camp in the mountains. I grew up in the Philadelphia area, and the closest mountains to us were the Pocono Mountains. These aren’t mountains by Rocky Mountain standards, not nearly as high, peaked or impressive, but they are beautifully wooded and green, with rivers and lakes. 

In order to get to summer camp, we had to drive through the Lehigh Tunnel which fascinated me. Driving through an actual mountain was a little scary. Of course, the scariness was part of why it was my favorite part of the trip.

Tunnels are truly an engineering miracle, in my opinion, especially considering that tunnels can be drilled from both sides to meet - if the calculations are correct - in the middle.

The earliest known example of a tunnel that was dug from both sides is the Tunnel of Eupalinos, in the Greek isles, constructed in the 6th century BCE.  WIth pickaxes, chisels, hammers and shovels, two teams dug through Mou...

What do fingers, flow and faith have to do with each other?  Absolutely everything. The three things are totally interdependent. You can think of them as three corners of a triangle, each corner being connected to each of the other corners. And, just like the legs of a three-legged stool, all three support your playing.

I’m guessing you haven’t thought of these three elements together before, or how together they form the core of your playing, so I’ll give you a quick sketch of what we’re going to talk about today. Also, I should be clear that we’re not talking about religious faith on the podcast; we’re talking about trusting yourself.

The idea is this: your technique, your fingers, produce flow and give you faith or confidence in your playing. You have to have faith in your fingers doing what you have trained them to do, because they really don’t need you to micromanage them. And you have to have faith that the flow of the piece is what you need to communicate the music. And foc...

One of the things I love about watching virtuoso artists perform is how easy they make it look. For instance, just this past summer I attended a reunion of many of us who attended the Salzedo Summer Harp Colony in Camden, Maine. One of the highlights of that weekend was a concert of music written by Carlos Salzedo, and the star performer on that concert was Judy Loman. She is in her eighties, and she walked onto the stage with as much comfort and ease as if she were in her own harp studio at home. 

One of the pieces she played was Salzedo’s Variations on a Theme in the Old Style. This is a monster piece, very long and very difficult. She told the audience how she first heard and fell in love with the piece when she was taking lessons with Salzedo in Maine in the summer as a young child - I think she was ten. As she was walking to her lessons, she heard this piece wafting from the windows of houses where other older harpists were practicing it. She asked Mr. Salzedo if she could lea...

When you think of harp music, is there a characteristic harp sound that comes to mind, a musical gesture that belongs to the harp more than to any other instrument? A glissando, maybe? That’s certainly one of them, and a favorite of mine. Another one that I find very powerful and very harp-y is a rolled chord. 

Harps were meant to play chords, especially rolled chords. They sound liquid and rich, even plummy. You can listen to an orchestral recording and when the harpist plays a rolled chord, you know it. It’s almost as if everything melts for a moment. If you want to check out some of those moments, just stick with me because we’ll be talking about a couple. But I also want to talk to you about how to make your rolled chords sound just that magical.

In my opinion, we often forget that our rolled chords play a significant role in our musical expression. I hear so many harpists playing their chords blocked or flat when the music clearly calls for a chord that’s more lush and romant...

A little while back, I did a podcast episode about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and why I believe studying and playing that music is so important for harpists. If you want to go back and listen to that episode, it is Episode 154, and I will put a link to that episode in the show notes.

Understandably, after that podcast aired, I was asked why I was emphasizing the music of Bach who didn’t write anything that we know of for harp, when there are brilliant harp composers whose music we could study. I agree that studying music written for the harp is important for every harpist. But the music of Bach has been considered foundational for generations of music students, and it’s no less important for us harpists. In fact, it is precisely because Bach didn’t write for harp that we need to be extra-intentional about including his music in our studies. 

There is a drawback, however. The difficulty factor of much of his music makes it inaccessible to beginning students, and beginning ...