Monthly Archives: May 2022

Memorial Day

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This week we celebrate Memorial Day in the US.  Celebrate is a funny word to choose since Memorial Day is about honoring those who have died defending our nation and way of life in all the wars and conflicts to date.  But celebrating is probably the right thing to do – those people didn’t give their lives so the rest of us could stand around being morose but rather so that we could continue enjoying the life we’re so very privileged to live. 

Memorial Day

I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day.  Enjoy your events.  Play your harp with glee and maybe note that the strings are Red, White, and Blue.  And spare a moment to think of those who came before to make all this possible.

Later this week I’ll be heading to Scotland for this year’s Harp the Highlands and Islands trip – finally!  After two years of planning and replanning and postponing and waiting, we’re finally getting to go.  I’ll be posting about that next.  So excited to going – watch this space!

What We Can Learn from Drummers

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People often ask if we are angels.  That makes it easy to forget that on an orchestra chart the harp is part of the percussion section.   As we tune our strings, we shouldn’t forget where we come from!  We can learn a lot from other percussionists.  Here are some things we can learn from drummers:

Drummer

Precision is important – Drumming is often presented as fairly straightforwardly built on a series of “rudiments”.  And that means exactly what it sounds like – they have building blocks and they build everything from them.  To make those building blocks work together, precision is important.  How many rudiments do we have?  Do you think of them as precision pieces that can be fit together to make good music?  That precise use of unambiguous elements is important, and you should mean it when selecting a specific element that is fit for its purpose.  Put plainly – think ahead, plan and go with purpose.  Don’t just shove some available finger onto a string, leap for that next note, and hope you got it right.  Build a way ahead from your fundamentals!   

Rhythm underlies everything – pay attention.  There is a reason we count.  I get it, it’s hard to count (whine).  And there’s all that other stuff to do at the same time (like remembering and playing the right notes and all).  And yet, there’s an exquisite sweet spot that only becomes apparent from counting accurately and really getting the rhythm that we all should be reaching for.  This is a fundamental that we need to hone rather than dampen.  Yes, it’s delicious to pretend that playing the harp is all running through meadows with butterflies, but… it’s not.   When you are learning a new genre or idiom, pay close attention to the rhythms so you can match them to achieve the music you are pursuing.

Technical work lets you be you – when you have a strong foundation, you can do amazing things.  Learn your fundamentals.  Make sure you do all of the work, not just the things you like.  Do the rhythm work, fingering work, phrasing work.  Practice your dynamics, tempos, and transitions.  There are loads of exercise books available to help you learn these things.  I will tell you though, that you have to dig those books out because this stuff won’t come looking for you.  Remember too, that as fundamental elements, some of that stuff will make you cry if you don’t take it one bite at a time!  But once you’ve mastered the technical elements, you can build your own castles your own way for your own use.  Once you have them licked, they’re yours!  How can you break the rules if you don’t know them?

Being uncomfortable is not ok – there aren’t many instruments bigger than the harp, but the drum set is one that might be even more challenging to move around.  Smart drummers reposition their instruments so they can play based on how they sit.  NEVER form yourself to fit your harp.  Move the harp to accommodate you.  Remember, harps are cheap(er than back surgery!!!).   Yes the harp is big but, it’s not so big that you shouldn’t make it work for you.   

To be better you need to relax – tension doesn’t make anything better (except maybe scary movies… they are better with increased tension).  But playing doesn’t improve with increased tension.  Being tense can make you late – or early, and can make your chords squeak, your octaves buzz, and your melody notes fade away.  R-e-l-a-x.  B-r-e-a-t-h-e.   And, often, slow down!  Being tight makes it harder to play in control. And it certainly makes it harder to enjoy playing.  Perhaps most importantly, continuing to play with tension might lead to injury.  To note if you are tense, you have to pay attention to yourself (yes, while you’re also paying attention to everything else – no one said it was easy!).  If you are tense – explore why.  Are you concerned you’re not going to make it in time (playing too fast)? Or have you not yet fully learned the tune? Maybe you’re not breathing?  Once you know why you’re tense, you can work it right out!  Breathe, relax – you’ll get there in good time.

There is so much to learn from our fellow percussionists.  If you met a drummer today, what would you ask them that might help make you a better harper?  Let me know in the comments!

Always commit, but not too soon

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For harpers, one of the most challenging things to learn is fingering.  I don’t mean “learn” as in getting it into your head.  Rather I mean internalizing the concept and grounding everything you do in that.

After all, we know that fingering can make or break your tune.  We know that while we’re ingesting a tune, we need to pay attention to getting the fingering into our head so we can do it again.

