OSAS is here! OSAS is here!

Posted on June 29, 2020 by Jen

This has been a year of upheaval and I know many of us are feeling it keenly! But we’ve all mustered on, doing what we can – for ourselves and for others – trying to live in what is laughingly called the “new normal” rather than being dragged down by “what might have been”.

I LOVE the Ohio Scottish Arts School! It has been pivotal in my life as a musician and as a person – some of my dearest friendships have grown from this one week in the summer. In addition, I probably wouldn’t be playing the harp at all if I hadn’t found OSAS. I am not exaggerating – as much as I love orchestral music (and the harp for that matter), I am confident I would not have endured playing solely from that repertoire. OSAS helped point me in the right direction and I haven’t looked back!

And I LOVE teaching at OSAS, so I was excited to be doing so again this summer! But when the pall spread across the earth, I was sad that we would all miss out on it. The fun. The friends. The great students. The great tunes. Sigh.

Enter the Virtual Ohio Scottish Arts School! When the decision was made to go virtual, I was delighted and excited! (but you knew that from my earlier post). Virtual OSAS – a new twist for slightly twisted times!

We had meetings to figure out how we were going to do this.

And we kept saying, “It’ll be great. It’ll be easy. It’ll be fine”, and Debbie Doty – our beloved director, leader, Mom would agree, while making this face:

But we kept planning and we kept preparing and we worried (a little) that people wouldn’t come. But we pushed on, learning how to Zoom, polishing up our tunes to share, working together to figure out how everything would work together. You know, being the OSAS family!

OSAS Alumnae who are known for their hi-jinks and wicked senses of humor made thoughtful, heartfelt testimonials to encourage previous students to return and potential students to come along. And come along they did. Being virtual means that people who previously couldn’t get to Ohio can be a part of the week! And many students from previous years are also coming! So exciting! Even more exciting? The Harp Class filled before the registration deadline hit!

HARPHARPHARPHARP!

This week, OSAS will go on. We’ll be TogetherApart – playing our harps, sharing great tunes, learning, and laughing – social distancing by entire continents or oceans!

And looking forward to having a whole set of new tunes to play together when we can be together.

We’ll still be having our Tea –

And enjoying many of the traditions that help make OSAS the event we love!

I am confident that, as usual, I’ll be busy being there and won’t take nearly enough pictures (screenshots?) to share here – but we’ll see what comes of it. If you’re going to be there – yea! Can’t wait to see you and catch up. And if you’ve missed out, it’s not too early to start planning for 2021… OSAS is always the last week of June running up to the 4^th July holiday (in 2021, that will be 26 June – 2 July….go put it on your calendar now, because you don’t want to miss out twice in a row, do you?).

* All photos ripped from the OSAS website

How will I know (what to practice)?

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Jen

There’s SO much stuff to practice! You need to always be watching your technique…and that’s complicated. And you have to keep your tunes in your fingers…and that gets harder as you learn more tunes than you can remember you know. And you have to learn new stuff…which is easy to let slide while you’re busy watching your posture and remembering what you already know. And there’s theory. And there’s history and beyond your repertoire stretches, and…and…and…

…we get it, there’s a lot to practice…

…and there’s only 24 hours in a day…and all those Hallmark movies to watch, and laundry, and exercise, and meals, and work, and…sleep

So how are you going to get all your practice in? That’s not the question. The real question is – how do you decide what to practice?

You might need to use a time budget – but we’ve talked about that before – chopping up your practice time and assigning it at the micro level (think, “of my 30 minutes, I will spend 10 minutes doing…”) and the more macro level (think, “by the end of this week, I’d like to have learned that tune…”) and the even bigger level (think, “by September, I will begin to slowly refresh my holiday repertoire…” before you summarily forget it’s already October, but I digress).

And it’s a great idea to have all those levels of thinking about your practice, but then you have to make the REAL decision – what should you be practicing right now? Well, that’s up to you. I mean, I can only know my goals, and those of my students and the people I coach. If you’re not one of them, I have no way to know (BTW – shameless plug – I’ve got coaching slots available*). So, then the real question is – how do I decide what I should be practicing?

