Practicing Harp Happiness

As you probably know, one of the reasons I started Harp Mastery® back in 2012 was because of the number of adult harp students I was meeting who were frustrated by their lack of progress. Although these harpists were at different stages and interested in varying kinds of music, what they had in common was an incredibly strong desire to play the harp, a desire that kept them practicing despite the challenges they were encountering. Although I hadn't come up with the term "harp happiness" yet, I knew that I had to help these harpists find a path that would give them the joy and satisfaction they were looking for in their harp playing.

But years before that, I had already discovered something that shocked me about adult harp students. I had started a class for beginning harpists of any age - the classes usually had teenagers and adults - and I became intrigued by the reasons these students wanted to play the harp. Many of the adults had wanted to play the harp since they were young and were finally able to pursue their dream. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but it had not really occurred to me before that there were so many people who had always wanted to play the harp but, for one reason or another, hadn't been able to.

There was the woman who told her parents she wanted to play the harp, and they bought her a clarinet. Another who wanted to learn the harp in high school, but her high school only offered harp lessons to one student every other year, and she was in the wrong year. A third was told by her parents that a harp was simply out of the question and she could either play the piano they already had or not play music at all. Not all the stories were like this, but there were enough, in fact, too many. As an aside, I will say that there's another very happy story connected to this class and I'll share that with you at the end of the episode.

What's important about these stories is that for these people, the dream of playing the harp never went away. Life took them away from the harp, but their desire to play was never extinguished. We all have dreams or bucket lists, things we want to do but feel unable to do now. As a harpist, maybe there is a special piece you want to learn, a place you want to play. Maybe you want to develop a repertoire or learn how to serve others with the harp.

What I want to talk to you about today is how to start making those harp dreams happen. Your dreams shouldn't be gathering dust on a shelf. And it's no use telling yourself that those dreams don't really matter, because I can tell you, from my experience with those harp students in my first class and hundreds more that I have worked with since then, your dreams do matter, and they don't go away. We're quickly coming up on a new year. Imagine how exciting this year could be for you if you were able to make your dreams into your reality. It's not as hard as you think.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Act on your dreams at the Getaway Retreat
• Join the January Seminar Series
• 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-187

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 learn it, and he told her she could learn it when she was fourteen years old. I believe he actually let her learn it when she was twelve. She said she still loves it and has been playing it ever since.

So here she was on stage, over seventy years later, playing the Variations for us. This wasn't just brilliant playing for an eighty-something year old. Hers was just incredible playing. And here's my point - she made it look so easy. Most of us harpists break a sweat when we play this piece. When we finish, we are mopping our brows and feel like we've run a marathon. But not Judy. It looked - and sounded- as easy for her as playing a simple little ditty. Every motion was just what it needed to be and nothing more. I'm not talking just about arm motions or raising. Her arms and hands were calm when she played. Hers is an efficient technique, one that allows her to play with security and strength and without extra energy. That kind of efficiency, that kind of stillness, is what we should all strive for in our technique, and it's never more important to think about than now when the holiday frenzy is in full swing.

Today, we'll talk about how you can add stillness to your harp playing right now in your technique, in your playing and in yourself. I have some simple tips that will help you feel more relaxed not just in the holidays but after the holidays too.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Last chance to join our 12 Days of Harp Happiness
• Plan ahead for 2025 and register for our 2025 Getaway Retreat.
• 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-186

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 don't have the time for that. You could turn down the engagement. Nope, don't like that option. You could play everything twice. That's a good idea, but you're already playing four repetitions of "Good King Wenceslas" and another four might be pushing the limit. What if you could make those extra verses sound more interesting and creative? Now, there's an idea, and that's what I want to teach you today, how to create variations for your holiday carol. I'm talking real variations, not just playing the melody an octave higher.

The theme and variations form has been around for hundreds of years. It's interesting to play and to hear. Plus, from a busy harpist's perspective, it's learning just one piece and getting loads of extra value from it, musical value and technique value too. We're talking variations today, so grab a cup of coffee and we'll get those creative juices flowing!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Join 12 Days of Harp Happiness 2024
• See the "Mozart on the Housetop" PDF sheet music in our shop
• 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-185

There are three ways we learn how to play the harp. The first and most obvious one is by doing. Playing and practicing is our "go to" method for learning. You can't actually learn to play the harp without playing it.

When my son was about 12 or 13, he fell madly in love with football. There weren't any teams he could play on at his school or in our community, so he had to be content with playing football video games. Not the same thing, of course. Even so, when he got to high school and finally had the opportunity to play on a real team, he was actually surprised to find out how different the game was when he was on a real field instead of a virtual one.

