By Anne Sulllivan
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The podcast currently has 176 episodes available.
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 discovered in my own harp journey was that practice really wasn’t about what I thought it was. It isn’t enough just to play something over and over again until it’s right. The goal of practice isn’t perfection; it’s music. When your practice isn’t helping you make music, you can be pretty sure you’re doing it wrong.
The right kind of practice starts with the right kind of focus. I’m not talking about mindset or concentration. I’m talking about practicing for the results you want, the results that are more than the right notes, results like flow, expression and musicality.
That was the starting point for my book. Kaleidoscope Practice: Focus, Finish and Play the Way You’ve Always Wanted. I used the word focus to describe five focus areas which can serve to direct your practice so that you can actually play the music you start. I’d like to explain those focus areas to you today and give you some of my favorite practice tweaks that may revolutionize the way you think about your practice, the way they revolutionized mine.
Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:
Get the Harp Mastery® app for iPhone and iPad.
Check out the Kaleidoscope Practice ebook and PDF workbook, The Harpist’s Playbook in the Harp Mastery® shop.
Related resource: Don’t practice for perfection! blog post
Harpmastery.com
Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-176
If I had to give the shortest possible explanation of what a daily harp warm-up is, it would be this: your warm-up is the prelude to your practice.
Why a prelude? A prelude is most often defined as a short piece of music intended to be an introduction to a longer one. It sometimes uses musical themes or ideas which appear in the larger work, but the prelude’s most important function is to set the scene, the mood or the tone for what follows.
That’s how I like to think about a warm-up. It sets the scene for your practice. It allows for a transition from your possible hectic daily non-harp life to a more calm and focused musical space. My warm-up, which I will tell you about later in the podcast, is a moment I truly treasure in my practice. It is also a temptation moment, which I will explain later too.
I’ve talked about warm-ups on the podcast before. Episode 98 was a mini masterclass on warm-ups. Episode 120 was about three important skills that your warm-up could help you strengthen. I have linked to those episodes in the show notes so you can find them easily.
But today, I want to talk about the warm-ups I recommend most often to my students and why I think they are so good. These may be warm-ups that you already use, and if that’s the case, I will give you some tips on how I think you can use them to your best advantage. If you have another warm-up that you like, these tips will help you get more out of that warm-up too.
As I mentioned, I will also tell you what I do to warm-up. It doesn’t fit the conventional mold, but it does fit the main purposes that I believe are most important for any warm-up. That’s really the point of this episode today, to show you a different way to look at your warm-up so that your prelude to your practice can save you time, build your skills and be one of your favorite parts of your practice too.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-175
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 habits, good ones, that may no longer be helping you. I am sure that you are committed to at least one of these five, and I want to help you move on to a new stage in your harp life. We won't just talk about the habits you should abandon, but we’ll talk about what new habits you should consider adopting to replace them.
Remember, a habit should be a helper, an aid to doing what we need or want to do. But a habit is only a hindrance when we are ready for a better way. That’s what I want to help you discover today, a better way.
Don’t think your practice habits need updating? If you’ve ever thought you could be learning music faster, or sight reading better or wished you had a stronger technique, then you’re ready for a refresh.
Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:
Register for my Learn It Tonight Webinar on Wednesday, September 25.
Related resource 4 Harp Rules You Can Break blog post
Harpmastery.com
Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-174
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 experience in their practice and performance. Chicken Little’s misperception of a perfectly natural phenomenon - the acorn falling - created widespread panic which could have been averted with just a little understanding. The panic, anxiety or even chaos that we can feel when we are overwhelmed by performance nerves or when we aren’t sure that our practice is getting us anywhere, can be relieved too. All it takes is looking at it differently.
Today, I’m going to talk about ten things that may be causing you anxiety, hopefully not panic, in your practicing and in your playing. I’ll give you simple ways to change your thinking about each of these, along with definite action steps to counteract the chaos. Trust me; no matter how nervous or overwhelmed you feel, the sky isn’t falling. Every one of those painful acorns could actually grow into a mighty oak that will support your playing, if you decide to plant it rather than run from it.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-173
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 when we have our own ideas or thoughts confirmed by the people around us. When our ideas are opposed to those around us, the pain center of the brain, the anterior insula, is activated.
We could choose to remain silent and not express our different ideas. Our brain, however, is wired to change our ideas to conform with those around us. A network formed of the anterior insula and the medial frontal cortex registers the difference between our ideas and those of others as an error and becomes active to try to eliminate the difference. Fascinating and a little scary. Our brain is more active in adjusting our choices and our attitudes than we are aware.
This is why it is so important to choose your circle of friends wisely. This is also why it is important to choose your circle of harp friends, and your harp role models, wisely.
Today, I will share the qualities that I think are important in a harp role model, starting with the qualities I admired in the harp role models I had early in my harp life and how they influenced me in ways I am only just beginning to realize. My hope is that this will help you discover more harp role models to inspire your harp life, and maybe even help you be a role model for other harpists yourself.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-172
Do you think of yourself as creative?