Here is a process to determine what you should be spending your time on:

Actually define what you’d like to be able to do (yes, this means write down what you’d like to be able to do with all that practicing). It can be grand (I’d like to play the Ceremony of the Carols on my 21 string lever-less folk harp) or mundane (I’d like to be able to play my exercises as slowly and carefully as Jen asks me to at my lessons so that I can actually get through them without fumbling). But write it down…maybe in that practice journal you either haven’t gotten, haven’t started, or think is just stupid.
Do a “mind dump”. Mind dumping is really popular right now. And with good reason. Yes, this is more writing things down, but in a good way. You really are going to try to dump, from your brain and onto the paper, everything you know about where you are, where you want to go (see #1 above) and what you already know. Write down everything you can think of that relates to how you play now, what you’d like to be able to do, and anything you might already know about the path between the two. No, really, write it down. All of it.
Now let’s build a “mind map”. Maybe you’re not a writer and you’re pushing back on this. Then you might not mind this step so much – a mind map is just a visual map of the stuff you wrote down. Yup – a drawing! Sort through all the things you wrote in #2 and identify which ones are related to one another. You might find, as you’re making your map, some things are more related than you originally thought (technique? theory? fingering?). For example, Carolan is all the rage this year (don’t ask me, I have absolutely no idea why, but he is!). But to play a lot of Carolan’s tunes, you need to be able to flawlessly and quickly play a scale – part of a scale, all of a scale, most of a scale – he used them a lot. So, in your map you’ll start with what you want to work on (playing Carolan) and “map” it to all the things that might help you get there (smooth, seamless, rapid scales). And I’m sure you’ll have loads of things to work on – so put them all on the map…and show which ones are related to which others.
Give it a hard look. Be realistic. Do you have the time to do all of that? If yes, go to a. If no, go to b.
1. Do the thing! Now you know what you need to work on and how they’re all linked, so you can put together an approach to your practice. Be sure to include steps for each day you practice, each week and each month. Be realistic. Assure that everything lines up in a reasonable way (for example, you’ll want to be able to play simple scales before you start doing scales that are compound rhythms or complex executions). If you’re not sure, ask your teacher. Remember to plan more than just each day – let the days build on one another.
2. Do the thing! Now you know what you need to work on and how they’re all linked, so you can put together an approach to your practice. Be sure to include steps for each day you practice, each week and each month. Be realistic. Assure that everything lines up in a reasonable way (for example, you’ll want to be able to play simple scales before you start doing scales that are compound rhythms or complex executions). If you’re not sure, ask your teacher. You will need to leave yourself plenty of time (over the calendar) and take small… but consistent (daily)…steps. Remember that 15 minutes every day is better practice than 2 hours on a Saturday! If you only have 15 minutes, now you’ll know what to spend them on! Remember to plan more than just each day – let the days build on one another.
Keep track of what you do! This can be easy – write it down. Too lazy? Too busy to spend all that time (20 sec) writing it down? Use that fancy phone you have! Record your practice once a week – then you’ll be able to see what you’re doing right and what needs a little more attention.
Don’t forget the cookie! OK, it doesn’t have to be a cookie (but it can be!) – make sure you also have a reward for meeting your plan. Whether it’s buying yourself a goofy harp trinket (I’m not mocking them, I have them too!) for practicing every day or for learning a tune completely or for performing the tune well when you needed to, you set the reward…and be sure to deliver! You will deserve it.

Let me know how you know what to practice – in the comments below!

* If you’re interested in coaching (or lessons) – let me know!

The Secret Way to Learn a Tune

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Jen

One of the benefits of longevity at the instrument is growing a large repertoire. To be fair, having a big repertoire comes from a long-time learning of tunes and working on them.

The longer you spend learning tunes, the more you learn about learning. Not only about learning in general but also about your specific way of learning. If you pay attention, you learn what is challenging for you to take in and what comes so effortlessly to you (by which I probably really mean painlessly!).

You also learn some tips and tricks along the way. The short cuts. The work arounds. With time, you begin to be able to identify little patterns in the music. And eventually you learn to identify (and remember) even bigger patterns. With enough practice and exposure, you might not even be aware that you are learning. This is equally true whether you are learning by ear, learning from the paper, or the combination of the two. If you know your music theory, you also know that there are “rules” of the game (which could be construed as a different type of pattern). And you know which rules are malleable and which are inviolable, and when those rules can be bent, broken, or ignored.

