Monthly Archives: April 2020

Not SLOW again?!

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I saw it in the eyes. I thought that maybe while teaching online I wouldn’t see that look – the “oh no, she’s going to make me play it even slower – how can I play it s-l-o-w-e-r?  I can’t remember it that slow, pleasepleaseplease don’t say to play it slower.  Crap, she said it!”

I get it.  We want to play more, we want to advance, we want to achieve.  And now that most of us are at home, we are being sent subtle (and not so subtle) messages that we should be achieving great things with all this free time we have now (that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish – because I don’t know about you, but I seriously am working more that I was before!).

You might have heard this same thing from your teacher*.  So, what does “practice it slower” really mean?  Well there’s the obvious – just play everything at a lower tempo.  But does that really serve you?  What is it that you’re meant to learn while practicing slower?** 

Here are six things you can get from practicing slower:

  1. Get the notes.  I’m not kidding – sometimes when we feel the need for speed, we are so busy going fast that we don’t realize that we don’t actually know the notes!  You have to know what comes next – not just by momentum, but each and every note, and the relationship of each note to the notes that come before and after.  Can you start in the middle of a phrase or shape and play?  If not, perhaps you don’t know the notes as well as you think.  By slowing down and focusing on the notes – and only focusing on the notes, you will be able to learn and remember them, individually and as a group.
  2. Get the rhythm. Once you have the notes and you’re not struggling to remember what comes next each time you run through, then you can focus on the rhythm. This is actually another way the notes are related.  But since you know what comes next, you can instead focus on how long, how short, how they fit together to make the rhythm.  And you can focus on being accurate – get the snaps right, give the half notes a-l-l of their time, etc.
  3. Get the harmony. Now that you know how the tune goes, and you’re able to play it fairly strongly, you can add the harmony.  (If you’re reading, you might want to treat the LH part as a different sort of melody – working on each hand separately to get the notes and the rhythm.  If you’ve done that, at this point you’ll be that much farther ahead).  When you’re learning a tune and arranging it, it helps to first know where you’re going – what’s the chord progression you’re hoping to end with?  You really can begin to develop that with just 1 finger.  You’re playing the melody, the rhythm is good, you don’t want the whole thing to fall apart while you try desperately to remember what comes next in the harmony!  So just use one finger – if you’re going slowly (this is one of those places people speed up – after all you know the tune right?) you’ll have time to remember what the chord progression is and get one finger there – on time.  As you get the progression in your head, you can expand the harmony to bigger and more complex chords – but go there in stages.  It always seems to amaze people that going from one finger to two in a fifth is hard, but it can be, so give yourself the time – by going slowly – to get there.  Only later will you be able to comfortably move into more complex chords.  And that’s ok. (caveat – on fast tunes, things that work here were you’re going slowly may not work as well at speed (and vice versa) so keep that in mind as you develop the accompaniment…of course practicing slowly and carefully coming up to tempo will allow you to work this out)
  4. Get the feel.  Ok, no one likes wooden music.  No one.  Even Pinocchio doesn’t like wooden music.  But you can’t really get the feel in there until you actually know the music.  So, once you’ve got it together, then you can (slowly at first) add the feel – dynamics, idiom, articulation – all those are things you have to remember, so add them in slowly and learn them.
  5. Get the tempo.  Now that you actually know the music, NOW you can begin to increase the speed.  I suggest to my students that you start “stupid slow” by which I mean a tempo that will challenge you to keep it together – that is so slow you have to subdivide your subdivision (e.g. something like one-tak-ee-tak-and-tak-ah-tak) just to get through the slowness between metronome beats.  There’s a reason there’s a 40 on your good old fashion Seth Thomas!  Imagine how much better you’ll be able to think when you’re done with that!  My rule of thumb is to play it at a stupid slow tempo and then move the metronome one tick (on an mechanical metronome) or four clicks on an electronic metronome (e.g. from 40 to 44).
  6. Get the polish. This is the thing we all want to get to!  We think it’s the prize, but really, it’s the culmination…you cannot polish what you don’t really know yet.  But when you’ve worked slowly and built the tune up to tempo, you actually have something to polish.  Because let’s be honest, typically when we say we’re here, we’re typically not really polishing – we’re still fixing and learning.  But by going slowly, when you get here, you’ll actually be polishing.