But making that knowledge part of our intrinsic fabric of self is challenging.  Precisely because you learn it along with the tune.  And that’s what makes it slippery.

Commit

Because when you learn the fingering as part of the tune, rather than embedding the need for fingering in your core, you just let it sort of wash over you.  In effect, you don’t really pay attention to the fingering as an element of the tune, it’s just a means to an end. 

You learn it but you don’t commit. 

And at the beginning of acquiring a tune, that’s a good thing.  After all, before you know the tune, how you can you know what the best fingering can be?  How can you understand where the phrases are going to take you?  Where will you place your stamp?  So, at the beginning, you do need a fingering that will get you through the tune.  But do you need to commit to it?  Or is it too soon?

To successfully play the tune, make it yours, and frankly, to enjoy it, you might need to mix up that fingering, so it might be too soon to commit.  You might change the fingering as you develop your overall approach to the tune and to the harmonies.  You might find that the whole thing will go better if you take this note in the other hand.  Or that a big fat lush rolled chord just there is exactly what you want so you now will play the melody note with the thumb.  Well, those things, those changes, those modifications, those betterments will change your fingering.  If you have already committed to an earlier fingering, it will have been too soon.

If you’ve committed to a fingering too soon, it will chafe.  And of course, once you’re committed, every change becomes harder to implement (because you have to unlearn what you were doing and relearn the new thing). 

Once you’ve settled on what you’d like to have, then you could commit to the fingering.   When you have assigned your imprimatur, then you can commit the fingering to memory, based on the development and analysis you bring to the tune.  And then use it!

When you’re learning a tune, yes, work on the fingering (especially if you’re a newer and shinier harper – if you’re still learning how to play, all of this will apply after more development… learning elementary tunes as taught is helping you build the foundation you need to then later do what I’m advocating here).  As you cultivate the tune, give yourself the freedom to explore other fingerings and approaches to rendering the tune.  Then you’ll be ready to commit, and it won’t be too soon!

How do you help yourself make the commitment at the right time?  When do you feel ready to commit?  Let me know in the comments!

Being Musical-y

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The president of my fan club doesn’t know much about music but sometimes lofts the question, “how is your musical-y thing going?”.  It’s meant to demonstrate support and caring.  It’s sweet…not helpful, but sweet.

“Musical-y thing” in this context means “everything” …and everything is a lot of stuff when we’re talking about music.

Be musical-y

But we are musicians and so we should understand what makes up the musical-y stuff.  We need to know the difference between and the relationship of the musical-y things.  They sort of easily fall into two elements – Musicianship and Musicality*.

Some people think they are the same thing, but they are actually very different.

Musicianship is the technical stuff – the playing, articulation, fingering, accuracy, closing, good reading, good posture, thinking, incorporating technical elements into your playing, etc.  Musicianship leads to strong playing.  Musicianship fuels analyzing the music to find the patterns, the themes, the work arounds, and applies all that technique to result in solid playing.  Musicianship is the hard work, the repetitions, the focused practice – the discipline. 

Musicality is the expression, the emotion, the feeling, the inflection.  Musicality hears the potential in each phrase, each pattern, each mis-note**.  Musicality is the recasting of the phrase, the on-the-fly improvements, and adds that sparkle to the performance.  Musicality injects the life into the music.  Your listener can feel your musicality.

Musicality is the life of the party while Musicianship is refilling the dip.  Without Musicianship, Musicality (and everyone else) leaves early.  These are both essential to having a great event!  And frankly Musicality is so much easier to bring forth when it’s leveraging strong Musicianship.

Developing each of these is essential to continued growth but that can be a challenge.  For some, the focus is on musicianship – those very technical things that can be measured, assessed, built incrementally, and tracked.  For others, the focus is on musicality – the feelings expressed and the connection with others – things you can feel but can’t necessarily point directly at to assess.

If you have fallen into the trap of focusing on only one, dig your way out!  Why?  Because no one ever said, “I love rote, mechanical, robotic music”.  But also, no one ever said, “Despite almost every note being so wrong that I didn’t recognize the piece, I loved the emotion of whatever that was.”  These are two sides of the same coin – musicianship without musicality is flat and uninteresting.  Musicality without musicianship is just about noise.  To be a complete musician, you have to capitalize both!

You can develop each – but how? (You already know what I’m going to say) Practice!  But balanced and complementary practice. 

To develop Musicianship, do the “usual” practice – careful, precise work.  Deliberate practice of the technical elements applied to your tunes.  Focus on the skills.  You know how to do this.

