Monthly Archives: August 2021

It helps to have a plan

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What are you going to do this week?  It’s a fairly innocuous question.  But it has the potential to be a very good week.

But a little bit of preparation can ensure that it is a very good week.  All you’ll need is about 15 minutes and some paper. You can do this on whichever day is your night before your week begins.   You know that writing it down helps bring the thoughts out and makes them real. 

So, what should you capture there before you start your week?  Here are some ideas:

1. What would you like to accomplish this week? Try to be specific so you’ll know if you’ve done it.

2. Make a plan for each day.  Remember that you can include all the things that are part of practicing including analyzing new music, listening to tunes, practicing at the harp, practicing away from the harp, rhythm work, improvising, all the things! Don’t forget to plan which days youl might be away and have little time to practice as well as the days that you know you just really are not going to make it to the bench.  Be realistic!

3. Show up – every day.  If you have plan, it is certainly easier to stick with it.   

4.  Don’t waste your time – since you have thought about what you’ll be doing, do it – fully.  Don’t skate through your practice. 

5.  Be present.  Put your phone away, turn the tv off, close the door (if you have that luxury).  It’s a brief part of your day – be a part of it.

6.  Take the good with the not as good (and include the inevitable flow of your development into account when you plan your week. 

7.  Set your priorities – out loud.  You have already set them, whether you articulate them or not, so you might as well include them in your thinking.

8.  The clock is your friend.  Not only do you want to be sure to have identified when in your day you will sit to play, you also need to know how long you intend to play.  Not only do you want to avoid packing it in too early on a rough day, but you also want to keep the rest of your life going too!

9.  Make a note – when you’ve done for the day, jot down what you accomplished and what you need to do the next time (which might be a tweak to the plan).

10. Don’t let a little bit of structure make you forget that you enjoy this!

You might also strive to always play at the same time of day.  I don’t suggest that only because that I can’t really support that.  My schedule is never that regular.  If you have (or crave) a very steady schedule, then definitely do try to keep to a scheduled time.  But if it doesn’t really drive you, don’t worry about having a regular time – so long as you regularly make time.

Do you have a plan? Will you try some these?  Which ones?  Let me know in the comments.

Have a bath

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Ok, let’s start by just taking a breath.  Because it’s been a breath-taking week.  No matter how you look at events and their attribution, it’s been quite a week.Sound Bath

So, we could sit around and kvetch about it.  Between the pandemic and the world and politics and social media and social distancing and east coast hurricanes and west coast fires, and everyone being sure that they know the answer, and everyone else is an idiot, there’s a lot to “unpack” as they say. 

One thing seems sure – many people are feeling many things, including anxiety and ennui. What if someone could give a gift to multiple people simultaneously, that would help ease that, if only for just a brief while? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift?

Of course it would be!  Well, guess what?! 

YOU can give that gift.  You can provide that brief respite.  It’s all there, right at your fingertips!

Consider going out and playing for the people near you (and for yourself).  You can create a version of a Sound Bath.

What is a Sound Bath?  It’s an experience that uses sound as an aid to relaxation and meditation.  The music is played to wash over the listener – hence the “bath”. 

While simpler sounds are often used, the harp is certainly a perfect instrument and this is a perfect situation.  All you need to do is play.

Play simple melodies.  Play those tunes you learned at the start.  Play what you’re learning now.  Play from your heart and with the intention of relieving any conflict in your own head as well as creating an environment in which your listeners can relax.

It won’t be a performance.  Perhaps it will feel slightly more embarrassing – after all, you will be inviting others to join you in a bath!  Ask them to join you, to relax, to close their eyes, to breathe, to listen, while you play your harp.  Then bathe them with sounds.

It doesn’t need to be fancy – just play from your doorstep, porch, driveway.  Or go to the park.  Or the Walmart parking lot.  No matter where you sit, be sure you play from your heart.  It will do you good.  It will do them good.  Use your harp and your music as a balm. 

It won’t matter what you play.  What will matter is that you play.  It’ll do you good. 

Will you go out there?  Will you draw a sound bath for yourself and others?  There’s no time limit and certainly no deadline, but there’s no time like the present.  Let me know if you decide to play, where you chose to play, who you played for – let me know in the comments!

Ooops, missed that

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It’s been quite a time.  All the stuff going on around us.  Disease. Death. Destruction.  But we’re really lucky – we have our instruments and our music to help soothe us and to aid our journey through the mire.

Most of us try to face toward the future, to the time after all the yuck we’re experiencing.  Therefore, we might not have noticed that time is passing.

And so, the midpoint of the year, which is July 1st (or 2nd, depending on the year and your desired level of precision), has come and gone, by quite a bit – over six weeks (!).  I like to mark the midpoint of the year – to see how things are going and to assess if I’m “there yet”.  At that point in the middle of the year, plenty of time has passed to have started some projects, made progress on others, and to have finished some as well.  With projects in work, I can also get a good idea how I’ll be getting along through the rest of the year. 