Do yourself a favor and slow down! You will know your music better and you’ll be more comfortable playing it.  You will also, whether you mean to or not, learn what gives you the most trouble so the next time, you can give it the time it needs while you’re learning…by going slow. 

How Slow Can You Go? Let me know you’re great slow going experiences in the comments.

* Not everyone agrees with this approach and I am sure some may read this and clutch their pearls.  And that’s ok.  I like to see people succeed in learning and breaking the music down into small pieces and working on the parts systematically has worked really well. Probably because at each step you are only focusing on learning one thing.  It won’t work for everyone, but isn’t it worth a try to see if it will be a good fit for you?

** I am a-l-w-a-y-s telling my students to practice slower.  Heck, I am always telling myself to work slower.  Even I get tired of hearing myself say it (I do still say it, because it works).  In the time of Coronavirus, blog posts ideas are being shuffled and I found the notes for this post on a sticky note on my desk.  I can tell by the color of the sticky that I made the note months ago.  So, after I wrote the post, it occurred to me that I may be this brilliant…or I might have read something or listened to a podcast by someone else and that’s where I got the six points.  It all sounds like the sort of thing I do and teach, but if I have inadvertently stolen someone’s idea, unfortunately, I didn’t write down whose.  But, I do not intend to plagiarize – if if you recognize this – please let me know so I can attribute credit.

 

COMMENTS BELOW THE LINE

For good or bad, photos don’t “fit” into the comments – but I LOVE when you share them, so I’m going to start incorporating “Comments Below the Line” in posts so there’s a place for them to show.  You will have to email me the photos, but that’s ok, I’ll get them up here asap.  Thank you so much for always helping me learn more!

From Helen:

Play SLOWER stickies

Getting out of the Land of Should

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I love teaching.  I learn so much from each of my students.  They all have their own strengths and challenges, but I find that there are sometimes overlaps.  This week, no less than three students have been trapped in the Land of Should – a dark and horrible place which is easy to find and sometimes hard to leave.

You might have been there. You might be there right now.  You can tell you’re there by the signs:

“I should practice more”

“I should be more motivated (even though there’s a global pandemic and nothing is as it typically is)”

“I should be able to ignore the things going on in my life and keep playing”

“I should be able to play this by now”

“I should be better than I am”

I get it.  The Land of Should can be very seductive.  And sometimes it seems like it’s the only place the bus stops.

But being trapped in the Land of Should is actually painful and not very comfortable.  After all, WHY should you (practice more, be more motivated, be more accomplished, and by extension, have a pristine home, have read all the “right” books, being wearing the right look, etc. – whatever)??

But shoulds are often unhelpful – these thoughts don’t get you any further ahead. Telling yourself you should do (or be) something doesn’t change anything or suggest useful changes.  It only sets you up to feel like you’ll never get where you’re going.  The Land of Should is like that.

One way to look at is that these thoughts are actually you bullying yourself!  You’re telling yourself you’re a disappointment.  Would you say something like that to your best friend?  I didn’t think so.

And right now, we all need a little more TLC – especially from ourselves!  Even the most stalwart and resilient among us are feeling a little peaky.  So, it’s no surprise if the pull of the Land of Should is becoming stronger.

How do you escape its terrible orbit?  Here are five ways to get out of the Land of Should:

