Practicing Harp Happiness

• Three Keys to Relieving Stress - PHH 234

  I was moving the harp the other day and once again, it occurred to me just how much stuff we have to carry around with us. Granted, I move my harp all the time for rehearsals and concerts - it's a big Lyon Healy Salzedo model harp - so you would think I'd be used to it by now.  I guess I am, mostly; I don't have to think about what goes in the car, and my harp bag is always ready to go. But when I start counting the number of trips I have to make between my car and the concert hall in the pouring rain, I start wishing for a Star Trek transporter.  But recently, while I was moving the harp, my bench, my stand, and my bag, I had a flash of insight; we harpists carry a lot of baggage with us. Not a revelation, I know, but it led my mind to consider the other kind of baggage we harpists carry, the stress that accumulates in our practice and performance. That's a kind of baggage that piles up in a sneaky way until one day, we find it has overwhelmed us. The physical stress that is part of practicing, the mental stress that can come with intense focus and the emotional stress of wanting to do our best when we play can add up to a potentially toxic level.  The worrisome part is we rarely acknowledge the stress as it is building little by little. There is simply a moment when we know we can't take any more, often as we are in the final stages of preparing for a performance. That's when we want to be at our most focused, but our mind and body are shutting down, trying to protect us from too much stress. I'm better at managing stress than I used to be, but stress used to be baggage that I always carried with me to some degree. It came and went in cycles, and I'm embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me that this wasn't or shouldn't have been normal. I don't want to be all doom and gloom here. What I want to talk about today is how to recognize that sneaky cycle of stress and release yourself from it. We'll talk about the hidden symptoms of stress and how to recognize them and how to keep them from coming back. It's time to ditch the excess baggage and feel free to play. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Are you a beginner? Register now for my free seminar, Pro Tactics for Beginners. Register for the Getaway Retreat now at Early Bird Pricing!  Stretches for Harpists, by Mary Jane D'Arville  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-234  

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• A Behind the Scenes Look at My Practice Week - PHH 233

  Over the years I have had questions about my practice: how much practice I do, what I do in my practice, and so on. There has also been the occasional request to sit in and listen to my practice. I have always thought that my own practice routines and what I do on any given day in my practice wouldn't be useful to share with most harpists, the reason being that the demands on my time and on my playing are vastly different from what the majority of harpists experience. And I have never believed that anyone could benefit from watching me practice or listening to my practice. But gradually I have been led to rethink that opinion. My thinking started to change with the introduction of Practice Labs in our Harp Mastery® Hub.   In case you don't know what our Practice Labs are, I will fill you in. They are online meetups that any of our Hub members can join, and all that happens is we practice in the same virtual space for an hour and a half. Our cameras are either on or off, and our microphones are off, so that although we can see everyone else on the call, we can't hear them. We are all just practicing together. It's a little like a practice study hall, where we are all doing our own work together. We hold them twice a week, on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. The point of the Practice Lab is that it creates a scheduled practice time with a little nudge of accountability. No one takes attendance; you show up when you want to, if you want to and stay for as much of the time as you like. Sometimes we have a good number of people; other days just a few. I don't make all of the Practice Labs myself, although I show up most days.  And it was on the Practice Labs when I began to notice that some people wanted to show up just to watch me practice. It didn't make sense to me at first. But now I have a different perspective, and that's why today I want to share this behind-the-scenes look at my practice. If this sounds like a "why would I care about this" topic, I get it. But if you have any curiosity about what I practice, when I practice, how I practice and most importantly why I practice, then you will want to keep listening. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Getaway Retreat registration is open! Register now to get Early Bird pricing. 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-233  

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• Starting a Piece? Don't Take It From the Top - PHH 232