From time to time, a harpist will tell me that she doesn’t feel she is very creative, at least not in a musical way. I instinctively challenge this, because I believe that anyone who persists in studying the harp for more than a few months is nurturing a gift and a desire that is, at its essence, creative. I also believe, though, that much of our practice and pedagogy shifts us away from the creative spirit. This is unfortunate, to say the least. We risk drowning our enthusiasm for the joy of creating music in the hard work that is part of studying it and learning to do it well.
There are endless ways to add more creativity into your harp playing. Certainly, musical expression is creative, but that’s just scratching the surface. I’ve linked in the show notes to a blog post in the Harp Mastery® archives that outlines just a couple ways to add creativity to your practice. But there are so many ways that the harp can not only be an outlet for our creativity, but can actually help our creativity develop. One of those ways is arranging music.
Today we are going to explore arranging music as a creative exercise. Maybe you’ve never tried arranging music, at least not beyond adapting a piano piece for the harp. Maybe you’ve arranged lots of pieces and even published your arrangements. Whichever group you fall into, the approach we are going to take today will help you stretch your creative powers in a logical step-by-step, but still creative, way. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it is, but that’s where the artistic process of music lies, at the intersection of intuition and intention.
If arranging sounds like something you’d like to do but haven’t tried because you’re not sure how to go about it, you’re going to love this simple step-by-step approach which will work with classical pieces, folk tunes, hymns, pop songs, any kind of music. If you’ve done arrangements before, you’ll find this approach may really simplify your creative process and give you some new ideas to try as well.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-171
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 discussion about performance nerves. It was an incredible discussion with many powerful ideas on that call, not just from me but also from the other harpists on the call, and I wanted to share the recording with you here on the podcast.
I’ve edited out the actual warm-up portion of the call, and please remember that this was a live call so you’ll hear me talking off the cuff, totally extemporaneously. You’ll also be able to tell how passionate I am about this topic, one that is absolutely vital to every harpist’s harp happiness.
You will definitely want a pen and paper to take notes, because there are lots of words of wisdom here, from me and from the others on the call. And I’ll be back at the end with some final thoughts for you.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-170
Juggling. Patting your head and rubbing your tummy. Walking and chewing gum.
Coordination challenges come in all levels of difficulty. Playing hands together is another one, but it’s one that we harpists eventually get comfortable with. Your right hand does one thing and your left hand does another. For the most part, everything works out, until we encounter polyrhythm, that is.
What’s polyrhythm? The technical definition of polyrhythm is one of those dictionary definitions that cause more confusion than it clears up. According to the New Harvard Dictionary of Music, polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. I warned you.
In terms that are probably more meaningful to you, 2 against 3 is an example of polyrhythm. In a general sense, it is two rhythms that don’t normally go together and that, as a consequence, present a rhythmic coordination problem when you try to play them. A group of two notes, as in two eighth notes, played with your right hand at the same time as your left hand plays an eighth note triplet is a very common example of what I’m talking about. And these rhythmic challenges crop up everywhere from the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms to Chopin and Debussy to folk music.
So today, I’m going to help lower the difficulty factor of these rhythms for you. We’ll start with a perspective which may be a different one from the one you’re used to. Hint: it’s not all about the math. I’ll show you the best ways to practice them and how I think you shouldn’t practice them. If these rhythms always stop you in your tracks, we will try to clear the tracks and get you moving today.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-169
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 tell you a little about the Colony itself, about what studying there was like, about the impact it had on me as a young student and most, importantly, the powerful lessons I learned - or perhaps relearned is a better word - at the reunion. These lessons aren’t exclusive to classical music harp players or those who use the Salzedo technique; they are for us all. And I guarantee you will enjoy learning a little about this unique harp experience, one that no longer exists and will never be replicated.
I would like to also state clearly that although I am no spring chicken, I never studied with Carlos Salzedo. I did study with his pupils for almost all of my harp life, including my summers in Camden. I just wanted to be clear about that in case you try to put a timeline together in your head as you listen.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-168
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 perfect world, our practice would be balanced between the two, with both in fair, if not exactly equal, measure.
This idea of harp balance is one that I like to revisit from time to time. It helps me keep or maybe regain my perspective. Am I doing enough in-depth work, or too much, or not enough? Mostly, it helps me remember why I am sitting at the harp in the first place, because I love to play the harp. That’s what underlies every moment I spend improving my technique, or drilling a few tricky measures, or memorizing a piece for a recital. It’s the motivation for my teaching and even for this podcast. I know you love playing the harp and I want to help you continue to love it.
So that’s what we are going to dive into today, how to regain your harp playing balance. We’ll talk about how the various parts of your playing and practice fit together. And I’ll share how to make sure that your harp playing goals don’t get in the way of your harp playing contentment.
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 [email protected]
LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-167
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