But there’s a secret way to learn a tune, inside and out, up one side and down the other, whether you know the rules or not.

Are you ready for the secret?

Like most secrets, you’re going to slap your forehead at its obviousness.

Drumroll…

Cue “building suspense” music…

The secret is to teach the tune.

Told you it was simple.

When you are learning a tune, you look at it like an oncoming train – a whole bunch of notes, headed straight for you (that’s why it is so much easier when you begin to hear the little patterns that make it up).

But when you teach a tune, you look at it completely differently. For one thing, the notes aren’t all ganging up and headed at you! Instead, you have lovingly collected them so you can spoon them out. You are looking at them from the other end! And it is funny, but when you look at this this way, the tune looks completely different.

I can’t tell you how many tunes I have changed fingering for – after I had played them for years – because when I taught them, I realized how dumb my original fingering was. My thought process at that moment goes something like, “I can’t teach that! It’s really difficult, not to mention stupid. Why am I doing it like that? I’m going to show it this other way instead!” And then I change the way I play it!

Sometimes I see whole phrases differently. Sometimes I find little bits that are seminal building blocks of the tune. And if I’d noticed those things earlier, I would have learned the tune faster.

Give it a try. Next time you’re with a group, play some fun tune you love (I promise, we’ll be together again soon!). Share it with others. Teach it to them – so you’ll have another tune to play together!

You might think, “everyone’s better than me, I won’t be able to teach them anything!” That may be, although I’m always surprised what tunes other people don’t know/haven’t heard before – so it’s always worth asking. And even if you have a small repertoire, as you learn, it will grow bigger. Eventually, you won’t be the newest harper in the room – so you should be prepared for it. You can also ask someone who is “harp-older” than you if you can teach them the tune – just as a means to “test” your knowledge…you’d be amazed how many people will play along (even if they already know the tune).

Still convinced you’ll never teach anything to anyone? Then pretend! Or teach the tune to your (very disinterested) cat*. Go through the exercise of figuring out – how would you teach it. Stumped? Then ask yourself, “How would Jen teach this?” (or your favorite teacher or your harp hero).

How would I teach the tune? I’d look for the repeating patterns. And I’d give them names (or numbers, or characteristics) – one of my favorites is a tune with a cookie in the middle – two patterns that make an Oreo (or Hydrox) – a bottom cookie (one pattern), the creamy middle (second pattern), and another cookie on top (first pattern again). No one forgets that part of the tune!

Pick a tune you know and decide who you’ll teach it to. Typically, summer workshops are a good opportunity because friends share tunes (and we will, just maybe not this summer!). Look for the patterns and how they fit together. Where do they go? How much is there to learn really? I love teaching tunes where the B part is the A part with one measure changed (not even different, just changed)! What will you teach? Let me know in the comments – and if I don’t know it, hope you’ll teach it to me!

*Someone recently asked me about my cat (since I’m always writing about playing for your cat). I don’t actually have a cat. I haven’t had a cat in a very very very long time. I borrow other people’s cats. But, I like cats so they come up in my thinking. If you’re a dog person, please do not take umbrage. I also don’t and haven’t had a dog in a very very very long time either. I like dogs too but I don’t seem to think of them as much. I also know from experience that dogs will sit there and listen because they are loyal and sweet…but cats will listen because they choose to.

Welcome June

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Jen

In the long sad time, when the sky was grey

And the keen blast blew through the city drear

When delight had fled from the night and the day

My chill heart whispered, “June will be here”

A June Tide Echo, Amy Levy

I find that I’m a little mournful just now. In my original plan, by now I’d be already in Edinburgh, joining friends, seeing sites, sharing tunes (writing on originally scheduled blog post topics!). I’d be helping students prepare for competitions and performances and recitals. I’d be trying to decide what, from my “OSAS at Oberlin” stash would be appropriate for “OSAS at the blissfully air conditioned Baldwin-Wallace”. I’d be organizing my calendar to practice teaching, practice weddings, practice performances, composing, arranging.

[I refuse to think of life before all the sickness of this year-to-date as “normal” because there is no normal. There is only change we do not see. And normal = mundane and who wants to be mundane?!]