The second way we learn is by instruction, by having someone show us how to advance our skills or teach us new ones. In today's world there are countless ways to get instruction: lessons, coachings, videos, online courses. But instruction can teach us more than how to get our fingers to obey our commands. For example, a music theory class can help us learn the elements of music like keys, harmony, melody, structure and form. That's an important part of our harp playing too.

Today, though, we're going to talk about the third way to learn to play the harp, and that's through music itself. This is the part of learning that goes beyond the doing, beyond the fingers, notes and rhythm, to discovering how music communicates and learning how we can communicate it through our harp playing. This may be an advanced concept, but the methods we are learning today (going back to learning method two, instruction) are ones every harpist at every skill level can and should use. We are going to talk about how music can show you how to be more musical. If that sounds a little circular, don't worry. I'll sort it all out for you.

Our particular focus areas today will be two techniques that are extra challenging for harpists, more so than for other instrumentalists. We're talking about legato and rubato, and we are going to be looking at them through the music of two pianist/composers, John Field and Frederic Chopin. Whether you've played their music or not, there is a lot for us all to learn from them, so get ready for some beautiful music and some ideas you can use to make your own playing more expressive and beautiful.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Join our 12 Days of Harp Happiness 2025: Nocturne for a Midnight Clear
• Related resource Maybe Your Music ISN'T Romantic 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-184

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 nearly impossible. Those were frustrating and demoralizing times, for sure.

Of course, that "too much to do and too little time to do it" feeling isn't exclusive to the holidays, but today, as the holiday countdown is beginning, seemed like a good day to sort out the harp overwhelm so you can put these ideas for finding focus into action now. We'll talk about the three kinds of overload - the overload we create, the overload we accept and the overload we imagine - and I'll share how I deal with them. I also want to help you explore the most common "focus fiends," the habits we think are helpful but are actually robbing us of our time, energy and yes, harp happiness. We'll banish the sneaky "focus fiends" and start hanging out with some new "focus friends."

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Join our 2024 12 Days of Harp Happiness celebration!

• Related resource Giving Thanks Daily: A New Practice 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-183

"What can I do to make my music more expressive?"

If I've been asked that question once, I've been asked it a thousand times. This isn't a beginner question, either. It usually is a question of an intermediate level player. Once harpists achieve a fair level of technical competency, they have enough bandwidth to consider how to make their playing more musical. Until that point, it's all about getting the right fingers on the right strings.

Naturally enough, most of us look to the dynamics to make our music more expressive. It's a good plan. Following the dynamic markings that the composer has included allows us a glimpse of what the composer intended the music to be. Dynamics create differentiation in the music that helps a listener hear the intent of the music as well. And dynamics add variety so our music is more interesting. Dynamics are a great place to start if you're ready to make your playing more expressive.

Usually, however, the harpists who ask me about making their music more expressive are already working at the dynamics. That's why they're asking the question; they aren't sure why their music still doesn't sound the way they want.

Today, I'm going to share my ideas on the techniques of musical expression that lie beyond the dynamics. I'm talking big picture concepts here, ideas that will, I hope, change the entire way you approach your music from practicing to performing it. These ideas are for every harpist at every level; beginners can use them and advanced harpists can always use a reminder about them.

Every piece, whether it's super simple or virtuoso concert repertoire, can and should be played expressively and beautifully. It's not about the number of notes you can play or the speed or facility of your fingers. It's about finding the musical heart of what you play and not being afraid to put your own heart into it. Don't let that scare you, though. I have some ultra-practical strategies for you that will help you make your music as expressive as you want it to be.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Join me at our February Getaway retreat. Register today!

• Don't miss our November Seminar Series, "On a Roll."

• 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-182

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 romantic. In fact, this is one of my pet peeves and something I'm likely to go into a rant over given the opportunity. I'm not ashamed about this though. I felt totally vindicated when I was in a workshop given at the World Harp Congress by the famous French harpist Isabelle Perrin. She was talking about the opening chords of the Fauré Impromptu, and suddenly she was off on a rant just like mine. The frustration she expressed was that too many harpists play blocked chords all the time, when rolled chords would be infinitely more musical. She didn't know it, but she was ranting to the choir, where I was concerned.

