Practicing Harp Happiness

• Are You Practicing Enough? - PHH 201

  Here’s a question we’ve probably all wondered about at some point: am I practicing enough?  As a teacher, I can tell you that my experience has demonstrated that if a harpist - and this includes me - has to ask the question, the answer is probably no, you’re not practicing enough. But of course, the real answer is likely a little more complicated. It depends on what you’re trying to do. On the light end of the practice spectrum, if you’re just trying to keep the rust off either your fingers or your pieces, you probably only need a few minutes each day. On the other end, if your ambition is to learn a piece or stretch your technique or develop a skill, you are going to need more time. I know it would be helpful to know exactly how much time you’re going to need, but coming up with a number would just be guessing.  Even so, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some factors that can guide you that will keep you from overworking yourself or underutilizing your time. Simply put, your goal is to practice enough to make progress, but not so much that you actually sabotage your efforts. Today I’ll tell you what this means and how I think you can find the right amount of practice time for you. I’ve talked about practice time with you before on the podcast. In the first show of this year, 2025, I shared an acronym to help you remember what to include in your practice. That acronym spelled the word “practice” and the letters stood for Play, Review, Aspire, Create, Technique, I, Connect and Enjoy, That’s episode 190, and I will link to it in today’s show notes. In episode 148, I taught you about practice bursts, short 15 minute chunks of time that you could use to keep on track when your schedule won’t allow you a longer practice session. I will link to that episode in the show notes too. But today, we’re taking a different approach. We’re going to look at why we practice, how our practice can help us maintain the status quo, or help us achieve a goal or help us stretch our skills and grow. We’ll talk about time and how we need to manage it and how to truly enjoy the time we spend at the harp. Because that’s what harp happiness is all about. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Join the April Seminar course, Rhythm Makeover. PHH #190: Transforming Your Practice in 2025 PHH #148: 10 Surprising Benefits of Practice Bursts Harpmastery.com Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]   Looking for a transcript for this episode? Did you know that if you subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts you will have access to their transcripts of each episode? LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-201  

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• Small Steps to Break Through and Grow - PHH 200

  How do you measure something that is unmeasurable? How do you quantify something that can’t be contained or counted? How do you assess something that is completely subjective? You might think you can’t, but yet, that’s what we attempt to do every day in our practice. We try to gauge our progress. We try to determine exactly when a piece is “finished.” Exact measurements aren’t possible in music. We can’t time our progress. “This piece will take exactly 37 days to learn to the degree of polish that I personally want.” If only we could have that degree of certainty, the whole practice thing would be so much easier. I realize I am guilty of perpetuating this unreality. I often use notional percentages to represent stages of “finish” for a piece. For instance, I’ll call a piece 80% done if I can play most of the notes correctly most of the time at a tempo that’s at least 80% of my goal tempo. It’s hardly scientific, but it gives me and my students a way to judge where we are on our journey with a piece.  So what about you? Do you know where you are with that piece you’re trying to finish? Are you at that 80% mark? If so, that’s great, because you’re almost there. By the way, I don’t believe in 100%; perfection is not a practical goal. Instead, 90-95% is what I would call finished. If you’re playing at Carnegie Hall, that’s not good enough, but it should do for just about everywhere else.  Or maybe this is what you’ve experienced: you get your piece to 80% without much trouble, but then it gets stuck there. It just won’t get over that last hump to the 90% mark. That hump - and how to get over it - is what I’d like to talk about with you today. I want to talk about the factors that contribute to progress and to growth, as well as how to find the way to close that gap between where your piece is now and where you want it to be. We can’t exactly create “progress by the numbers,” but we can find the steps that will pull you out of the place you’re stuck and move you forward.  Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Join our March Seminar Learn how to close the gap with my Finish It Course Harpmastery.com Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected] Looking for a transcript for this episode? Did you know that if you subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts you will have access to their transcripts of each episode? LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-200  

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• Making Music Sing: A Phrasing Primer for Harpists - PHH 199

  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 with some years of piano lessons in my youth, long tones were practically a new concept. On the harp, we don’t hold a note. We simply play it and it goes effortlessly into the ether. No need to practice long tones.  But this also means that we have no control over a note once we’ve played it. We can’t make it crescendo or decrescendo. We can’t add vibrato to intensify it. We can’t create a true legato, where one note connects seamlessly to the next.  I think this is partly why we harpists tend not to pay enough attention to phrasing. Yet, phrasing is the breath of the piece. It’s the living component of the melody. It’s what makes the song sing and the piece flow.  So today’s podcast is essentially a guide to phrasing for harpists. We’ll talk about everything from what a phrase is and how to identify it, to how to practice it so your melodies can sing. If you’ve been wondering how to get that “flow factor” into your playing, this will be important information for you, so stay tuned. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Join our March Seminar, “Variations on Bendemeer’s Stream” Announcing the Finish It Course with The Quick Start Guide to Learning Like a Pro Harpmastery.com Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected] Looking for a transcript for this episode? Did you know that if you subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts you will have access to their transcripts of each episode? LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-199    

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• Etudes: What You Never Knew They Could Do For You - PHH 198

  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 allows you to add expression, rhythm and other musical elements that aren’t usually present in finger drills to the skill you’ve been practicing, but without all the challenges that show up in a “real” piece. This doesn’t mean that etudes are easy, not by any means, But they do provide a way to step up a little more gradually to more intricate music. You practice your arpeggio exercise, then you practice an etude that uses those same arpeggios. Then you’re ready to tackle the piece that has those arpeggios in it.  But that’s not the way I’m looking at etudes today. Today, I want to tell you about two different ways to use etudes that will give you additional benefits, benefits like playing with more speed, more flow and helping you learn music faster. If you’re the kind of harpist who loves etudes, you’re going to absolutely love these ideas. And if you’ve been lukewarm at best about etudes, you might find yourself dusting off that etude book, because now you’ll understand why etudes have been part of every musician’s studies for hundreds of years. Simply because they work! Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Work with a Harp Mastery® Certified Coach in our new Lessons program. Learn my new “Variations on Bendemeer’s Stream” in our March Seminar course. Become a My Harp Mastery member - join today! 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-198  

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• Here’s Your Sign: How to Tell if You’re Making Progress - PHH 197

  The day this podcast episode is released, we will be living Day 55 of this year 2025. According to the calendar, we’ve already had 55 days this year to get things done, to grow, to accomplish. We’ve had 55 days to play the harp. If you set goals at the beginning of the year, this is a good time to check in on them. Are you where you thought you’d be? Are you ahead of the game, checking things off your list and moving on to your next steps? If you are, here’s a huge high five from me. That’s the way to create harp happiness. Today we are going to revisit your goals. We’ll look at how far you’ve come, confirm your direction and realign your course if necessary. We will focus on the progress you’ve been making and where your next steps may be. But if you haven’t seen the progress you had hoped for or expected, no worries. Progress is tricky to measure and sometimes hard to spot, even when it’s happening. When you’re walking the path, you can’t always tell how far you’ve come or how far you still have to go, and that can be unsettling or even frustrating.  We’re talking today about how to create progress and, more importantly, how to measure it. I’ll share the three things I think are absolutely necessary for you to make progress, and I’ll give you some ideas for progress markers you can use to make sure you’re moving in the right direction.  I want you to keep this in mind too: sometimes all you need is a fresh look at where you want to go and what you need to do to get there. It is often that simple. And I think that’s what our time together today will help you do, find those simple next right steps to move you and your harp playing forward. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Work with a Harp Mastery® Certified Coach in our new Lessons program. Learn my new “Variations on Bendemeer’s Stream” in our March Seminar course. 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-197  

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