But as for right here, right now, it is easy to be suckered in by things around us (like social media mostly, although regular media isn’t really helping any either) and its unending stream of “content” (some good, some pathetic). And for good or bad, I found that I was being sucked in and becoming envious of the people who were posting clever, or at least amusing, videos of their funny children, hilarious pets, perfectly executed, while distributed, performance art, or oops-filled online meetings. Increasingly, I was feeling particularly peeved that I, a creative and artistic person, was not also generating huge vats of content…like so many artists posting (highly edited) stuff.

But maybe, with a little shift in focus, I can see that this is not the truth of it. I am doing inventive things (but maybe not subjecting everyone else with the outputs). And then I remembered one of my favorite quotes.

Never compare your blooper reel with everyone else’s highlight reel.

This quote should probably be updated to include the words “tightly curated and heavily edited” highlight reels.

I remain excited for this summer and I’m trying to embrace all the changes (yes, I’m mournful and still remain excited…I’m complex like that). I’m also trying to appreciate that those changes represent potential. I still look forward to next summer when I might have even more time with friends in Scotland – and the extended absence will definitely make the hearts grow fonder. I’ll have more tunes to share and a whetted appetite for sites, sounds, smells and tastes. My students will outgrow the music we started to ready for performance this year and will move on to other pieces to ready for next year’s events and venues. Pieces we might not have even thought about if “everything was normal”! I’ll have time to consider the joyful memories of the items in the “OSAS Oberlin” bin while dreaming up what excitement we will find in our new OSAS location in Barea, OH. And hopefully I’ll be scrambling to get from competition to wedding to workshop – happily busy and working.

Be careful of the perfectness of what you see. Spend time with your harp – Imperfect time. Try new things. Play new stuff. Play old stuff…in new ways. Share what you feel like sharing. What are you doing? What are you planning for next June? What imperfectly perfect thing are you working on? Let me know in the comments!

OSAS 2020 is coming!!

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Jen

If you’ve read my blog for more than about 15 minutes, you know that one of my most favoritest harp events each year is the Ohio Scottish Arts School. I have participated as a student and as a teacher – and I can tell you the view from either window is just marvelous! The instructors, the students, the Thistle Sisters and Thistle Brothers – all outstanding!

And you also know that this spring has led to a lot of cancellations. A lot of cancellations.

BUT NOT OSAS!!! OSAS is going ON LINE.

It’s taking some planning – and creative thinking (I’d say “out of the box thinking” but clearly, as you can see in the picture below, we’re each in a box!)

OSAS planning – things you learn in a COVID world.

If you’ve always wanted to come to OSAS but haven’t been able to – this is your chance! Live too far away? Live so many timezones away, we’re upside down? All no problem this year! OSAS CAN STILL BE A PART OF YOUR HARP LIFE!

You will have the opportunity to study with the inestimable Sue Richards, the incredible Rachel Hair, the wonderful Rachel Clemente, and the incalculable me.

The fun of working together to learn a tune and play it! PS, do not sit like this when you’re playing your harp (like I am – sidesaddle) or you’ll be calling me for an Ergonomics Lesson to fix all your injuries and pains!

From Monday, June 29 to Friday, July 3, 2020, we will have 3 – 4 sessions per day. In the morning, we’ll learn tunes. After lunch, we’ll gather to review the morning, learn more, and participate in group lectures and/or one-on-one sessions. More specific details will be coming (as we firm up and finalize everything).

Tuition for this special week is $250 (includes $200 non-refundable deposit). Please note that class sizes are limited. Registration deadline extended to June 8, 2020. Here is the link to the online registration form.

I am very passionate about this event (as you can tell by the plethora of exclamation marks throughout this post) – because I know how much you have the potential to learn, from incredible tutors that you won’t find all together in one place in any other workshop. In addition, over time, OSAS has lead to many lifelong friendships, collaborations, and happy memories.

You should join us this summer at OSAS ONLINE. No, we won’t be all in one room, but we will be all in one space – we’ll be TogetherApart! If you have any questions you can go to the OSAS website or you can leave them for me in the comments below. Hope to see you there!

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Monthly Archives: June 2020

OSAS is here! OSAS is here!

How will I know (what to practice)?

The Secret Way to Learn a Tune

Welcome June

OSAS 2020 is coming!!