  1. Journal.  You know I’m always exhorting you to keep a journal of your practice.  Here’s a good use for it.  First, you can document your practice time – what (objectively) did you work on, where did you leave it, where will you pick it up next time?  Secondly, you can also capture how you are feeling about the time you had (especially if you’re feeling like you have not done enough).  As always, keep your journal in any means that works for you – in a notebook, on your computer, as an oral history in your phone voice memos, as an abstract drawing – it doesn’t matter how you keep it as long as that medium works for you!
  2. Be realistic.  There’s a lot going on in the world, no matter who you are or where you live.  With the ongoing uncertainty and changing information as physicians and scientists learn more about it, it’s easy to feel like we’ll never have our feet on solid ground again.  You can use your time at the harp to help soothe your frayed nerves and the anxiety of not knowing.  Maybe this isn’t the time to double your repertoire or add those highly chromatic pieces you admire but don’t feel ready to take on.  But you do have repertoire already with which you can be fairly comfortable – play that.  Noodle!  Improvise.  Play nothing at all.  But don’t cut yourself off from your harp.  At a minimum, allow the reverberations of playing the notes impact your body.  Take some time and take some ease.  No matter your level of play, you can do this!  Are you a rank beginner, still trying to remember which finger is 2?  No worries, play a single string and let it ring while you feel the gentle vibration and hear the beautiful timbre!  Then play another. Think that’s only for beginners?  Nope – there’s a lot of soothing in a playing a single string and letting it reverb for you for as long as it likes…then play another one, etc.
  3. Reframe.  It is easy (especially in difficult times) to focus on the negative, to beat yourself up and as a result to feel bad.  Reframe your thoughts! It isn’t that you didn’t practice enough.  Rather, you made the best use of limited available time.  It isn’t that you aren’t progressing.  Rather, you currently have higher priorities requiring your time and attention.  It isn’t that you’re not motivated.  Rather you are dealing with a lot and will be back and focused soon.  But DO NOT tell yourself you’re not “good enough” because you haven’t done something.
  4. Study your history.  You haven’t always felt this way.  Think back to a time when you didn’t feel like this and understand that you have ups and downs and that’s ok.  Your truth includes being strong and resilient and sometimes it includes being a little bit fragile and that the fragility passes – and all of it is part of you!  And that’s kind of cool – because there’s interesting in there (to be found sometime when you’re transitioning from fragile to strong!).
  5. Be nice…and positive.  Be nice in general, but especially be nice to you!  And don’t torment yourself.  Instead, focus on the good (if only because it’s so easy to focus on the bad – and who wants to do easy stuff?).

If you find yourself lost in the Land of Should, perhaps one of these might help.  If something works for you, please let me know.  And if you have another way to escape – please share in the comments below.

World Art Day is this week

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The silent siege rages on.  We the fortunate work from home, stay inside, and “do our part” (whatever that means).  Sadly, people are becoming more isolated, even while feverishly posting to social media – lighting a match to hold back the darkness.

But this week can be just a little bit different.  This week we honor the fine arts by celebrating World Art Day on 15 April.

Which is ever so much better than Tax Day (if you just had a moment of panic, relax, they moved the deadline to 15 July – you may resume your regularly scheduled delaying).

The International Association of Art (www.iaa-usa.org)  declared 15 April as World Art Day (I cannot make this stuff up) to promote awareness of creative activity world wide.  They chose this day because it is also Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday.  And if ever there was a walking personification of the fine arts, ‘twas he.

In case you’re wondering what this has to do with us as musicians – in a word, everything!  Many think the fine arts only includes painting, drawing, and sculpture, but it is much broader.  And you guessed it, includes music!  (and other things like literature, architecture, dance and more)

In the US there’s a big celebration in Los Angeles with loads of events planned.  Well, there was to be a big celebration in museums all over the area.  But as you might have guessed, that will not be the case this year.  With museums and other public spaces closed, these events will certainly take a different from (if they occur at all). 

So what are we – we fine artists – to do? 

Let’s be creative!

And let’s share our fine art.

Because now more than ever, we need to be making art. We need to be making art to care for ourselves.  And perhaps even more, non-artists really need to be experiencing art!  So we need to be making art to care for others.

So, let’s share our arts. Not to put too fine a point on it – our art is fine.  There are many things you could do.  Here are a cursory few:

  • Put on a driveway/balcony/porch concert for your neighbors and other passersby (and if you really only perform for the cat and the curtains – go onto your back porch – the neighbors will benefit and you will too!)
  • Make a YouTube/Facebook/Instagram sharing event
  • Write some music that shares all the feelings you are experiencing while being at home, waiting – or reflect your musical thoughts on the difficulty someone else may have shared with you
  • Curate a playlist of music that reflects your mood
  • Create a set list (maybe for your driveway concert) that celebrates our resilience and what we’re going to do when this is past us
  • Take some online workshops
  • Make all kinds of fine art and put it in your windows to share with your neighbors – paint, draw, write, act, play

How will you celebrate World Art Day? Let me know and share photos!  And remember, if you want – every day can be World Art Day!