  So you decided to learn a new piece for the holidays - good for you! When I think of all the years I've been playing the harp, it's a little amazing that I still feel a little thrill when I pick up a new piece of music to learn, and I'm sure you feel the same. Starting a new piece is a voyage of discovery with the promise of adventure, new notes to conquer, a few challenges to meet along the way, and finally, a beautiful piece of music we can play. Of course, the voyage is often a little rougher than we anticipate. It can take longer than we thought and can be more discouraging. We can't always eliminate the difficulties or estimate exactly how long it will take us to learn a piece. However, we can give ourselves the biggest advantage we can by getting the strongest and fastest start we can to the piece. One of my frustrations with the way harp learning is often taught is that it teaches the student to be slow. Certainly playing slowly and learning carefully are necessary to developing good habits, to creating and maintaining a strong technique and to playing with relaxation and fluidity. But slow playing doesn't have to be the first step in learning a new piece; in fact, it really shouldn't be.  It may be the way you learned to start new pieces when you were a harp newbie, but you have become a more experienced harpist since then. If you're still learning with the same processes, it's time for an update. So today, I'm going to give you a faster system for starting a piece. It works for any harpist at any level, and even if you've already started your piece, you can put this system in play now and you'll cut out days or maybe weeks of your learning curve. But don't think this is all about playing faster. It's about starting with the music, so you can end up playing the music, instead of just practicing it. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Watch for our Getaway Retreat registration flash sale! Need help with your six week practice plan? Work with Anne! 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-232  

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• Your Simple Six Week Holiday Music Readiness Plan - PHH 231

  It's nearly the end of October and already my daily practice is revolving around what I will need to play this holiday season. Yours might be too. The smart harpist knows that this is the time to plan your practice carefully so that you don't have to cram practice time into an already overloaded holiday schedule. If we feel prepared to play going into the holiday rush, it makes everything about the holidays more fun. So now is the time to plan. We have about six weeks from now until the end of November. In my own planning I usually use our Thanksgiving as my target date to have my music ready. If you're not up to speed on American holidays, our Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, so date-wise, it's a movable feast, but as it marks the kickoff for our holiday rush, it's a great target date for music readiness. Today, I want to share what I think is the easiest and most realistic schedule for making sure whatever music you have to play this December will be ready. I start by looking at the three most critical decisions: what "ready" means (and believe me, it's different for each piece, each player and each performance), how much practice time you have and how to divide that time among everything you want to practice and play.  Once you have made those decisions, it's about making a realistic and flexible schedule that allows you to get your music ready without the stress and lets you feel confident that you are ready to play your best. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Arpeggios with E.A.S.E. Course - last chance to get in! Join the Community in the Hub through the Harp Mastery® app. 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-231

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• Here's Why You Should Do It My Way: A Teacher's Response - PHH 230

  I once had a student say this to me: "But it doesn't work when I do it that way." We were trying to fix a passage in a piece she was learning. When she played the passage for me, there was an obvious stumble spot, and I had a definite idea about what was wrong and how to fix it. But after a week of trying to implement my suggestion, she came back to me, saying that her old way, even though it wasn't really working, worked better than mine and so she was sticking with her way.  Please understand that the student didn't doubt the solution I was offering. She had tried it, just as I had suggested. She had confidence in my ability to help her surmount this difficulty. The frustration for her was not just that the solution I offered didn't work; it was that her old way was actually better for her, at least at that moment. At that point in our lesson, I could have responded with the all-time favorite response of music teachers everywhere - you have to give it some time.  That would certainly have been a correct response in that it was true, but that doesn't mean it would have been very helpful. But if I didn't want to trot out that old standby answer, I had to provide a different one. It was clear to me what she needed to know. She needed to know why.  This was years ago. I hadn't published all the resources that I have now. I didn't have the teaching experience that I have garnered in the years since then. But even back then, I was a good teacher, one who not only knew the right way to do things, but was skilled at seeing the underlying problem that a student needed to address. What I needed to learn, though, was how communicate my methodology, not a technique method necessarily, but how I knew my way of solving the problem would be better in the long run. When "just trust me on this," or "because I said so" aren't good enough answers, the better response lies in the reason, the explanation, and that requires a teacher to dig deeply into her own expertise. After all, it's likely been a long while since we teachers asked for those explanations ourselves. We're at a point where we simply know, and that's good for us, but less helpful for our students.  So today, I'm hoping to share with you the reasoning behind some of those potential "because this is the way it works" answers. Whether you're a student or a teacher, or just a harpist who has an inquiring mind, I'm sure at least one of these will click for you. Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Sign up for the It's Not Working Webinar Join the Arpeggios with E.A.S.E. Quick Study 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-230  

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