I try not to make it too much of a report card.  You know –

SUBJECT GRADE
Effort A
Follow Through C
Completion F

And if it is a report card, for it to be more kindergarten-like:

If you can focus on the critique (of the smiley report card) and avoid the criticism (of the other), then you can make a better assessment too.  After all, at the beginning of the year, you have boundless energy, unending ideas, and a blank calendar.  By the middle of the year, you have less energy, the calendar is mysteriously stuffed AND you have a clearer idea of what you are really interested in.  Because really, you only do those things on which you focus.

At this point of the year, when it’s hot, and still, and called the dog days for a reason, you might find that your focus has drifted.  Between the alluring beauty of the easy things and the unending distraction of the glittery things, you may have lost sight of the most important things (as defined by you!).   That makes this the perfect time to ask yourself if the important things of January have maintained their status in August?  Ok, really the perfect time would have been on July 1st, but today is nearly as perfect a time to ask. 

Then the question is, ask what?  Here are a few questions you might ask (and answer!) in the middle of the year:

  • Are those things identified in January as being important still important?  If not, then take them off your agenda, ‘cause you’re not going to get to them!  But if they are still important, then it’s time for the tough questions
    • Why did they get short shrift?
    • What is stopping you?
    • What do you need to do to get back on track?
  • What has gone well?
  • What one thing do you need to have done by 31 December to consider this a good year?
  • Were the goals set in January the right ones (and if not, what should they be now?)
  • Am I only trying to do this because it seemed important before?

And my personal favorite –

  • Am I enjoying myself? (because, after all, if not, why do it?)

On balance, I’m fairly pleased so far this year.  How about you?  We have about four and a half months to go, so there’s loads of time to keep on and move ourselves to where we’d like to be.  Don’t forget that writing it down helps – both to realize what you have remaining to do and to remember what’s still to go (and why it is important to you).  List the tunes you’d like to learn, the technique you want to master, the events you’d like to play, the people you’d like to meet, etc.

Then you can work on making it happen!  How does your year look here at the mid-point?  Let me know in the comments!

Doubt

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This week I was feeling the need for a little inspiration – probably because it’s August and summer and sunny and delightful, so of course I want to be outside enjoying the niceness.  But I’ve got other things to do…like practice.  Do you ever notice how when you most need to practice you also most feel like you need to be more than that?  Or maybe that’s just me.  Either way, this week, just a little share.  If you feel that way sometimes too, this can serve as a reminder that when you’re standing on the horizon, nothing looks close (or do-able) but just like the dawn, just give it a sec and you’ll get there — don’t doubt!

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Color outside the lines?

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It’s all there in Black and White.

The treble lines, the bass lines.

Five lines of instructions (actually, 10 for us – plus ledger lines!). Play this note at this time…and all those other notes too, in order, as written.

So let it be written, so let it be done!

Except…wait a minute – last week we talked about the importance of asking questions…including my favorite – why? And a few weeks before that we talked about how sometimes meter and tempo get conflated and confused. So, this is sort of the same idea – We often make flawed assumptions about how we know what to play. And this week, we’ll talk about another flawed assumption that can make playing more difficult (and a way around it!)*.

Sometimes we mix up the register and the hand. This is especially easy to do because we are taught that way. And, to be honest, about 99.99999999999999999999999999999% of the time that is the right solution. But sometimes it’s just silly. Imagine if you were presented with this**:

Your experience, your practice and your efficiency all drive you to play all that mess in your left hand – even as the music tells your right hand to pack a bag and go on vacation! And you will likely tear yourself inside out trying to make it happen – possibly with the right hand sympathetically gripping the sound board tightly in terrorized support, hanging on like a terrified passenger on the back of a wobbly Harley.

Or what about this?

Same thing, only this time it’s the left-hand packing for a trip to the Bahamas!

Why do we do this? Well, because the ink said to, so we must.

It has always been thus.

But do we really? NO!!

Because while the ink tells you What and When –

it actually says n-o-t-h-i-n-g about How!

Read that again.

Of course, it’s easy to think like that –

Bass = Left hand and Treble = Right hand

And it’s easy to not think about what hand makes sense to be playing at that point.  After all,

Melody = right hand and harmony = left hand

Sic semper tyrannis

But does it even make sense to do it that way?***

After all, you have one harp and all the sounds come from it. Harmony and melody – all from one source – so really, which hand you use doesn’t really matter.

Now, I’m not advocating that you throw away all that practice and tradition. Instead, I’m suggesting that when you are struggling to make some fingering work, try to work smarter rather than harder.

I’ll remind you: the staff tells you What and When but

not How!

There’s another benefit of thinking about “breaking” the arrangements differently – and that is that the more ways you can look at the music (divergently), the more you will see new ways to play it. You’ll also “discover” patterns that were previously hidden from you that can then be leveraged, and the more you will think creatively (yea divergent thinking!).

Remember that the ink is a guide, but you must make the journey!

Do you ever color outside the lines?  What wonky passages have you struggled with and how did you overcome that?  Let me know in the comments!

* Special thanks to Rachelle Morgan who asked this question in Ask a Harp Pro on Facebook!

** Unceremoniously pinched from Rachelle’s question but slightly modified

***I need to credit Sue Richards for teaching me to think this way. Otherwise, I’d still be fighting to make stupid stuff work out and playing slowly, unable to catch up.