Rolled chords are part of the native language of the harp. Today I want to help you roll them well, to understand how to fit them in and most of all, how to use them to add expression to your music. We'll explore the differences between flat, cracked and rolled chords. We'll deal with some of the critical technical aspects of rolled chords, too. But mainly, I want you to learn how to love them and how to use them to create more depth of expression, more beauty in everything you play.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Our November Seminar series on rolling chords is starting - join today!

• Related resource: Podcast episode #92, Quick Fix: Roll Your Chords Right

• Listen to Marilyn Costello with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing Rimsky Korsakov's Scheherezade; the Pas de deux from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and Debussy's Danses sacrée et profane.

• 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-181

The sinking of the unsinkable Titanic still fascinates us all over a hundred years after the disaster. It's the subject of all sorts of speculation and theories, and there's one of those that is actually relevant to our topic today. The question is this: if the Titanic crew had performed all the safety drills they were supposed to, if there had been enough lifeboats and if the passengers had been drilled in lifeboat procedures, would so many have perished when the ship went down?

Some people have noted that a routine safety drill on the fateful Sunday morning was not held. This has been attributed to several factors including high winds and the morning church service on the ship. Even with that, however, there was only lifeboat accommodation for about half of the passengers and crew onboard. Was the ship thought to be so well-designed that safety preparedness could be relaxed?

Probably not. But the safety regulations for passenger ships that we have today came in part out of the hard lessons of the sinking of the Titanic. In fact, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) was established in 1914 following the disaster, and mandated, among other things, that ships carry sufficient lifeboats for everyone onboard.

So what's relevant in this story for us? If you've ever worked hard to make your piece bullet-proof or crash-proof or otherwise "unsinkable," you may have been ignoring some of the important preparation to help not only prevent performance disaster, but to recover from it. When you're preparing to play a piece, expecting that mistakes will happen and learning to recover from them is the most important part of your practice. You can hope that you won't make any mistakes, but if you haven't prepared for how to meet them if they happen, you're playing a dangerous game. The icebergs are there and you may or may not hit them. But just as some emergency preparedness may have saved lives aboard the Titanic, your harp emergency preparedness could save your performance too.

On today's show, we'll explore the myths around mistakes, perfection, excellence and safe performance preparation procedures. There's a lot for you to learn in this episode, so grab your cup of coffee and let's get started. And - safety first! - don't forget to buckle your seat belt!

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• We've announced our November Seminar Series - join now!
• Related resource Perfection, Productivity and Performance 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-180

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 students, particularly adult beginners, could benefit so much from studying his music. So today, I have three goals. First, I'll show you what you can learn, even as a beginner harpist, from Bach's music and I'll demonstrate how you can learn it. Second, I'll share a practice page that you can use as a warm-up or for more practice on this material. And most importantly, in the course of our time together today, I want to help you connect with the beauty in Bach's music. Even though he never wrote anything for harp, he surely did write music that is beautiful, even transcendent, when it's played on the harp.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Download your free Bach Study Sheet PDF
• Related resource 3 Bach Pieces Every Harpist Should Know and Why podcast
• Get the Harp Mastery® app for iPhone and iPad
• 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-179

There are plenty of things we can muscle through: fatigue, a headache, the last email, the last pot to wash, paying the bills. But we can't muscle through harp playing, especially when it comes to our fingers. For all that we talk about strong fingers and considering how hard we work them, they and the bones, tendons and muscles that support them are relatively fragile. So when we talk about strengthening our fingers, we don't want to do any more heavy lifting.

Today on the podcast, we are going to talk about how to train your weakest fingers to be stronger by training them the right way, gently.

What do we mean by saying a finger is weak? How do you know if a finger, or even more than one finger, is weak? Weak fingers can manifest themselves in one of four ways.

First, you may have knuckles that collapse or lock up. When this happens, your finger may feel like it gets stuck on the string or frozen; it won't move when you want. Or it may play unevenly or unintentionally play more than one string at a time.

Second, it may not have the same tone or volume as the other fingers. It might be louder or softer. It can feel like the volume knob is broken.

Third, it may feel awkward or uncoordinated, compared to your other fingers. It may not place accurately. It may not play well in combination with other fingers.

Lastly, it may not be independent. Actually, lack of independence is at the heart of some of these other issues, too. When your fingers can function independently, they have good dynamic control and can play evenly and equally with the other fingers in whatever combination is called for. Clearly, this doesn't mean that every time you stumble over a fingering, it's because of weak fingers. More likely, you just have a new finger pattern to learn. But a finger that causes you to constantly accommodate it, is a weak finger. And today, you're going to learn exactly what to do about it.

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.

• Related resource Strengthen Your Fourth Finger 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-178