 

Kate sent me this photo of her Covid-19 protected harp!  Kate’s a nurse and knows the importance of keeping healthy – 

Summer? Maybe not…instead –

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It’s that time on the calendar when I usually take some space to mention some of my favorite summer programs and activities so you can save your pennies and dates and plan to go to as many interesting, educational, and cool adventures as you can swing.

This year – not so much.

We’re still watching from the windows, waiting for the shadow to pass.  Hopefully it will leave us alone, but not before many of the summer activities will be cancelled or postponed.

But we are the lucky ones – we have our beautiful instruments and our soul-touching music – our companions in times good and bad.  We have a port in the storm that feels like it will never recede.

It will recede, as storms (and diseases) do.  And after a while we will timidly leave our homes and venture out.  Slowly, as we do, things will return to normal.  Normal – and all that it entails – too much going on, too much to do, too much to accomplish.

Don’t be one of the people who, at the end of this confinement, looks back and wonders where the time went!  If you are home and you are not sick – what a gift – you have time!

You can use this time chained to the constant blather of news that isn’t – or you can go to your harp!  But what will you do there?  Well, what would you like to do?  While the answer to that depends on you, here are some ideas to get you started:

  1. Basics.  Get our your favorite love to hate source – Grossi?  Friou? Salzedo? Sylvia?  Doesn’t matter (they are all useful).  Pull it out and turn to page 1.  YUP – Page 1!  Then do the things we know we are supposed to do, but somehow there’s rarely time for.  Go slowly.  Read carefully.  Be your own terrifying maestro – accept nothing short of excellence from yourself.  Close!  Watch your posture!  Breathe!  Do it right!  Then do it again!  Don’t speed through just to get to the next one.  Savor each exercise.  Ask yourself – what am I meant to learn here?  What tunes that I currently play can I apply this to?  There is no race – compare yourself to you yesterday and identify where you’d like to be tomorrow and find how will this help get you there.  And through it all – enjoy it.  Dig in and feel your growth.
  2. Read.  Reading is a skill you develop and a tool you can use.  Reading will help you broaden your perspective and possibly open you to new ideas.  Don’t use the excuse that you play traditional music to put off bettering your reading.  You don’t always have the luxury of hearing everything either.  Reading will make all sorts of things accessible – collections, other genres, stuff you read just to practice reading.  But you’ll only get more facile at reading by doing it (just like when you were in first grade!).
  3. Listen.  You learn so much by listening.  You’ll learn new music of course.  But, like reading, you’ll get better at listening if you practice.  What do you hear first?  What do you struggle to hear when you listen (I’m talking about what you process, not how well your ears work).  How do you transfer what you hear to the harp?  Listen to everything you can lay your hands on – other harpers but also fiddlers, pipers, drummers, classical music, modern music, traditional music outside your usual sphere – everything.  I’m listening to Depeche Mode as I write this and I’m keying in on the base line and wondering how I could adapt the idea to a tune I’m arranging just now.  Yes it’s a stretch, but it only takes the kernel of an idea to get started, if you work it (usually over time).
  4. Learn.  You’re never going to get this kind of opportunity again (I hope!) so pull out all those tunes you half learned, never really got up to speed, used to play all the time but have sort of forgotten – and set out to learn them.  Really learn them.  Don’t forget all the new stuff you haven’t even started on!  Like all the other stuff, don’t accept half way.  If you’re having trouble with something – go back to 1 (above) and find an exercise that will help you (or make the tricky bit into an exercise), find a source to look at (and write on!), find recordings (if possible), and work with your tunes until they can worm their way into your head.
  5. Enjoy.  Have fun – never forget why you play!

Summer may be cancelled, but we still have our harps!

Next week – ways to get yourself sorted, organized and keep from spinning around not actually learning anything!  How are you spending your harp time while staying at home?  Let me know if the comments!