To develop Musicality, do the “unusual” practice – craft the story you’ll be telling by visualizing the elements, hear the emotions you want to evoke, yep – use your imagination!  Use movement to reinforce your story.  Calibrate your finger control, position of your hands, and placement of your arms so that you evoke the sound you are imagining.  And because it’s hard to do all these things at once and assess the outcomes, record yourself, find what you like, and build on that!  In addition, write down your ideas, thoughts, and insights as you practice.

Here’s a homework assignment – select a new-to-you song (songs are easy – they have words that tell you what the story is – easy-peasy!).  Learn the tune with good technical proficiency (strong Musicianship).  When you are comfortable playing the melody, think about the story and its associated emotions so you can craft your playing and – bake that feeling into your tune practically from the beginning (Musicality).  Keep testing for doneness (make throw away recordings) and monitor your technique (which can so easily fall by the wayside while your brain is trying to focus on everything).  Remember it is never finished, so you can change how you feel about the emotions you seek to evoke at any time!

Are you musical-y?  How do you feel about your musicianship and your musicality?  Have you tried this homework?  Let me know what you learned in the comments!

*Yes, of course there can be more or different bins – be my guest, tell me a better way to characterize this!

**Some people call a Mis-note an error but that would be a mistake 😀

The Beauty of Error

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We talked about defining “right” and of playing “perfectly”.  One of the problems with so many definitions of right is that they can blind us to the Beauty of Error.

If every time you have a variant note you make a “lemon face” you might miss what could be right in front of you. When you play something that isn’t “right” you haven’t played something wrong.  Instead, you’ve played something different.  Something you didn’t intend.  Something you hadn’t thought of.  Something you hadn’t seen before.  The caveat is we are not talking about when you begin to learn the tune – it is important to know the melody.  But after you have that learned…

In those times you inadvertently play something you hadn’t planned, you open a big door of possibility.  The question is, will you go through?  Or will you slam it shut?  (You know which one I think you should do!)

Beauty of Error

Because these variations could be serendipitous.  Some of them will work ok.  Others – meh, not so much.  And some won’t work at all, no matter how much lipstick you pile on them. 

But some of them will just explode into an amazing array of new sounds, new thoughts, new textures.  Like a prism bends light, your new find might bend your entire perception of the tune.

Others will explode in another way – shining a light on a new way to look at the tune.  Or click something in your mind that changes how you look at some other, completely unrelated tune.  You might find a new interval combination you hadn’t noticed before.  Or you might find some new rhythm twist that you hadn’t thought possible (or hadn’t thought, period).

This is especially true when we’re working harmony or improvisation – because there are no wrong notes.  There are combinations that may be less satisfying than others.  We might have created a sound environment that does not match our original intention.  But each of those has its beauty – even the discordant options -as long as we are willing to hear it. 

Funny thing about sound – once you make it, it’s gone relatively quickly.  So, even if you lay out a stinker, it doesn’t last. In fact, before you can even examine it, it’s gone!  That tempus is fugit-ing which makes those sounds hard to hang on to. 

So how do we become more appreciative of these unintended consequences?  How do we find the Beauty of Error?  Honestly, you already know –

Practice.  No really – the more you allow these variances to occur, the less they take you by surprise and discombobulate you.  Practice not stopping for every little blip.  Get in the habit of paying attention while you play so you hear them as they happen, not belatedly.  Record yourself to be sure you’re not making lemon face, or rolling your eyes, or any of the other things that telegraph to your audience that things might not be going quite to plan!  All easier when you’ve practiced it!

Boldly go.  Specifically set practice time to explore the sound space around your tune.  Specifically violate the carefully set arrangement you have built.  Challenge your assumptions.  Challenge yourself.   Throw open that door to the unknown and fling yourself through it.  What’s the worst that can happen?  Be kind to yourself – this is what practice time is for!

Capture, review, learn, iterate.  As part of that practice, make the sounds just a little less ephemeral and capture your work.  Record your noodling.  I just use an voice memo app on my phone.  It’s no Deutsche Grammophon but it’s clear enough for me to sort through.  I have loads of little snippets.  Then I go through them and mark in a notebook what’s wheat, what’s chaff, what’s just garbage.  When I’m done, I d-e-l-e-t-e them – like they never existed.  All my secret bombs are gone – *poof* – the sweet gems remain, and no one’s the wiser.

Stop chasing perfection.  We have already talked about how perfection is overrated.  If your listener wanted perfection, they’d get a cd.

Did I mention practice? This doesn’t come overnight.  Nothing about becoming a better musician does.  You just keep practicing – hearing things you didn’t expect, gliding on past like a swan, filing away the sparkly ones – the more you do it, the easier it becomes.   

What beautiful errors have you had lately?  Do you have other ways of cracking that nut and seeing the beauty in the errors?  Have you set aside time for finding them?  Let me know in the comments!